In the year ending March 2025, an estimated 12.8% of women in England and Wales aged 16 and over were victims of domestic abuse, sexual assault or stalking. That comes to 3.2 million women in a single year, in one of the safest countries on earth. The Office for National Statistics now tracks that figure as the government’s official benchmark, and policing leaders called violence against women and girls a national emergency in 2024.
Set that against the thing women are taught to fear about travelling alone, the violent stranger in a foreign city. Of the roughly 83,000 women and girls killed intentionally in 2024, 60% were murdered by an intimate partner or family member, according to the UNODC and UN Women. The person most likely to harm a woman is someone she already knows, and no amount of vigilance in a hostel dorm changes that.
The fear most women carry onto a plane, then, points at the wrong target. Travel carries risks, but they are different from the ones that make headlines, and once you name them they turn out to be manageable.
What the risks abroad actually are
Pickpocketing, bag snatching and phone grabs around stations and transit hubs are the most common problem by a distance, and they follow travellers of any gender everywhere on earth. They rarely turn violent and are almost always headed off with a few basic habits.
Harassment slips past the safety rankings altogether, because verbal and visual hassle never shows up in homicide data. It does no lethal harm, but in certain destinations it runs close to constant, and it wears you down over a trip.
Narrower again is drink spiking, tied to particular settings rather than whole countries. In May 2026 the FCDO revised its guidance after a rise in sexual assault reports involving British nationals in Jamaica, Turkey and Thailand, naming solo women as the highest-risk group in beach resorts and nightlife districts. Bars, clubs and late nights are where that one lives.
The digital risks are the ones nobody packs for. Recent research on solo female travellers found real exposure through unsecured public Wi-Fi, location sharing left running in ride-hailing apps, and plain identity theft. The threats that are growing are the quiet ones, and they never make a checklist.
Where it is genuinely easy
Japan sits at or near the top of nearly every 2026 ranking, ninth on the Global Peace Index, with women-only carriages on the major commuter lines, a neighbourhood police-box system that responds in minutes, and a solo-dining culture so normal that eating alone at a ramen counter never draws a second glance. Walking back to your hotel through a residential district at eleven at night feels much as it would at home.
Taipei took the title of single safest city for solo female travellers in 2026 in InsureMyTrip’s reading of the Numbeo Crime and Safety Index: very high reported comfort walking alone day or night, a transport system that runs like clockwork, and night markets that stay busy into the small hours.
Iceland has an annual homicide count you can usually tally on one hand, strong legal equality baked in, and a reputation among solo travellers as the country where the real threat is the weather and the sheer emptiness rather than other people. Slovenia has become the favourite of the recent rankings, with a compact, walkable, cycle-friendly capital in Ljubljana, Lake Bled and Triglav both hikeable solo, and prices a long way below the Nordics. Portugal offers Europe’s best balance of safety and cost for 2026: low crime, walkable old towns, warm locals and late dinners that feel relaxed rather than fraught, with pickpocketing in the busier corners of Lisbon and Porto the main thing to keep an eye on.
Beyond these, the 2026 Global Peace Index and the aggregated safety indices keep returning the same names in the top tier, New Zealand, Switzerland, Ireland, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Austria and Singapore, all of them pairing low violent crime with the everyday infrastructure that makes moving around alone straightforward.
Where to stay switched on
The FCDO’s three current flags, Jamaica, Turkey and Thailand, deserve real attention in nightlife and resort settings specifically, and the advice is simple: keep an eye on your drink, arrange your transport back before you head out, skip the walk home alone after dark, and hold back your hotel and social details from people you have only just met. In Turkey, a fair share of reported assaults involved hotel or spa staff, so the caution is not only about strangers in bars.
The harassment cluster, Morocco, Egypt, India, Turkey and Southern Italy, sits in a different category. Huge numbers of women travel these countries alone and come home in love with them. The preparation here is as much mental as practical: go expecting persistent attention, know that it very rarely tips over into violence, dress in step with local norms where it smooths the way, and keep a few firm phrases in your back pocket. Women-led local tours and female-only accommodation take most of the sting out of it.
The countries that top the “most dangerous for women travellers” lists are often not the ones British readers are heading to. The United States ranks as the most dangerous Western country on the long-running Fergusson Women’s Danger Index, with homicide the third leading cause of death for American women aged 20 to 24, and Australia sits high largely on rates of non-partner sexual violence. Both are mainstream holiday destinations, and the fact that they rarely appear on the warning lists shared around travel groups says more about the lists than about the risk.
How experienced solo women actually travel
The women who have been travelling solo for years tend to run the same handful of habits. They share a live location with someone at home and check in on a loose schedule. They save the local emergency number before landing, 112 across the EU, Iceland, Norway and Switzerland, 111 in New Zealand, 999 for police in Singapore and the UK. They book female-only dorms where they exist rather than assuming, and they lock in that first airport-to-bed journey in advance so they are never haggling over a lift at midnight in a strange city. They keep a VPN on for public Wi-Fi, switch off location sharing in apps they are not actively using, carry card and cash separately so a single theft cannot strand them, and they act on the instinct that says leave, every time, without stopping to justify it.
Tourlina connects verified female travellers and holds a 4.7 out of 5 rating, and Girls Love Travel has grown into a community of more than two million members swapping the kind of tested, been-there advice that beats any ranking put together by people who never visited the places they rated.
Follow your instincts, prepare properly and be assertive when you need to be, and solo travel becomes one of the most liberating things you will ever do. Get out there and explore. Before long you will feel as safe walking down Khao San Road as you would down Kensington High Street.
