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Would you want a prize for being the most improved member of your family? Thought not. For just as faint praise damns, some prizes arrive with baggage. That’s the context for our own annual gong, for country of the year. We never award it to predictably splendid, well-run places such as Nordic states that always top the UN’s human development index. They can hardly improve by much. Instead we seek candidates that, in the past 12 months, saw dramatic gains. For those, you must start at a rather wretched level. (A tip for Russians in 2026: depose your despot and you’ll be a shoo-in for our next prize.) There’s a clue for the winner of the 2025 award.
The most improved country is…
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