Every year, one of the most recognizable names in the retirement-abroad world releases its big ranking of the best countries to retire in. International Living’s 2026 Global Retirement Index put Greece at number one and evaluated 24 countries overall, using a framework built around the practical realities of retirement overseas rather than postcard fantasy.

And honestly, the top of the list makes sense.

Greece is a strong pick. Panama belongs in the conversation. Portugal, Mexico, Costa Rica, Spain, Italy, Thailand, and Malaysia all have obvious strengths. None of that is crazy. The thing that jumped out at me wasn’t who made the list. It was who didn’t.

Colombia wasn’t on it.

And if you know me, you know I’m not going to sit here and pretend Colombia is perfect. It isn’t. But I do think it deserves a more serious look than it got. So the better question is not “Why didn’t it win?” The better question is: if you ran Colombia through the same logic International Living uses, where would it actually land?

That’s where things get interesting.

International Living’s retirement framework has long been built around seven real-world categories: cost of living, healthcare, climate, housing, visas and retiree benefits, how easy it is to fit in, and the broader question of development and governance. That’s a legitimate framework, and it’s exactly why Colombia becomes such a fascinating omission. Because on some of those metrics, it’s genuinely strong. On one or two, it clearly falls short. And that gap tells the whole story.

Let’s start with the easiest category: cost of living.

This is where Colombia is extremely hard to ignore. If you’re earning in dollars, euros, or pounds, Colombia remains one of the strongest value plays in the Western Hemisphere. Not because it’s the absolute cheapest place on earth, but because it combines relatively low day-to-day costs with a major-city lifestyle, good private healthcare access, and easy flight connections back to the United States. That last part matters more than retirees sometimes realize. Thailand and Malaysia may compete on affordability, but they do not compete on proximity to Miami.

Then there’s healthcare, which is where Colombia keeps surprising people.

Colombia’s official pensionado visa framework still assumes retirees can establish themselves here with documented pension income and health-related documentation, and in practice, many expats pair that with the country’s well-known private medical system rather than relying only on public pathways. Colombia has also continued to grow as a medical tourism destination, which tells you something important: people are not coming here just because it is affordable. They are coming because the quality-to-cost ratio is compelling. It may not have the brand recognition of Portugal, Spain, or France in the retirement press, but on cost-adjusted private care, Colombia punches above its reputation.

Now let’s talk about climate, because this is one of Colombia’s great hidden strengths.

Greece gets a lot of retirement love for Mediterranean sun, and fair enough. But Colombia has a different kind of climate advantage: range. Bogotá gives you year-round springlike weather if you like cooler, stable temperatures. Medellín offers its famous eternal-spring setup at a lower altitude. Cartagena gives you Caribbean heat. The country is basically a climate menu. That is a serious retirement advantage, especially for people who know what kind of weather they actually want rather than just saying “warm” and hoping for the best. Colombia’s climate flexibility is better than many people realize.

On housing, Colombia also deserves more attention than it gets.

Foreigners can own property in Colombia, and the official investor visa pathway still explicitly includes real estate, with a threshold of 350 times the legal monthly minimum wage for the relevant category. That means the country does not just tolerate foreign buyers — it has a legal immigration framework built partly around them. The friction is not in whether you can buy. The friction is in the process: notaries, documentation, registration, and the general fact that Colombian transactions are usually more paperwork-heavy than foreigners expect. So this is a category where Colombia does well, but not effortlessly.

Then we get to the category that starts to explain the omission: fitting in.

Colombians are warm. Genuinely warm. If you make even a modest effort, people tend to respond generously. That part is real. But unlike Panama or parts of Mexico, Colombia asks more of you linguistically. If you want to do more than just survive inside an expat bubble, Spanish matters. That doesn’t make Colombia a bad retirement destination. It just means the social ease score is lower than in countries where more retirees can function long-term with very little language acquisition. This is not a deal-breaker. It is just part of the honest scoring.

And then we arrive at the biggest structural weakness in Colombia’s case: visa design and retiree benefits.

Panama’s Pensionado program is still one of the most retiree-friendly frameworks in the hemisphere. The Embassy of Panama continues to describe it as one of the world’s standout retirement programs, with permanent residency for qualifying pensioners and a long list of discounts on utilities, transportation, travel, and other everyday expenses. Colombia does have a retirement pathway — its pensionado visa still requires income equal to at least three Colombian minimum wages — but it does not come with a Panama-style retiree discount system. That difference matters a lot in a ranking built specifically for retirees rather than for expats more broadly.

The same issue shows up again when you look at long-term immigration structure.

Colombia absolutely has migration pathways. It has the pensionado visa, the digital nomad visa, and multiple investor routes. But the digital nomad visa is a visitor-category visa, not a residency-building migrant path, and the resident visa route is more layered than the cleaner retirement systems some other countries market more directly. Colombia rewards people who are willing to learn the system. It does not hold your hand the way Panama does.

Finally, there’s development and governance, which is probably where the list-makers get cautious.

Daily life in north Bogotá, good areas of Medellín, or the right parts of other major cities can feel remarkably normal, modern, and convenient. Internet is strong in the neighborhoods most expats actually use. Delivery infrastructure is excellent. Urban life works. But reputation still hurts Colombia, and not entirely without reason. Governance concerns, bureaucracy, and lingering foreign perceptions all weigh on the country in a way they do not weigh on Portugal or Greece. Street reality in expat-friendly neighborhoods and institutional-image reality are not always the same thing. That gap still costs Colombia points.

So where does that leave us?

If I run Colombia through the same general logic International Living uses, I do not think it belongs at number one. I also do not think its absence from the broader conversation makes sense. My honest take is that Colombia would land somewhere around the edge of the top 10 or just outside it — roughly the “number 11” argument from your transcript feels fair.

Why?

Because Colombia is excellent on value, climate, and private-healthcare affordability.

Good on housing.

Decent on social fit, especially if you learn Spanish.

And weaker on retiree-specific visa perks and formal benefit structures, which is exactly the category where Panama keeps beating everyone.

That’s the whole story.

Colombia is not missing from retirement conversations because it lacks value.

It’s missing because it lacks a cleaner retiree-benefits machine.

And those are not the same thing.

If you want the easiest possible retirement path with the most formalized perks, Panama still has a stronger case. If you want a beautifully structured European retirement life and can absorb a higher cost of living, Greece and Portugal make a lot of sense. But if you want major upside on day-to-day value, strong climate optionality, a real city lifestyle, and you are willing to do slightly more homework, Colombia deserves far more attention than the official list gave it.

That’s really the conclusion here.

The absence from a retirement list does not mean the absence of a retirement opportunity.

Sometimes it just means the country is better for people willing to think past the brochure.