Analysis
The 26 shared places in the 2026 Country Index, and why the index ties
Fifty-three of the 183 ranked countries share their place with at least one other — Austria and Luxembourg at 6th, Colombia, Ecuador and Indonesia at 86th. The index prints a tie wherever its arithmetic cannot tell two countries apart, and this is the full list.
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The figures in this piece are as they stood on . The pages it is based on are kept current; this piece is not, so a number here may since have moved on those pages.
Based on: Country Index 2026 · Methodology: the three words · How the index is built
The 2026 Country Index places 183 countries on 156 distinct positions. Twenty-six of those positions are shared — by two countries in 25 cases, by three in one — so 53 countries, nearly three in ten, hold their place jointly with at least one other. This piece explains why the index ties as often as it does, what a joint place means, and lists all 26. The figures are as the edition stood on 25 October 2026.
Why the index ties
Each country's overall place is the order of an average: on every subject it is placed on, its place is turned into a share of that subject's field, and the shares are averaged. The average is never published — it is this site's arithmetic, with nothing anchoring it, and a printed number would invite being read as a measurement somebody made. But the order is published, and the order has to decide where one country ends and the next begins.
The rule is that two countries whose averages agree to one decimal place are printed as joint. The average is a mean of up to sixteen shares, each of them a fraction of a field of between 159 and 200 countries, and a difference in the second decimal place is a difference the inputs cannot support — the edition publishes, as every row's range, how far a place moves when any single key is dropped, and that movement is what the second decimal is measured against. The index could order every country by the full value of its average and print 183 distinct places. It chooses not to, because that would be printing a precision the data does not have.
What a joint place means
Both countries hold the place, and the next place is skipped, in the way a published league table skips one. Austria and Luxembourg share 6th; the next country, Germany, is 8th, and there is no 7th. Colombia, Ecuador and Indonesia share 86th, and the country after them is 89th. A joint place is marked with "=" on the edition page and the word "joint" wherever a standing is printed in a sentence, and a country's position on its own profile reads the same way.
Two things a joint place does not mean. It does not mean the countries are alike — Austria and Luxembourg reach the same average by different routes, and their subject standings differ on most subjects. And it does not mean the index could not separate them if asked; it means the index declined to, on the stated rule.
All 26 shared places
| Place | Countries |
|---|---|
| =6 | Austria, Luxembourg |
| =17 | Australia, Belgium |
| =19 | France, New Zealand |
| =31 | Italy, Slovakia |
| =46 | Moldova, Seychelles |
| =55 | Malaysia, Montenegro |
| =62 | Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ukraine |
| =69 | Armenia, Panama |
| =71 | Dominican Republic, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines |
| =73 | Mexico, Russia |
| =76 | Brunei, Jamaica |
| =78 | Saudi Arabia, Türkiye |
| =86 | Colombia, Ecuador, Indonesia |
| =91 | Maldives, Suriname |
| =95 | Kuwait, Sri Lanka |
| =97 | Bahrain, Tonga |
| =102 | Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan |
| =104 | Bahamas, Tunisia |
| =107 | Ghana, Vanuatu |
| =113 | Morocco, Namibia |
| =122 | Honduras, Laos |
| =136 | Malawi, Palestine |
| =140 | Bangladesh, Lebanon |
| =156 | Djibouti, Gambia |
| =166 | Mali, Republic of the Congo |
| =175 | Afghanistan, Central African Republic |
The pairs are not neighbours in any other sense. Mexico and Russia share 73rd; Bahrain and Tonga share 97th; Malawi and Palestine share 136th. In each case two countries on different continents, measured by largely the same publishers, reached an average the index could not tell apart.
Where the first place is not shared
One place the edition does not share is the first. Switzerland is placed first alone, and its range — the span its place would move within if any one key were dropped — is 1 to 2. The site's rule for a leader applies to the index as it applies to every statistic page: a country is named as first only when it holds that place alone, and a shared first place would be printed as shared with nobody named as the leader. In 2026 that case did not arise overall; it does arise on individual subjects, and the subject pages say so where it does.