Boston Consulting Group's inaugural Intelligent Cities Index, released July 27, ranks Singapore 11th and Hong Kong 36th among 61 cities. The study evaluates outcomes, strategy, technology adoption, ways of working and enabling conditions, placing Singapore in its accelerating tier and Hong Kong in the emerging tier.
Boston Consulting Group released its first Intelligent Cities Index on July 27, 2026, assessing how 61 cities across 39 countries use digital technology and AI to serve residents and businesses. Singapore ranked 11th overall, while Hong Kong ranked 36th.
The ranking puts Singapore behind several other Asian cities, including Shanghai, Beijing and Seoul, but ahead of Hong Kong by 25 places. BCG assigned Singapore to its accelerating maturity group and Hong Kong to its emerging group. London led the overall index, followed by Dubai, New York City, Washington and Amsterdam.
What the index measures
BCG evaluates five domains: resident and economic outcomes, intelligent-city strategy, adoption of smart-city apps and AI, institutional ways of working, and enabling conditions such as data, infrastructure, talent and funding. Those domains contain 14 dimensions and 35 indicators. The consultancy says it normalized six core indicators and combined the results into four maturity groups: leading, accelerating, emerging and developing.
This is broader than a league table of AI model development or private-sector technology companies. The index focuses on how effectively a city turns technology, governance and supporting resources into services and outcomes. BCG's analysis also argues that high adoption alone is insufficient: cities need both hard enablers, such as infrastructure and data, and soft enablers, including talent, capital and partnerships.
How to read the Singapore-Hong Kong gap
The 25-place difference is a result within BCG's methodology, not a universal measure of either city's technology sector or financial importance. Rankings can change when indicators, weights or city samples change, and the report does not establish that AI adoption alone caused a city's position.
For data and AI teams, the useful signal is the index's emphasis on deployment conditions. Model access is only one part of city-scale implementation; governance, service design, infrastructure, workforce capability and sustained adoption determine whether AI-enabled services reach residents and businesses. The ranking offers a comparative framework for those factors, but local decisions should still rely on the underlying indicators rather than the headline position alone.
Key Points #
- 1BCG ranked Singapore 11th and Hong Kong 36th among 61 cities in its inaugural Intelligent Cities Index.
- 2The methodology spans five domains, 14 dimensions and 35 indicators rather than measuring AI adoption alone.
- 3BCG placed Singapore in the accelerating maturity group and Hong Kong in the emerging group.
Scoring Rationale #
The index provides a current, structured comparison of city-scale AI and digital-service maturity across 61 cities. It is useful for public-sector and applied-AI teams, though the result is a consultancy ranking whose conclusions depend on its selected indicators and weights.
Sources #
Primary source and supporting public references used for this report.
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