The Best Information About Happiness: What Science Says and the Happiest Countries in 2026

What is happiness? Can it be measured? Does it depend on you or on your genes? Does money buy it? Here is the essential information about happiness: what philosophy and psychology say, the most solid scientific studies, the ranking of the happiest countries in the world in 2026 and a practical way to bring all of it into your life. Happiness is personal, which is why it is not measured: it is managed.

1. What is happiness
2. What science says about happiness
3. How to manage your happiness: the wheel of life
4. Tips to be happy
5. The happiest countries in the world in 2026
6. International Day of Happiness
7. Key authors on happiness
8. Happiness in organizations
9. Happiness quotes
10. Frequently asked questions

What is happiness?

The Royal Spanish Academy defines happiness as a “state of pleasant spiritual and physical satisfaction”. More than two thousand years ago, Aristotle called it eudaimonia and made it the supreme good: the only thing we seek for its own sake, while everything else (money, fame, pleasure) we seek in order to be happy. For him happiness is not a stroke of luck but the result of living by developing the best in yourself, hence the idea that happiness depends on ourselves.

As soon as you try to pin down what that good is, disagreements begin. Philosophy asks about its concept, psychology about the factors that make us feel good, sociology about the social variables that shape our goals, and anthropology about how each culture built its own model. What they all share is that happiness is subjective: what fulfils one person leaves another indifferent.

Is happiness an emotion or a feeling?

Joy is an emotion: intense, brief and triggered by something specific, like good news or a hug. Happiness is closer to a feeling or a state: it is the judgement you make about your life, and it lasts longer than any emotion. That is why you can have a bad day and still feel your life is going well, or laugh a lot at a party and feel something important is off.

Happiness according to psychology

Psychology studies it as subjective well-being: how satisfied you are with your life, plus how often you feel pleasant emotions and how rarely you feel unpleasant ones. It also separates two sides: hedonic (feeling good, enjoying) and eudaimonic (having meaning, growing, contributing). Since the late 1990s, Martin Seligman’s positive psychology has made happiness a field of research in its own right, with its merits and also a lot of marketing, as we explain in the myths about happiness.

Happiness and success

Success is the happy result of an action, and it means something different to each person: raising a family, running a company, starting your own business or living without worries. All successes share one secret: they have to help us be happy. One is rarely enough, because happiness usually comes from balance between several areas of life. Each person needs their own rules and their own formula; the problem is that many lose it along the way or never try.

What science says about happiness

The longest study on happiness: Harvard, since 1938

The Harvard Study of Adult Development began in 1938 with 268 Harvard students. Later 456 young men from poor Boston neighbourhoods joined, and today it continues with their children under Robert Waldinger. After decades of follow-up, its conclusion is that close relationships predict happiness and health better than money, fame, social class, intelligence or genes: those most satisfied with their relationships at 50 were the healthiest at 80 (Harvard University summary).

Martin Seligman’s PERMA model

Seligman, the father of positive psychology, sums up well-being in five elements (the PERMA model):

• Positive emotions: pleasant feelings.
• Engagement: being absorbed in what you do.
• Relationships: positive relationships.
• Meaning: sense and purpose (here is how to find your life purpose).
• Accomplishment: moving toward what matters to you.

How much of your happiness depends on you?

You have probably seen the famous “happiness pie”: 50% genes, 40% what you do and only 10% your circumstances. It came from a 2005 paper by Sonja Lyubomirsky, Kennon Sheldon and David Schkade and was repeated in thousands of books and courses. In 2019, Nicholas Brown and Julia Rohrer showed that those figures do not hold up: genes, circumstances and activities interact, and the 40% was inflated. The original authors admitted the pie was a simplification, although they maintain that happiness can be worked on. The honest conclusion: part of your happiness does depend on what you do, but nobody can tell you what percentage. Distrust anyone who sells you an exact number.

Does money buy happiness?

