Smart City Index 2025: Düsseldorf, Hanover, Heidelberg and Leipzig new in the top 10
These are Germany's most digital cities: Digital association Bitkom publishes shortlist of the ten highest-ranked cities in the Smart City Index 2025.
View of the city of Düsseldorf - now in the top 10 of the Smart City Index. Source: Unsplash
There has been a significant shift in the top group of Germany's smartest cities: Düsseldorf, Hanover, Heidelberg and Leipzig have moved into the top 10 of the Smart City Index this year. Last year, Leipzig was still in 23rd place, Heidelberg in 15th, Düsseldorf in 17th and Hanover in 41st. Dresden, Freiburg im Breisgau, Lübeck and Ulm are no longer in the top 10 this year.
5 categories, 163 parameters, 13,529 data points
The Smart City Index analyses and evaluates all 83 major German cities in five categories: administration, IT and communication, energy and environment, mobility, and society and education. For each city, 163 parameters were examined – from online citizen services and sharing offers for mobility and intelligent traffic light systems to broadband availability and digital training for teachers and administrative staff. Index values were calculated for each city in the five categories, from which the overall value and overall ranking were derived.
The following cities made it into this year's top 10 (in alphabetical order):
- Bochum
- Düsseldorf
- Hamburg
- Hanover
- Heidelberg
- Cologne
- Leipzig
- Munich
- Nuremberg
- Stuttgart
Smart City Index Awards at #SCCON25
The complete ranking and the exact placement of the top 10 cities will be presented in an online press conference on 11 September 2025 in the run-up to the Smart Country Convention.
The official award ceremony for the smartest cities will take place on 30 September, the first day of #SCCON25, as part of the Smart City Index Awards on the Plaza Stage.