“Don’t worry, be happy” may be the newest motto for Brampton, if a new national poll is any indication.

The Leger survey ranks Brampton as the second-happiest of Canada’s 10 largest cities, with residents reporting a dramatic five-point increase in their happiness compared with last year.

Brampton scored 71.7 out of 100 in the 2026 Leger Happiness Index, trailing only Montreal at 72.7. More notably, Brampton’s score climbed five points from 66.7 in 2025, the biggest year-over-year increase among the country’s 10 largest cities.

That means Brampton has gone from fifth place among Canada’s biggest cities last year to second this year.

So whatever residents may have been feeling in 2025, the latest numbers suggest they are feeling considerably better in 2026.

And Brampton’s jump stands out even more when compared with some of its GTA neighbours.

Toronto moved up 3.6 points to 69.4, putting it in third place, while Mississauga — which topped the big-city happiness rankings last year — dropped from 70.3 to 68.7 and now sits sixth.

Hamilton also recorded a score of 68.7, while Calgary came in at 68.6.

The 2026 ranking of Canada’s 10 largest cities is:

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Montreal — 72.7
Brampton — 71.7
Toronto — 69.4
Vancouver — 69.0
Hamilton — 68.7
Mississauga — 68.7
Calgary — 68.6
Ottawa — 68.3
Edmonton — 67.7
Winnipeg — 67.2

Brampton’s rise is part of a broader increase in happiness across Canada.

The national happiness score climbed from 68.7 in 2025 to 70.5 this year. Twenty-five per cent of Canadians said their happiness had improved over the previous year, while 52 per cent said it had stayed about the same. The percentage reporting that their happiness had deteriorated fell from 28 per cent last year to 23 per cent this year.

Leger’s findings suggest that happiness is still being driven by some fairly basic things.

Family was the most commonly identified contributor to personal happiness, followed by personal life and health.

At the community level, feeling safe and secure was the top factor, followed by green spaces, parks and access to nature, and the quality of neighbourhood life.

Money, meanwhile, remains a significant source of unhappiness. Cost-of-living pressures and financial concerns continue to weigh on Canadians’ overall sense of well-being.

For Brampton, however, the bottom line is pretty simple: residents are reporting higher levels of happiness than they did a year ago which is enough to put the city near the very top of the national big-city rankings.

And perhaps that’s the most interesting finding of all.

Brampton isn’t just happy. According to this year’s poll, it’s happier than almost anywhere else in Canada’s biggest cities.

The Happiness Index was produced by Leger, a major Canadian market research and polling firm. Leger says it is Canada’s largest Canadian-owned market research and polling firm.

For the 2026 study, Leger surveyed 63,710 Canadians aged 18 and older between June 9 and 29 using its proprietary LEO online panel. The results were weighted according to gender, age and region to make the samples representative of the population.

Participants rated their happiness on a scale from one to 10, with those responses used to produce the overall score out of 100.

The survey also included 6,408 Americans this year, allowing Leger to introduce a U.S. comparison. The average happiness score was 70.0 south of the border, compared with 70.5 in Canada.

 


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