For years it was repeated that beyond about $75,000 a year, more money did not make you happier. In 2023, Matthew Killingsworth, Daniel Kahneman and Barbara Mellers reviewed the data together and reached a subtler conclusion: for most people, happiness keeps rising with income; only among the unhappiest (around 20%) does it stop rising beyond about $100,000 a year. Money helps, but it does not fix what hurts elsewhere, such as a broken relationship or a job with no meaning.

The formula for happiness

A team at University College London led by neuroscientist Robb Rutledge published in PNAS in 2014 an equation that predicts momentary happiness. They tested it with 18,420 people playing on a smartphone app, and the result was clear: what moves your happiness at any moment is not how much you win, but whether things turn out better or worse than you expected. Realistic expectations are not resignation: they are a good strategy.

How to manage your happiness: the wheel of life

Studies talk about averages, and your life is not an average. To move from theory to action, the simplest tool is the wheel of life: you score the eight areas of your life from 0 to 10 (family and friends, health, home, leisure, love, money, personal growth and professional development), write what you want in each and choose what to change first. The goal is not an average score but to see where you stand and what depends on you.

You can make your wheel of life for free right here, with your Personal Well-being Report at the end. To go deeper, try these values exercises or build your life map.

For a short reflection exercise, see how to be happy. If you are just getting started, read how to start being happy. If you hold back from good things, read about fear of being happy. For the workplace view, read happy employees. For a critical view, read the science of happiness. To put it into practice, read how to make changes in your life.

And if you would rather look at one area in detail, choose its sub-wheel:

Tips to be happy

There are no magic formulas: with age most of us find that generic advice works, at best, as a placebo. Still, some ideas tend to help, and several match what science says.

• Look after your relationships. They are the best predictor of happiness in the Harvard study. It is never too late to make up with the people you love.
• Think more positively without denying what goes wrong. Optimism can be trained too.
• Appreciate the small things. Though if someone leaves you a nice inheritance, there is no need to refuse.
• Keep a gratitude list, even if your neighbour does not.
• Live in the present. The time machine does not exist yet.
• Take time to reflect on what you want in each area of your life.
• Stop comparing yourself with others. Compare only to learn, the way you would study the competition to improve.
• Be more compassionate. You never know when it will be your turn to ask for help.
• Fix what is wrong, and try to accept what cannot be fixed.
• Manage your stress without obsessing over getting it to zero.
• Make time for your passions, not other people’s.
• Sleep enough. As much as your body asks for, no more and no less.
• Move regularly, body and mind.
• Do nice things for others. It will fill you with courage.
• Make time for yourself and make the changes your life is asking for, one at a time.

Hundreds of diagrams on how to be happy circulate on social media, many “backed” by some study from some university. This advice is not coaching, mindfulness or NLP: it is common sense. Move away from people who are bad for you and spend time with those who make you happy. It is worth repeating: if someone truly loves you and gives you happiness, that is the person to be with. And remember that not everything in life is happiness, and that you can also be happy with little.

If you prefer to read at your own pace, Conseguir la Felicidad is a free blog-book.

The happiest countries in the world in 2026

Can happiness be measured? Surely it is personal and non-transferable and the happiness meter does not exist, yet some try: the World Happiness Report 2026, published by the University of Oxford’s Wellbeing Research Centre, Gallup and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. It asks thousands of people in each country where they would place their life on a ladder from 0 to 10 (the Cantril ladder) and ranks 147 countries by their 2023 to 2025 average. The 2026 theme is happiness and social media.

The 10 happiest countries in the world

1. Finland, first for the ninth year running (7.764 out of 10), with its saunas.
2. Iceland, which despite the cold has the northern lights.
3. Denmark, the birthplace of hygge, the Danish art of coziness.
4. Costa Rica, the best-placed Latin American country and the big surprise of the top 10.
5. Sweden, where saunas and good food are also enjoyed.
6. Norway, among its fjords.
7. The Netherlands, a country to enjoy by bike.
8. Israel.
9. Luxembourg, one of the richest countries in the world.
10. Switzerland, closing the top 10.

