Which European city has the highest murder rate per capita in 2025?

1. Contradictory headlines: three cities named “most dangerous” — which claim exists and who says it?

Three separate analyses assert different cities hold the top spot for danger in Europe in 2025: one report names Bradford as Europe’s most dangerous city based on a high crime index of 67.1 (source claims drug‑related and economic offenses drive the ranking) ^[1]. Another travel/crime guide lists Marseille as often cited for high violent crime and drug‑related neighborhood violence, presenting it as holding the highest murder rate per capita in 2025 ^[2]. A Euro‑focused news piece highlights Brussels as the capital with the most recorded shooting incidents through mid‑2025, framing it as the gun‑crime capital though not explicitly the top murder‑per‑capita city ^[3]. These headlines reflect different metrics and editorial framing rather than a single, consistent homicide-per-capita ranking.

2. What the sources actually measure — crime index, shootings, or homicides?

The materials conflate distinct indicators: Numbeo‑style crime indices and travel guides use composite measures of reported crime and perceptions to label cities “most dangerous” ^{[1] [2]}. Euronews documents shooting incidents and gun‑related fatalities, not a standardized homicide‑per‑100,000‑residents rate; it reports Brussels leading in shootings up to mid‑August 2025 and cites counts for other cities but stops short of per‑capita homicide rates ^[3]. The other background pieces discuss country‑level homicide trends or long‑term murder‑rate trajectories without city breakdowns, so they cannot supply the per‑capita city ranking needed to answer the question directly ^{[4] [5] [6]}. The available sources therefore mix prevalence measures, perception indices, and event counts rather than a single comparable metric.

3. Why per‑capita homicide rates are missing and why that matters

Several provided analyses explicitly note the absence of 2025 per‑capita homicide figures for cities and flag that their data are insufficient to determine which city had the highest murder rate per capita in 2025 ^{[7] [5] [8]}. Per‑capita homicide rates require validated counts of intentional homicides and reliable population denominators for the same year and administrative boundaries; without those, comparing raw counts (e.g., shootings) or composite crime indices can mislead. The sources that make strong “most dangerous” claims use proxies—crime indices, shooting tallies, or travel‑guide classifications—that do not substitute for a standardized homicides‑per‑100,000‑people figure ^{[1] [2] [3]}.

4. Country‑level trends don’t substitute for city rankings — evidence from the provided analyses

The country‑level materials show Latvia and other countries with relatively high national homicide rates in recent years, but they do not provide city‑level 2025 figures and thus cannot identify a top city ^{[4] [6]}. Authors of those pieces explicitly acknowledge their scope limits: they track homicide rates by country up to 2023 and discuss long‑term trajectories rather than current municipal statistics ^{[4] [5]}. Using national homicide ranks to infer a city’s per‑capita murder rate across Europe would risk ecological fallacy because high national rates may be concentrated in non‑urban areas or dispersed unevenly across municipalities; the provided analyses warn against that jump.

5. On gun‑crime hotspots versus murder‑per‑capita: Brussels example shows nuance

The Euronews coverage (dated 2025‑09‑19 in the analysis) identified Brussels as the EU capital with the most shootings recorded through mid‑August 2025 and highlighted specific shooting deaths in cities like Marseille and Stockholm, but it did not offer a homicide per‑capita ranking ^[3]. High counts of shootings or gun incidents can indicate acute public‑safety concerns but are not mathematically identical to the standardized homicide rate; they may reflect policing, reporting differences, or temporal spikes. The source’s framing is factual about shootings yet insufficient to conclude Brussels—or any other city—had the highest murder rate per 100,000 residents in 2025.

6. Bottom line and what data would settle the question decisively

Given the evidence in the supplied analyses, no supported conclusion can be drawn that one specific European city had the highest murder rate per capita in 2025: the competing claims cite different metrics, and multiple authors explicitly note the absence of 2025 per‑capita homicide figures ^{[7] [5] [8]}. A definitive answer requires city‑level homicide counts for 2025 and mid‑year population estimates or accepted annual denominators from national statistical offices, Eurostat, or aggregated criminal‑justice datasets (e.g., UNODC); none of the provided sources fulfils that standard. The existing materials indicate hotspots (shootings in Brussels, high crime index in Bradford, violent neighborhoods in Marseille) but do not supply the comparable per‑100,000 homicide rates necessary to name a single city as highest in 2025 ^{[1] [2] [3]}.