Where to live in Papua New Guinea
We track 3 cities in Papua New Guinea: Arawa, Lae and Port Moresby. Average temperatures run from 26°C to 27°C. We estimate a couple needs €2,668 to €2,898 a month to live centrally. For foreigners, long-term residency is hard to obtain.
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- Safety
- 49/100
- country-level estimate
- Healthcare
- 46/100
- country-level estimate
- Democracy
- 5.5/10
- estimated
Estimated from World Bank indicators and calibrated to the scales of our reference tables: safety from the Worldwide Governance Indicators Political Stability and Absence of Violence estimate (GOV_WGI_PV.EST, 2025) and life expectancy at birth (SP.DYN.LE00.IN, 2024), healthcare from the life expectancy at birth (SP.DYN.LE00.IN, 2024) and current health spending per person in US dollars (SH.XPD.CHEX.PC.CD, 2023), cost of living from the price level of GDP relative to the United States, from GDP per person in US dollars and at purchasing power parity (NY.GDP.PCAP.CD/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD, 2025) and democracy score from the Worldwide Governance Indicators Voice and Accountability estimate (GOV_WGI_VA.EST, 2025). Source: The World Bank (World Development Indicators, Worldwide Governance Indicators), CC BY 4.0.
Limited data for Papua New Guinea. Figures for safety, healthcare, cost of living and political stability in Papua New Guinea are country-level estimates from World Bank indicators, each named with its year. We have no tax, English, social openness or internet speed figures for Papua New Guinea, so the quiz scores those factors conservatively and this page leaves them out.
The 3 cities we track
| City | Size | Setting | Avg temp | Rain a year | Est. cost a month |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arawa | smaller | coastal | 27°C | 3,502 mm | €2,668 |
| Lae | smaller | coastal | 26°C | 4,975 mm | €2,744 |
| Port Moresby | mid-sized | coastal | 26°C | 1,497 mm | €2,898 |
Source: City size from GeoNames, temperature from the Open-Meteo archive (2019 to 2023 averages), rainfall from TerraClimate (1991 to 2020 normals), coast distance from Natural Earth. Cost is our model estimate for a couple living centrally, from the World Bank price level.
Residency and visas
Hard to obtain. Long-term residence is realistically only via an employer-sponsored work permit (subject to a labour-market test), with permanent residency available case-by-case after roughly 5-10 years of prior residence; there is no self-funded passive-income, retirement, or investor/golden-visa route open to a newcomer.
For short visits, 198 of 198 passports can get an e-visa or visa on arrival.
Source: OurNextCity residency dataset, hand-reviewed approximations researched against published immigration rules. Not legal advice: check the official source before you apply. Short-stay entry from the passport-index dataset (ilyankou, MIT).