Spain ranks 41st (6.54 out of 10), three places down from the previous year. In Latin America, after Costa Rica (4th) come Mexico (12th), Uruguay (31st), Brazil (32nd), El Salvador (37th), Panama (39th), Guatemala (42nd), Argentina (44th) and Chile (50th).

What the ranking measures, and what it does not

The report explains differences between countries with six factors: GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity and perceived corruption. It is a useful tool for governments to put well-being on their agenda, but it says nothing about your happiness, because it ignores each person’s preferences. How can you be happy in Finland if you hate the cold? In the end it is a matter of each person’s tastes, which is why it makes no sense to move abroad just because of a ranking.

One example: Saudi Arabia appears in 22nd place. At a time when we talk so much about human rights, how happy can gay people be in a country where they have no rights? Everyone can draw their own conclusions. If you are interested in how people try to measure it, we explain it in detail in can happiness be measured?

International Day of Happiness: March 20

March 20 is the International Day of Happiness. The United Nations General Assembly proclaimed it in 2012 (resolution 66/281), and the World Happiness Report is presented every year on that day. To make the most of it, here are five things worth remembering:

1. Start with the most important: you may be unlucky and today may be a bad day. Some believe you only have to account to happiness once a year. Those of us who work on it do not panic over a bad day. Do we have to be happy every single day?
2. Whatever happens, do not let anyone condition how you are happy, least of all a calendar. If today is a good day, great; if not, no problem.
3. If you like, eat well, rest and smile at everyone. Not to be happy, but simply to live better. And if you see someone in a bad mood, do not take it on and keep enjoying life.
4. Whatever you do, today may be a day to forget, for example when a loved one dies. Whoever tells you those days are also for smiling has lost touch with their emotions. Learning to overcome failure is part of happiness too.
5. However you take it, today may be the worst day of your life. Relax: as long as you can breathe, there are still things to discover.

On a lighter note: “there are some things money can’t buy, for everything else, there’s MasterCard”. Something smarter: “today may not be a good day, but to keep your smile… Happiness Play”.

Key authors on happiness

If you want to read those who have contributed most to the study of happiness, start with these:

• Aristotle: happiness as the supreme good (Nicomachean Ethics).
• Martin Seligman: founder of positive psychology and the PERMA model.
• Sonja Lyubomirsky: The How of Happiness and the famous pie (and its revision).
• Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: the state of flow.
• Daniel Kahneman: Nobel laureate; the difference between living well and remembering having lived well, and money.
• Ed Diener: the great researcher of subjective well-being.
• Robert Waldinger: director of the Harvard study on the good life.
• Tal Ben-Shahar: his happiness course was one of Harvard’s most popular.
• Laurie Santos: her Yale course The Science of Well-Being is one of the most followed in the world.
• Ruut Veenhoven: creator of the World Database of Happiness.
• Viktor Frankl: Man’s Search for Meaning.
• Matthieu Ricard: happiness through meditation.
• Pedro Amador: happiness is not measured, it is managed (Coaching of Variety).

To follow the research as it happens, the best centres are Greater Good (UC Berkeley) and the Wellbeing Research Centre (University of Oxford). There are very interesting studies, although many lean on surveys to give general advice, and very few truly help each person manage their own happiness.

Happiness in organizations: measured or managed?

Happy employees? Happy collaborators? Tired of the typical workplace-climate survey? Imagine that at the next election they do not let you vote: they tell you they ran a representative poll and the result is scientifically proven. You would be outraged. Something similar is starting to happen with happiness in companies: using the excuse of having an indicator, decisions are made for people. Happiness is not measured! Happiness is managed!

Is happiness profitable for an organization?

Common sense says happy employees perform better, but there is still no reliable data that proves it in general, so beware of the limits of statistics: you cannot put factory workers and their managers in the same bag. Happiness can be a marketing strategy or a value offered to the customer, and in both cases it works when each person can manage their own.

