In which New York City borough do Ted and his friends mainly live?

Ted Mosby and most of his close-knit friend group mainly live in Manhattan. The borough is the central setting for How I Met Your Mother, where Ted, Marshall, Lily, Barney, and Robin meet, work, date, and repeatedly return to the same familiar places.

The group’s apartment and MacLaren’s Pub are especially important locations. Ted and Marshall share an apartment for much of the early story, while MacLaren’s serves as the friends’ regular gathering place. The fictional pub was inspired partly by McGee’s, a real Midtown Manhattan bar near the Ed Sullivan Theater, where the show’s creators worked.

The wording “mainly” matters because not every character lives in Manhattan all the time. Robin, for example, is associated with Park Slope in Brooklyn, and characters periodically move to other boroughs, cities, or countries for work and relationships. Even so, Manhattan is the show’s shared home base and the borough most strongly associated with Ted’s story.

The Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn are all New York City boroughs, but none is the primary setting for the group’s everyday social life.