IELTS Speaking Part 2: Your Favourite City You Have Visited – Model Answers 2026

This is a new Part 2 topic in the official IELTS Speaking question bank for May–August 2026. You have one minute to prepare and two minutes to speak. Start with the city directly.

Cue Card

Describe your favourite city that you have visited.

You should say:
– Where it is
– How you knew it
– When you visited it
– And explain why it is your favourite city

Model Answer

Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, is the city I think about most often when the question of favourite places comes up. I visited about two years ago with a close friend, and we spent eight days there without ever feeling like we had run out of things to discover.

I first heard about Hanoi through a friend who had visited the year before and had been somewhat evangelistic about it ever since. He described it as the kind of city that surprised you at every turn, which is the sort of thing people say about many places but is rarely accurate. In the case of Hanoi, it turned out to be true.

What makes Hanoi genuinely distinctive is its layering. A thousand years of Vietnamese history overlaid with a century of French colonial architecture, overlaid with the rapid development of a city that is currently growing at considerable speed. The Old Quarter alone is a study in organised chaos. Narrow streets where each block was historically dedicated to a specific trade, still functioning that way in many cases. Silk vendors, paper makers, herbal medicine shops all occupying the same streets their predecessors occupied centuries ago.

The food was extraordinary in a way that is difficult to convey without sounding hyperbolic. I ate pho from street vendors every morning. I tried bun cha for the first time, which became an immediate and non-negotiable favourite. I had egg coffee in a cafe above a bookshop that I found by accident and returned to three more times.

What made it my favourite is not any single thing but the aggregate of it. A city that felt alive rather than performed. That distinction, between a place that is genuinely itself and one that is presenting itself for visitors, is the clearest way I know to describe what I found there.

Why This Works

The answer uses a specific comparison (a city that is genuinely itself versus one presenting for visitors) that shows sophisticated thinking. The food section is specific without being a list. The layering description shows historical awareness.

📌 Band 7-8 Vocabulary:
– evangelistic — enthusiastically promoting something to others
– layering — the combination of multiple distinct elements built over time
– hyperbolic — deliberately exaggerated for effect
– aggregate — the total formed by combining several separate elements
– genuinely itself — authentic rather than performed for an audience

IELTS Speaking Part 3: Favourite City Questions and Model Answers

Question 1: Which is more suitable for young people, urban or rural life?

Model Answer:
Urban life offers advantages that are difficult to replicate in rural areas at the stage of life where career development and social connection are priorities. Access to employment, education, cultural activity, and diverse social networks is concentrated in cities in a way that is hard to match. That said, the cost of urban living in cities like London and New York has reached a point where younger people are increasingly being pushed out. The average age of first-time homebuyers in London is now over thirty-six. For older people, rural environments with lower cost, cleaner air, and stronger community ties often make more sense, provided healthcare access is adequate.

Question 2: How do people choose a city to travel to?

Model Answer:
The decision-making process is rarely as rational as people assume. Recommendations from people they trust carry disproportionate weight. A friend who came back from Hanoi genuinely changed my behaviour. Social media has amplified this effect dramatically. Instagram in particular has created entire tourism economies around photogenic locations that were virtually unknown before the platform existed. Santorini in Greece is the standard example in the UK travel press. Bali is the equivalent in the US market. Price and flight availability are practical constraints that shape the final decision, but desire is usually created by someone else’s story first.

Question 3: Do you think a tourist city is also a good place to live?

Model Answer:
Rarely, in my experience. The infrastructure of a tourist city is designed for short visits rather than sustained daily life. Housing costs inflate around attractions. Public spaces become crowded at predictable intervals. The authentic local character that draws visitors is gradually eroded as businesses optimise for tourists rather than residents. Venice is the extreme case in Europe, where the resident population has declined by nearly two-thirds over fifty years as the tourist economy has made ordinary urban life economically impossible for locals. Barcelona has a similar and increasingly acute tension between its attractiveness to visitors and its livability for residents.

Question 4: Do most people prefer a modern city or a historical city?

Model Answer:
Preference tends to split by age and travel experience. First-time international travellers and younger visitors often gravitate toward modern cities with recognisable landmarks and efficient infrastructure. Dubai and Singapore attract this audience consistently. More experienced travellers, or those interested in culture and history, tend to prefer cities with visible historical depth. Rome, Kyoto, Istanbul. There is also a growing market for cities that successfully integrate both, which is why places like Tokyo, which manages hyper-modernity alongside genuine historical preservation, consistently rank near the top of global destination surveys.

Examiner Tips for IELTS Speaking Part 2 Favourite City

Tip 1: The distinction between authentic and performed is a strong closing angle.
It is original, specific, and immediately signals sophisticated thinking to the examiner.

Tip 2: Food is the easiest way to make a city vivid.
Specific dishes described briefly (pho, bun cha, egg coffee) are more effective than general praise about the food scene.

Tip 3: For Part 3, use real cities as examples.
Venice, Barcelona, Dubai, Tokyo. Named cities with specific details anchor your answers and make them immediately more credible.

Common Mistakes on This Topic

Describing only tourist attractions without showing what made the city personal
Using only positive adjectives (beautiful, amazing, wonderful) without specific vocabulary
Part 3 answers that generalise without naming any real places
Opening with “I would like to talk about my favourite city…”

Frequently Asked Questions

Is this a confirmed IELTS Speaking Part 2 topic for 2026?
Yes. Your Favourite City You Have Visited appears in the official IELTS Speaking question bank for May–August 2026 as a new topic.

Can the city be in my own country?
Yes. A domestic city described with genuine detail and personal connection scores just as well as an international one.

What if I have not travelled much?
Describe the city you know best, even if it is where you live, or adapt the answer around a city you have read about or watched documentaries on.