Who is happiness productive for?

For responsible people who want to manage their lives. It takes understanding co-responsibility between an organization and its collaborators, and between citizens and their countries. Happiness is not a final destination but a path. If you are still waiting to be told what to do to be happy, read twenty self-help books and take twenty personal development coaching courses. The day you understand you are the only one responsible for your happiness, you will enjoy a simple technology that is always within reach, like Happiness Play.

For companies that want to give their customers something of quality and link their brand to happiness, or support their employees in their personal and professional growth. Collaborators do not go to the company to be happy, just as they do not go to be cured (that is what hospitals are for), but the companies of the future do give them tools to manage their well-being. And for governments that want to offer a new level of support to their citizens, knowing that statistics only report global trends and that every citizen has the right to choose their own well-being.

The happiness dashboard of Happiness Play Pro

Want to go beyond statistics and take action? Happiness Play Pro is the version for organizations: each person makes their own wheel of life, chooses what they want and what they will change, and the organization sees aggregated, confidential data in a happiness dashboard: activity, wheels, conditions, changes and countries, with filters by period, country, gender, age and area. It does not measure happiness, because the happiness meter does not exist: it helps manage it to have happier employees and customers.

Happiness quotes

Happiness is talked about constantly. From childhood we are taught rules and ways of living, and if we ask why, the answer is usually that following that path will make us happy. It is a horizon that makes us walk. Who knows whether there is an exact definition, or a different happiness for every inhabitant of the Earth. We only hope that those in this continuous race do not discover one day that, running so fast, they left happiness behind, within arm’s reach. Here is a selection of quotes that help to think about it:

• “The greater our mental calm, the greater our capacity to enjoy a happy life.” Dalai Lama
• “The happy man is not the one who laughs, but the one whose soul, full of joy and confidence, rises above events.” Seneca
• “Success is getting what you want; happiness is wanting what you get.” Often attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “For a man to be truly happy, he must be content with himself.” Armando Palacio Valdés
• “The secret of my happiness is not striving for pleasure, but finding pleasure in effort.” André Gide
• “Happiness is sometimes a blessing, but usually it is a conquest.” Paulo Coelho
• “An indispensable part of happiness is lacking some of the things you want.” Bertrand Russell
• “Let your happiness not be the fruit of favourable circumstances, but a product of yourself.” Periander

Frequently asked questions about happiness

What is happiness according to psychology?

It is subjective well-being: how satisfied you are with your life, together with feeling pleasant emotions often and unpleasant ones rarely. It includes enjoying (hedonic happiness) and having meaning and growing (eudaimonic happiness).

What is happiness for Aristotle?

Eudaimonia: the supreme good, the only thing sought for its own sake. For him it is reached by living according to virtue and developing the best in yourself, not by luck.

How can I be happier?

By looking after your relationships, which weigh most in the Harvard study; by adjusting your expectations, because happiness depends on how things turn out compared with what you expected; and by deciding what you want to change in each area of your life. The wheel of life helps you see where to start.

Why is happiness important?

Because it is what almost everyone seeks and it guides many of our decisions. Besides, the Harvard study found that those most satisfied with their relationships at 50 were the healthiest at 80.

Can happiness be measured?

There is no happiness meter. What is measured is the life satisfaction each person reports: the World Happiness Report uses the Cantril ladder, from 0 to 10. With the wheel of life you score each area separately to decide what to change, without summing it up in an average.

What is the happiest country in the world?

Finland, for the ninth year in a row, according to the World Happiness Report 2026, followed by Iceland and Denmark. Costa Rica (4th) is the best-placed Latin American country and Spain is 41st.

When is the International Day of Happiness?

March 20. The UN General Assembly proclaimed it in 2012 (resolution 66/281), and the World Happiness Report is presented on that day every year.

What are the happiness hormones?

The popular name for dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin and endorphins, substances the body produces that take part in pleasure, mood, bonding and pain relief. None is enough on its own: happiness depends on how you live, not on a molecule.

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