Safest Swiss city 2026: Köniz, Kriens or Bellinzona?

Safest city in Switzerland: none comes first everywhere

Look for the one safest city in Switzerland and you find seven. Across the 13 offences the FSO publishes for the 27 cities over 30,000 residents, the city with the lowest rate changes from offence to offence. One keeps turning up at the bottom, though: Bellinzona, among the three lowest rates for 9 of the 11 offences with a rate.

The table lists, for each offence, the city with the lowest and the second-lowest rate, offences per 1,000 residents, as of 2025. The highest rates are on Most criminal city in Switzerland.

City Crime Check: your city, lowest rates first

Pick an offence and the ConvivaPlus City Crime Check ranks all 27 cities from the lowest rate to the highest. Pick your city and it shows it for all 13 offences, with rank and change since 2009.

Bellinzona: fewest burglaries and frauds

Fewest burglaries, fewest frauds, offline and online: all three lowest rates are in the same city, Bellinzona. For burglary it is 1.8 per 1,000 residents, for fraud 0.60, for online fraud 0.40.

Add the fourth lowest rate in Ticino, violence against officials in Lugano: four of the 13 lowest rates are in the two Ticino cities on the list. The ConvivaPlus Lowest-Rate Counter counts, for each city, how often it is among the three lowest rates. Bellinzona reaches 9 of 11 offences, no other city more than 6.

Safest city for violence: Köniz, right next to Bern

The lowest rate of violence of all 27 cities is not in a mountain valley but on the edge of Bern: Köniz records 3.0 violent offences per 1,000 residents, Bern 7.6, 2.6 times as many.

For assault (0.64) and bodily harm (0.58), too, Köniz has the lowest figure. This is no one-year fluke: since 2019, Köniz has been one of the two cities with the lowest rate of violence in 6 of 7 years. Offences are counted where they happen, and only residents are in the denominator: where many people work, shop and go out without living there, the rate goes up.

Fewest thefts: Kriens, three offences, one city

Three property offences, one city: theft, vehicle theft and criminal damage are rarer in Kriens than in any of the other 27 cities. For theft it is 11.9 per 1,000 residents, in neighbouring Lucerne 37.3, about three times as high.

It stays low year after year: in 5 of the 7 years since 2019, Kriens had the lowest theft rate. And the rate keeps falling: in 2009 Kriens still recorded 20.2 thefts per 1,000 residents, and it has dropped by 41 percent since. Vehicle theft in Kriens stands at 1.6, criminal damage at 2.8.

Robbery: Winterthur is right twice

Winterthur calls itself the safest large city in Switzerland, meaning violence. The figures back it up in a second place too: for robbery it has the lowest rate of the 17 cities with a rate, 0.16 per 1,000 residents. In Zurich it is 0.70, more than four times as high.

And robbery has become rare: across Switzerland the rate has more than halved since 2009, from 0.46 to 0.20 per 1,000 residents. In Winterthur it fell from 0.49 to 0.16. For violence, the measure the city relies on, it stands at 7.2, the lowest of the ten largest cities.

For ten of the 27 cities the FSO gives no robbery rate at all, because there were too few cases for a rate.

Bike theft: rarest in Schaffhausen, where the ranking flips

Schaffhausen has fewer bike thefts per resident than any of the other 27 cities: 1.16 bike thefts per 1,000 residents, Switzerland as a whole 2.80.

The same city has the highest assault rate of all 27: 5.62 per 1,000 residents, counted where the offence happens. Safe is therefore not a property of a city, but a number per offence.

Burglary since 2009: the biggest falls in two Geneva towns

In Lancy there were 18.6 burglaries per 1,000 residents in 2009, and 4.3 in 2025, down 77 percent. The two largest falls are both in the canton of Geneva: besides Lancy, Vernier, from 17.5 to 4.5. The rate rose only in Basel and Chur. Across Switzerland it fell from 8.3 to 5.2.

Safest cantons: Uri, 10 of 13 times among the three lowest

Ten of 13: that is how often Uri is among the three cantons with the lowest rates, and no other canton gets above 5. For violence, Uri even has the lowest rate of the 26 cantons: 2.2 per 1,000 residents, Switzerland as a whole 5.5. Next come Schwyz (2.5) and Appenzell Ausserrhoden (2.8). All 26 cantons with violence and theft are in the canton table on Most criminal city in Switzerland.