GDS-Index 2026 · Data analysis

The island of Ireland has seven destinations in the 2026 GDS-Index Top 40 (17.5%)

The Republic of Ireland has six (15%)

Every one of the seven raised its score on last year. The Republic places more destinations in the Top 40 than any other country, although none of them reaches the top ten. Belfast, 8th, is the island's highest-ranked destination.

7/40Island of Ireland
17.5% of the Top 40

6/40Republic of Ireland
15% of the Top 40

7/7Irish destinations that
improved on 2025

8thBelfast, highest on
the island

Where Ireland sits in the table

The Global Destination Sustainability Index (GDS-Index) benchmarks how destinations manage the environmental, social and economic performance of tourism and business events. It scores four areas: environmental performance, social performance, suppliers and destination management.⁵ Its 2026 report, Spark to Scale, publishes a Top 40.¹ This analysis is part of our wider series, The State of the Built Environment in Ireland. The grid below shows all 40 places in rank order, with the Irish destinations picked out.

8Belfast

16Kerry

17Dublin

22Cork

24Clare

27Galway

32Limerick

Republic of IrelandNorthern Ireland (UK)Other destinations

Rank	Destination	Jurisdiction	2026	2025	Change
8	Belfast	Northern Ireland	87.06	84.40	+2.66
16	Kerry (county)	Republic	84.24	82.80	+1.44
17	Dublin	Republic	83.76	80.05	+3.71
22	Cork	Republic	82.59	80.08	+2.51
24	Clare (county)	Republic	81.79	77.24	+4.55
27	Galway	Republic	80.47	76.84	+3.63
32	Limerick	Republic	75.53	71.34	+4.19

Scores are GDS-Index percentages. The 2025 column is each destination's own score last year, not its 2025 rank. Kerry and Clare are county-level destinations. Counting cities only, the island has five of 40 (12.5%) and the Republic four (10%).

a. The island of Ireland

Seven of 40 places is a large share for an island of roughly seven million people. Irish destinations also appear in every band of the table: one in the top ten, two between 11th and 20th, three between 21st and 30th, and one between 31st and 40th.

Across the seven, the average score is 82.21%. That is marginally above the average for the Top 40 as a whole, 82.13%. The same seven averaged 78.96% in 2025, so the group gained 3.24 points.

This year the report splits Northern Europe into two groups, Nordic and UK & Ireland. In the UK & Ireland group, Glasgow is 1st, followed by Belfast, Kerry, Dublin and Cork. The island therefore holds four of the five top positions. Belfast, at 87.06%, is one of only two UK & Ireland destinations in the overall top ten, alongside Glasgow (6th). We look at how the city got here in Belfast: How History Built the City and How Belfast Is Building Greener.

b. The Republic of Ireland

With six destinations, the Republic has more in the Top 40 than any other country. Spain and the United Kingdom have four each. The gap is at the very top. No Republic destination reaches the top ten, and the highest is Kerry in 16th.

The six average 81.40%, just below the Top 40 mean. Their scores are tightly grouped. Five of them fall within four points of each other, between Galway's 80.47% and Kerry's 84.24%. Limerick, on 75.53%, is the exception. On average the group rose 3.34 points on 2025. Clare (+4.55) and Limerick (+4.19) improved the most.

Cork, 22nd, is the Republic's second city in the table after Dublin. Our updated report on sustainable building in Cork covers the projects behind it. One of them is Marina Park, a riverside park designed to flood.

Podcast · S6, E2 · Cork

Building Ireland's First Water Park: Inside Cork's Marina Park

Patrick McCabe of Redscape and Rani Ishar of Okra talk to Jackie De Burca about a park built to take on water.

Nine capital cities appear in the Top 40, and Dublin is the fifth of them in 17th place. That puts it ahead of Stockholm, Madrid, Amsterdam and Ljubljana. Helsinki, Copenhagen, Reykjavik and Berlin rank higher. For a destination score, how people move around a capital matters as much as its hotels and venues.

Podcast · S4, E27 · Dublin

Building Climate-Ready Streets, Homes & Transit with Feljin Jose

Dublin City Councillor Feljin Jose talks to Ciara O'Brien about how streets, housing and rail policy shape daily life and climate action.

Scores in 2026 against 2025

Belfast

87.06

Kerry

84.24

Dublin

83.76

Cork

82.59

Clare

81.79

Galway

80.47

Limerick

75.53

Coloured bar = 2026 score. Dark line = 2025 score. The axis runs from 70% to 90% to make the differences readable, so bar lengths are not proportional to the full 0–100% scale.

Improving, but the field is moving faster

Each Irish destination improved, but not by as much as the table overall. The 40 destinations in this year's Top 40 averaged 77.81% in 2025 and 82.13% in 2026, a gain of 4.33 points. The Irish seven gained 3.24 points on average. Very large jumps elsewhere lift the overall figure: Madrid rose 19.75 points, Valencia 17.11 and The Malverns 14.03. Even so, only Clare beat the Top 40 average gain, and Kerry's 1.44 points is among the smallest increases in the table.

