Most criminal Swiss city: a different one per offence

Most criminal city in Switzerland: seven answers

Ask which is the most criminal city in Switzerland and almost everyone has a name ready. The official table proves nobody right: across 13 offences, seven different cities lead. At the top of the Federal Statistical Office table: theft: Basel (68.0); burglary: Lausanne (16.1); violence: Yverdon-les-Bains (14.6); criminal damage: Bern (15.1); fraud: Lausanne (7.1). Counted are offences per 1,000 residents, in 2025.

The table below shows, for each offence, the city with the highest and the one with the lowest rate. The FSO only covers cities with over 30,000 residents, so smaller places are missing, and there is no official ranking of all municipalities.

City Crime Check: where does your city stand for each offence?

Pick your city and the ConvivaPlus City Crime Check shows its rank for all 13 offences, the 2025 rate and the change since 2009, with the canton and Switzerland alongside. Pick an offence and you see the full ranking of the 27 cities.

Crime in Zurich: almost half the theft of 2009

People in Zurich are far less likely to be robbed than in 2009: theft is down 46 percent. And Switzerland's largest city does not lead in any of the major offences: No. 11 for theft, No. 13 for burglary.

67.0 thefts per 1,000 residents in 2009, 35.9 in 2025. Violence fell 28 percent. How big Zurich is compared with other cities is shown in our ranking of the largest cities in Switzerland.

Crime since 2009: theft in Geneva more than halved

Geneva now sees less than half as much theft as in 2009: 110.5 thefts per 1,000 residents then, 53.8 now. The picture is similar almost everywhere: in 25 of 27 cities there is less theft today than in 2009. The rate is higher only in Basel and Chur.

For Switzerland as a whole, theft fell from 29.9 to 20.5 per 1,000 residents, violence from 6.4 to 5.5, down 32 and 14 percent.

Vehicle theft: 15 times as common in Chur as in 2009

In Chur around 15 times as many vehicles go missing as in 2009, and almost all of the rise came from 2020 on. In 2009 it was 0.5 stolen vehicles per 1,000 residents, bicycles not included. In 2025 it was 8.2. As late as 2020 the rate was 1.3, a rise of 1,400 percent over the whole period.

In Winterthur (around 9 times) and Fribourg (around 8 times) the rate is also far above 2009. Across Switzerland it rose from 1.2 to 3.5. The table does not break down what was stolen.

Fraud in Switzerland: higher than in 2009 in 25 of 27 cities

While theft is falling almost everywhere, fraud is rising almost everywhere: in 25 of 27 cities the rate is higher than in 2009. In Yverdon-les-Bains it is around 9 times as high, in Lancy also around 9 times.

For computer fraud (Art. 147, for example with someone else's card details) Vernier leads with around 8 times as much. Across Switzerland fraud rose from 1.0 to 3.6 cases per 1,000 residents, up 255 percent.

Safest city in Switzerland for violence: Köniz, right next to Bern

Two municipalities, one border: Bern's violence rate is more than double that of Köniz, 7.6 against 3.0 per 1,000 residents. That gives Köniz the lowest figure of all 27 cities. Together with Kriens and Bellinzona it holds 9 of the 13 lowest rates.

For burglary the lowest rate is in Bellinzona (1.8), for theft in Kriens (11.9). So «safest city» also depends on the offence. All the lowest rates, with robbery, bike theft and burglary since 2009, are on Safest city in Switzerland.

Crime by canton: Schaffhausen No. 2 for violence

Not Geneva, not Zurich: after Basel-Stadt (13.6), it is the canton of Schaffhausen that has the second-highest violence rate of the cantons: 8.8 per 1,000 residents, ahead of Vaud and Geneva. The canton of Zurich ranks No. 6.

For theft the cantons are even further apart: Basel-Stadt 64.4, Appenzell Innerrhoden 5.2, around twelve times less. Basel-Stadt is almost entirely urban: besides Basel, only Riehen and Bettingen belong to it. All 26 cantons at a glance are in our portrait of the 26 cantons.

Rate per 1,000 residents: what it measures and what it does not

A stadium full of fans from all over the country: every brawl counts for the city, none of the fans for its population. That is exactly how the rate works. It divides offences recorded by the police by the permanent resident population at the end of the previous year, times 1,000. People who work, shop or go out in a city but live elsewhere count in the offences, not in the population. That pushes up the rate of centres and nightlife spots.

On top of that, the statistics only count what the police learn about. How often people report something and how closely the police patrol a place change the figure without any change in the situation. The FSO says so itself in the table: police crime statistics are suited to analysing trends over time, less to comparing places.