London ranked first, while New York City, Washington, DC, and Amsterdam rounded out the top 5
Dubai has been ranked the world’s second-most intelligent city in the inaugural BCG Intelligent Cities Index 2026, while also securing the top global position in the Adoption of smart solutions and AI category, reflecting the emirate’s leadership in implementing smart technologies and artificial intelligence across public services, infrastructure and urban development.
London ranked first, while New York City, Washington, DC, and Amsterdam rounded out the top 5.
Dubai leads in adoption
Even the top five pioneering cities excel in different areas, and none of them leads across every domain, underscoring that no city has mastered every relevant dimension. Intelligent city leadership is defined by different combinations of strengths rather than a single model. Even leading intelligent cities have room to grow in maturity across specific dimensions, as residents’ expectations increase with fast-evolving technology, including AI.
While London tops the overall intelligent city rankings, the five domains are topped as follows:
- London leads in resident outcomes.
- Madrid leads in intelligent city strategy. Dubai leads in adoption. New York City leads in ways of working. Amsterdam leads in enablers.
The report is the firm’s inaugural assessment of how 61 of the world’s biggest cities across 39 countries use technology to serve their residents and businesses.The ondex evaluates cities across five domains of intelligent city maturity: outcomes, strategy, adoption, ways of working and enablers. A city’s overall maturity level reflects its combined maturity across domains: leading, accelerating, emerging, or developing.
“AI is a key foundation of the intelligent city, and AI adoption and optimism are not confined to the ‘usual suspects’ technology hubs,” said Akram Awad, managing director and partner at BCG and coauthor of the report.
“Cities around the world are creating value for residents in different ways and from different starting points. We built the Intelligent Cities Index to provide an objective, holistic view of how cities shape and enable their AI ambitions and how effectively those ambitions translate into meaningful improvements in people’s lives,” he added.
Optimism grows among fast-growing urban populations
The report uncovers a clear alignment between how frequently residents use GenAI tools and how positively they view AI’s future impact. Residents who use AI most often are also the most optimistic about the technology’s potential to improve opportunity, productivity and quality of life.
This creates a virtuous circle. Positive experiences with AI increase resident confidence, giving city leaders a further opening to enable AI more fully and provide more value to beneficiaries through new and improved intelligent city services. This value feeds yet more optimism, which drives more engagement, innovation, and scaling as the cycle repeats.
Cities in Africa, Asia and the Middle East are particularly prominent in this pattern, showing the strongest GenAI momentum, pairing high usage with high optimism about its future impact.
Younger, fast-growing urban populations also show especially high enthusiasm, leading disproportionately in usage and satisfaction, indicating that demographics are an important factor in helping to shape the next phase of adoption, as cities cater to current and future generations.
“Given today’s rapid pace of change and evolving resident expectations, building a city’s intelligent foundation, paired with focused improvement across enablers requires urgency. But city leaders and business partners don’t need to try to do everything all at once,” said Rami Mourtada, a partner and director at BCG and coauthor of the report.
“It’s a longer-term horizon and there is no single pathway forward. Intelligent city momentum comes from making intentional, and sometimes incremental, choices now and building for a smarter tomorrow with a clear, comprehensive roadmap,” he concluded.
Source: economymiddleeast