Sweden has ranked as the best country in Europe in which to do business, according to Leadfeeder’s ‘Doing Business in Europe: Where the Action Is in 2026’ rankings.
The Nordic country took the top spot with a score of 74.8, ahead of Denmark (69.2) and the Netherlands (64.6), while Germany, Europe’s largest economy in the study, ranked fifth with a score of 62.6.
The ranking assessed nine metrics across business activity and expansion, investment, innovation and competitiveness, and digitalisation.
Swede success
Notably, while Sweden came out on top overall, it leads in just one of the nine metrics, the report found.
‘Sweden leads only one of the nine metrics outright, the share of employment in knowledge-intensive activities, where at 50.1% half the Swedish workforce is in higher-value work,’ it noted.
‘What carries it to the top is consistency: top six finishes in all four categories, with Business Innovation & Competitiveness (2nd), Business Digitalisation (3rd), Business Activity & Expansion (4th) and Business Investment (6th). No other country in the study manages that.’
Best of the rest
The Netherlands recorded the highest employment rate among the countries studied, at 83.4%, while Norway had the highest labour productivity at 123.0. Germany led the innovation category, with 779.6 patent applications per million inhabitants, but ranked 11th for business digitalisation. France showed a similar pattern, ranking third for innovation but 19th for digitalisation.
Elsewhere, Türkiye recorded the highest gross fixed capital formation rate at 30.6% of GDP, followed by Czechia at 26.4% and Bosnia and Herzegovina at 25.8%. Greece recorded the lowest rate at 16.9%.
The five lowest-ranked countries were Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Greece. All five ranked between 24th and 29th for business activity and expansion. Bulgaria had the lowest labour productivity among the 29 countries at 21.7, while Romania had the lowest AI adoption rate in Europe at 5.2%.
In producing its ranking, Leadfeeder used data from The Conference Board, Eurostat and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Some 11 European countries were excluded from the overall ranking because they lacked complete data across the nine metrics. Read more here.
