All you need is Liverpool

The rest of the UK is waking up to just how great a place Liverpool is for millennials and Gen Z. It's about time

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That's how The Times described Liverpool in their recent rundown of the best places for under-35s to live.

“Well, obviously,” I thought while reading this particular accolade. Scousers tend to have a habit of deflecting praise with a well-timed joke, but will always put the self-deprecation aside to agree that their city is more than deserving of any hype that comes its way.

And right now there's a lot of it about. The Times' list placed Liverpool's Fabric District as the second best spot in the UK for young people (it was beaten, just, by the centre of Leeds). A few days later, the same paper crowned the city's central L1 area as one of the coolest postcodes for 2026, hailing its energy and its food scene. The Telegraph, too, has just ranked it as the best of Britain's bigger cities, while Tripadvisor celebrated it in its annual “Best of the Best” list. The rest of the country, it seems, is waking up to just how great the Mersey Riviera is. It's a real told-you-so moment for those of us who've been banging on about it for years.

I grew up on the other side of the river, on the Wirral peninsula. That means that I'll never be a true Scouser, just a “wool”, the vaguely derogatory catchall for anyone who hails from the areas that surround - but aren't properly a part of - the city (the age-old signifier of being truly scouse is possessing a purple wheelie bin, a mix of Liverpool red and Everton blue, or so the legend goes).