Clare

+4.55

Top 40 avg

+4.33

Limerick

+4.19

Dublin

+3.71

Galway

+3.63

Belfast

+2.66

Cork

+2.51

Kerry

+1.44

Percentage-point change, 2025 to 2026. The Top 40 average is a Constructive Voices calculation from the scores on page 8 of the report.

The report itself makes this point. The score needed to stay in the Top 40 keeps rising, because destinations further down are improving too. For Irish destinations, holding their current positions now requires steady year-on-year progress.

Suppliers are one of the four scored areas, so the businesses that build, retrofit and run a destination's venues and hotels count towards its score. The Constructive Voices Ireland directory lists credential-verified practitioners across the country.

Recognition · GDS-Forum, June 2026

Fáilte Ireland's Business Events Impact and Legacy programme won the Impact Award, presented with #MEET4IMPACT at the GDS-Forum in June 2026. The shortlist included the convention bureaux of Barcelona, Bogotá and Gothenburg. The report says the programme sits within the Business Events 2030 strategy and was developed jointly with industry.

The takeaway

Ireland's strength in the index is breadth. The Republic has more Top 40 destinations than any other country, and all seven on the island improved. What it lacks is height: none of the Republic's destinations is in the top ten. The rest of the table is also improving faster on average, so moving up will need gains above that pace.

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↓ Irish destinations (CSV) ↓ Summary and averages (CSV)

