Release: GaWC Global Media Cities 2025

We have today released our latest ranking of Global Media Cities. The reported city positions in 2025 are based on an analysis of the top 100 leading global media firms across 790 cities, the most extensive analysis of global media firms ever undertaken by GaWC researchers.

The study includes traditional global media corporations such as Comcast, Walt Disney and Bertelsmann, large technology corporations such as Alphabet, Meta, Amazon and Microsoft, and new media platform corporations including Netflix, Spotify, ByteDance and Tencent.

London and New York are the most connected global media cities, with Tokyo, Singapore and Paris making up the remainder of the top 5. Three Chinese cities make the top 20 – Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong.

Position	City	Country	GNC%*
1	London	United Kingdom	100
2	New York	U.S.	91
3	Tokyo	Japan	75
4	Singapore	Singapore	64
5	Paris	France	59
6	Sydney	Australia	56
7	Washington DC	U.S.	55
8	Toronto	Canada	52
9	San Francisco	U.S.	52
10	Dubai	UAE	52
11	Seoul	South Korea	47
12	Beijing	China	45
13	Los Angeles	U.S.	45
14	Amsterdam	Netherlands	42
15	Chicago	U.S.	41
16	Mexico City	Mexico	41
17	Madrid	Spain	41
18	Berlin	Germany	39
19	Shanghai	China	38
20	Hong Kong	China/SAR	37

These results build on earlier studies of global media cities, based on GaWC data produced in 2011 and 2018, and published as Hoyler and Watson (2013) and Watson et al. (2023).

Further analysis of the 2025 data will be forthcoming, so watch this space.