Sarasota Falls From U.S. News & World Report Retirement Rankings as North Port Climbs

Once a perennial favorite, Sarasota drops out of U.S. News & World Report’s 2026 national list of the Best Places to Retire, while North Port rises to No. 135.

Sarasota, long the toast of the retirement world, just got upstaged by its own neighbors. In U.S. News & World Report’s list of the 2026 Best Places to Retire, the city dropped out of the national list of top 250 cities altogether, while North Port, the quiet inland counterpart in the same county, landed at No. 135. On U.S News’ statewide list of best places to retire, the irony runs even deeper: North Port ranks 36th, Bradenton 46th and Sarasota—wedged right between them on the map—comes in at 57th.

Sarasota’s slide is notable given its strong recent history. Under U.S. News & World Report’s earlier, metro-based ranking system, the Sarasota–Bradenton–North Port metropolitan area consistently ranked among the nation’s best places to retire—No. 1 in 2022 and No. 4 in 2025. Those high placements reflected the region's combined strengths: Sarasota’s cultural amenities, beaches, and medical infrastructure, offset by the relative affordability of its surrounding cities.

But the U.S. News’ shift to city-level data for its 2026 rankings dissolved that advantage and splintered the former Sarasota–Bradenton–North Port metro into separate city profiles. When evaluated independently, Sarasota’s high housing and insurance costs dragged down its affordability score, while North Port and Bradenton, each still drawing from the same labor and healthcare markets, held on through lower cost-of-living metrics. 

Weighting also shifted. The 2026 formula assigns Quality of Life 27 percent of the total ranking for a city and Affordability (Value) 24 percent, followed by Health Care Quality (16 percent), Retiree Taxes (16 percent), Senior Population/Migration (9 percent) and Job Market (8 percent). For the first time since 2020, Quality of Life counts for more than affordability—and within that Quality of Life index, environmental risk counts for 15 percent, alongside crime, weather, culture/leisure access, air quality and walkability. In practice, that tilts the field away from high-cost, higher-risk coastal cities and toward more affordable, lower-risk locales—and helps explain the local inversion.

The humor writes itself: on the peninsula map, Sarasota sits between the two cities that just beat it.

Regionally, several nearby Florida cities do appear in the 2026 national top 250: Homosassa Springs (No. 3), Brandon (No. 53), Tampa (No. 91), St. Petersburg (No. 129), and Bradenton (No. 197) and North Port (No. 135). Country-wide, Florida remains dominant overall—U.S. News notes 94 Florida cities in the national top 250 and 16 in the top 50, including Homosassa Springs (No. 3); Spring Hill (No. 7); Palm Coast (No. 9); Naples (No. 18); Cape Coral (No. 21); Bonita Springs (No. 22); and Port Charlotte (No. 24).

Indeed, we’ve seen real estate news reflect the North Port rankings. Wellen Park has been a fixture on national best-selling master-planned community lists for years. In 2020, it ranked No. 4 nationally, with 1,415 new-home sales. More recently,  Wellen Park ranked No. 6 in 2024 with 960 sales—an increase from the prior year—and continues to expand with new neighborhoods.

The through-line in both the state and national rankings is consistent. With city-level scoring and revised weights, the rankings favor places that clear the bar on both everyday costs and risk, giving nearby North Port room to land ahead of the City of Sarasota.