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<div style="max-width:680px;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;color:#14202b;background:#fff;border:1px solid #e3ded1;border-radius:6px;overflow:hidden"><div style="height:8px;background:linear-gradient(90deg,#169B62 0 33.3%,#ffffff 33.3% 66.6%,#FF883E 66.6%)"></div><div style="padding:14px 16px"><p style="margin:0 0 10px;font-size:17px;font-weight:bold">Island of Ireland destinations in the 2026 GDS-Index Top 40</p><div style="overflow-x:auto"><table style="width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;font-size:14px"><thead><tr><th style="padding:6px 8px;border-bottom:2px solid #14202b;text-align:left;font-size:12px">Rank</th><th style="padding:6px 8px;border-bottom:2px solid #14202b;text-align:left;font-size:12px">Destination</th><th style="padding:6px 8px;border-bottom:2px solid #14202b;text-align:left;font-size:12px">Jurisdiction</th><th style="padding:6px 8px;border-bottom:2px solid #14202b;text-align:left;font-size:12px">2026</th><th style="padding:6px 8px;border-bottom:2px solid #14202b;text-align:left;font-size:12px">2025</th><th style="padding:6px 8px;border-bottom:2px solid #14202b;text-align:left;font-size:12px">Change</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td style="padding:6px 8px;border-bottom:1px solid #e3ded1">8</td><td style="padding:6px 8px;border-bottom:1px solid #e3ded1"><b>Belfast</b></td><td style="padding:6px 8px;border-bottom:1px solid #e3ded1">Northern Ireland (UK)</td><td style="padding:6px 8px;border-bottom:1px solid #e3ded1;text-align:right;font-family:monospace">87.06</td><td style="padding:6px 8px;border-bottom:1px solid #e3ded1;text-align:right;font-family:monospace">84.40</td><td style="padding:6px 8px;border-bottom:1px solid #e3ded1;text-align:right;font-family:monospace">+2.66</td></tr><tr><td style="padding:6px 8px;border-bottom:1px solid #e3ded1">16</td><td style="padding:6px 8px;border-bottom:1px solid #e3ded1"><b>Kerry</b></td><td style="padding:6px 8px;border-bottom:1px solid #e3ded1">Republic of Ireland</td><td style="padding:6px 8px;border-bottom:1px solid #e3ded1;text-align:right;font-family:monospace">84.24</td><td style="padding:6px 8px;border-bottom:1px solid #e3ded1;text-align:right;font-family:monospace">82.80</td><td style="padding:6px 8px;border-bottom:1px solid #e3ded1;text-align:right;font-family:monospace">+1.44</td></tr><tr><td style="padding:6px 8px;border-bottom:1px solid #e3ded1">17</td><td style="padding:6px 8px;border-bottom:1px solid #e3ded1"><b>Dublin</b></td><td style="padding:6px 8px;border-bottom:1px solid #e3ded1">Republic of Ireland</td><td style="padding:6px 8px;border-bottom:1px solid #e3ded1;text-align:right;font-family:monospace">83.76</td><td style="padding:6px 8px;border-bottom:1px solid #e3ded1;text-align:right;font-family:monospace">80.05</td><td style="padding:6px 8px;border-bottom:1px solid #e3ded1;text-align:right;font-family:monospace">+3.71</td></tr><tr><td style="padding:6px 8px;border-bottom:1px solid #e3ded1">22</td><td style="padding:6px 8px;border-bottom:1px solid #e3ded1"><b>Cork</b></td><td style="padding:6px 8px;border-bottom:1px solid #e3ded1">Republic of Ireland</td><td style="padding:6px 8px;border-bottom:1px solid #e3ded1;text-align:right;font-family:monospace">82.59</td><td style="padding:6px 8px;border-bottom:1px solid #e3ded1;text-align:right;font-family:monospace">80.08</td><td style="padding:6px 8px;border-bottom:1px solid #e3ded1;text-align:right;font-family:monospace">+2.51</td></tr><tr><td style="padding:6px 8px;border-bottom:1px solid #e3ded1">24</td><td style="padding:6px 8px;border-bottom:1px solid #e3ded1"><b>Clare</b></td><td style="padding:6px 8px;border-bottom:1px solid #e3ded1">Republic of Ireland</td><td style="padding:6px 8px;border-bottom:1px solid #e3ded1;text-align:right;font-family:monospace">81.79</td><td style="padding:6px 8px;border-bottom:1px solid #e3ded1;text-align:right;font-family:monospace">77.24</td><td style="padding:6px 8px;border-bottom:1px solid #e3ded1;text-align:right;font-family:monospace">+4.55</td></tr><tr><td style="padding:6px 8px;border-bottom:1px solid #e3ded1">27</td><td style="padding:6px 8px;border-bottom:1px solid #e3ded1"><b>Galway</b></td><td style="padding:6px 8px;border-bottom:1px solid #e3ded1">Republic of Ireland</td><td style="padding:6px 8px;border-bottom:1px solid #e3ded1;text-align:right;font-family:monospace">80.47</td><td style="padding:6px 8px;border-bottom:1px solid #e3ded1;text-align:right;font-family:monospace">76.84</td><td style="padding:6px 8px;border-bottom:1px solid #e3ded1;text-align:right;font-family:monospace">+3.63</td></tr><tr><td style="padding:6px 8px;border-bottom:1px solid #e3ded1">32</td><td style="padding:6px 8px;border-bottom:1px solid #e3ded1"><b>Limerick</b></td><td style="padding:6px 8px;border-bottom:1px solid #e3ded1">Republic of Ireland</td><td style="padding:6px 8px;border-bottom:1px solid #e3ded1;text-align:right;font-family:monospace">75.53</td><td style="padding:6px 8px;border-bottom:1px solid #e3ded1;text-align:right;font-family:monospace">71.34</td><td style="padding:6px 8px;border-bottom:1px solid #e3ded1;text-align:right;font-family:monospace">+4.19</td></tr></tbody></table></div><p style="margin:10px 0 0;font-size:12px;line-height:1.5;color:#5c6670">Data: <a href="https://www.gds.earth/reports/" style="color:#169B62">GDS-Movement, 2026 GDS-Index</a>. Analysis and table: <a href="https://constructive-voices.com/gds-index-2026-ireland-top-40/" style="color:#BF1E2E;font-weight:bold">Constructive Voices</a>.</p></div></div>

Data: GDS-Movement, 2026 GDS-Index. Analysis and table: Constructive Voices. Ranks and scores remain GDS-Movement's published figures.

How we calculated this. The ranks and scores are from the 2026 GDS-Index Top 40 table. Group averages, the Top 40 mean and every year-on-year change are Constructive Voices calculations from those published scores. They are labelled as such and are not figures published by GDS-Movement.

Sources

GDS-Movement, 2026 GDS-Index Report: Spark to Scale (2026), p. 8, "The 2026 GDS-Index Top 40".Scope: all ranks and 2026/2025 scores in this article.
GDS-Movement, 2026 GDS-Index Report: Spark to Scale (2026), pp. 16–17, "Leaders by Region".Scope: the UK & Ireland regional grouping and its top five.
GDS-Movement, 2026 GDS-Index Report: Spark to Scale (2026), p. 9, "What does it take to make the Top 40?"Scope: the rising score needed to stay in the Top 40.
GDS-Movement, 2026 GDS-Index Report: Spark to Scale (2026), p. 28, Insights section.Scope: Fáilte Ireland Impact and Legacy programme and the Impact Award.
Roger Kellerman, "Nearly 9 in 10 Destinations Improve as Helsinki Leads 2026 GDS-Index", Meetings International, 23 September 2026.Scope: the four scored areas; release coverage of the report. Ranks and scores were checked against the report itself.

Constructive Voices · Published 24 September 2026 · Verified rather than reported: every figure was checked against the primary source above.

Constructive Voices

The Island Of Ireland Has 7 Destinations In The 2026 GDS-Index Top 40 (17.5%)

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