A new edition of Kearney's Global Cities Index has ranked Qatar's capital Doha among the world's top-50 cities for the first time since 2018.

As a result of substantial improvement in the Human Capital dimension, Doha moved up seven spots from 2022 (57th). Doha was ranked 53rd (2021), 68th (2020), 61st (2019) and 63rd (2018) in the previous years respectively.

As international travel returned to pre-pandemic levels, Qatar's capital city also attracted large volumes of migrant talent and tourism. The FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 also welcomed over 1.4 million visitors to the country.

As a result of recent open economic policies, the city also jumped six spots in its Business Activity ranking, ushering it into the top 50.

According to Kearney, a leading global management consulting firm, global cities are experiencing a shake-up in their traditional hierarchy.

In addition, Doha has significantly improved its ranking in Global Cities Outlook after a few years of lull. Doha was overall 68th in the latest edition, improving 16 places from 2022 (84th). Doha was ranked 107 in 2021, 95 in 2020, 66 in 2019 and 63 in 2018 respectively.

New hubs - including Doha - have experienced incredible gains, contributing to a new geography of opportunity. Doha’s meteoric rise globally as a sports, tourism and events hub has seen it climb into the top-50 for the first time and rank second regionally.

A city's Global Cities Index (GCI) quantifies its ability to attract, retain, and generate global flows of capital, people, and ideas. Cities are measured against five key dimensions — human capital, information exchange, cultural experience, political engagement and business activity.

According to the 17th edition of the Global Peace Index (GPI) 2023, Qatar is the most peaceful country in the Middle East and North Africa. The ranking also places Qatar 21st in the world, recording a jump of two spots this year.

"Qatar's commitment to realizing Vision 2030 has led its capital city to begin closing in on more established global cities." The country has demonstrated its resilience despite challenging global conditions by increasing its focus on improving the investment environment, building upon its decades-long efforts to develop a world-class educational system and relatively easy access to global talent," said Rudolph Lohmeyer, Kearney Partner and National Transformation Institute.

A Global Cities Outlook (GCO) aims to identify the cities most likely to achieve global prominence while the Global Cities Index (GCI) captures the current state of global city leadership. There was also the emergence of a distributed geography of opportunity.