The Legatum Institute, an independent policy, advisory, and advocacy organization within the Legatum group of companies, released the seventeenth edition of its Prosperity Index report titled “Prosperity Index 2026”, which consists of a gauge of prosperity across 161 countries worldwide based on material wealth and personal wellbeing. More specifically, the Legatum Prosperity Index covers three domains (Development, Society and Freedom) in its assessment of each country which are further divided into ten pillars namely “Standard of Living”, “Health”, “Education”, “Integrity of Families”, “Integrity of Communities”, “Integrity of Society”, “Integrity of State”, “Civil Peace”, “Freedom of Dissent” and “Economic Freedom”. The 2026 edition introduced a new methodology that ranks countries based on their “p-average” rather than the simple arithmetic average. In details, and unlike a simple average, the p-average places greater emphasis on balanced performance across its indicators. As a result, exceptionally strong performance in one area cannot fully compensate for weak performance in another. In other words, countries are rewarded for achieving consistently strong outcomes across multiple dimensions of prosperity, rather than excelling in only a few while lagging significantly in others. Consequently, Scandinavian countries, which dominated the top 4 positions in the 2023 index have not been able to achieve the same results in the 2026 index due to their high tax burden. In addition, the new methodology enabled several Eastern European countries—including Estonia, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Latvia, and Slovenia—to break into the top 30 rankings for the first time.

According to the report, Switzerland came in 1^st in the world in the 2026 Prosperity Index with a score of 91.82, followed by Norway (score of 91.07), Ireland (score of 90.19), Denmark (score of 89.70) and Finland (score of 89.55). On the regional level, Kuwait came in first and ranked 50^th in the world with a score of 71.69, followed by the United Arab Emirates (score: 71.67, world rank: 51^st), Oman (score: 69.98, world rank: 54^th), Jordan (score: 66.28, world rank: 67^th) and Tunisia (score: 64.18, world rank: 75^th) among others. On the local front, Lebanon came in 99^th in the world and 11^th in the MENA region in the Legatum Prosperity Index with a score of 58.30. Specifically, Lebanon scored 70.00 in the development domain (ranking 89^th worldwide), 49.99 in the freedom domain (ranking 117^th globally) and 58.23 in the society domain (ranking 102^nd worldwide).