Tokyo Plummets, Tel Aviv Soars: The Global Cost-of-Living Map Has Been Redrawn

Deutsche Bank’s tenth annual Mapping the World’s Prices report (July 2026) (available here in full for pro subs) surveys 69 cities across six continents, benchmarking 2026 prices against 2016, 2019 (pre-Covid), and 2012 (peak yen / cheap dollar).

Jim Reid's (Deutsche's Global Head of Macro and Thematic Research) central finding is structural: currency moves, post-Covid inflation, housing shortages, and geopolitics have overturned old assumptions about which cities are expensive, cheap, or livable.

Most expensive and cheapest cities