Basque Culinary World Prize goes to Arca Tierra in Xochimilco
The €100,000 award, announced in Curitiba, is open to non-chefs for the first time and backs a network that brings pre-Hispanic canal farming to Mexico City's restaurants.
Mexican entrepreneur Lucio Usobiaga has won the Basque Culinary World Prize 2026 for Arca Tierra, a farming network that keeps the chinampas of Xochimilco, in the south of Mexico City, in production. The €100,000 award was announced on 8 November in Curitiba, Brazil.
Chinampas are cultivated plots raised from the lake bed and ringed by canals, a system older than the Aztec capital that once fed the whole valley. Most visitors know Xochimilco for its painted trajinera boats; fewer see the vegetable beds behind them, which supply produce to kitchens across the city covered in our guide to what to eat in Mexico City.
The jury, chaired by Joan Roca of El Celler de Can Roca, deliberated in Foz do Iguaçu and included Manoella Buffara, Michel Bras, Trine Hahnemann, Elena Reygadas, Josh Niland and Narda Lepes. Roca said the project shows how far efforts can reach "when they are collective and scalable".
This year the prize went to the field rather than the pass: the ingredient comes before the chef.
What the Basque Culinary World Prize now rewards
Created in 2016 by the Basque Government and the Basque Culinary Center, the Basque Culinary World Prize was previously reserved for chefs. This 11th edition opened it to any professional who uses gastronomy as a lever for change, and the organisers report around 1,400 nominations and some 940 candidacies from more than 40 countries. The money is not a personal bonus: the winner must put it into a project of their choice.
A special mention went to Edson Leite and Adélia Rodrigues of Gastronomia Periférica, which offers free culinary training to people from excluded areas of São Paulo and counts more than 3,000 beneficiaries. Jacques Pépin, 90, received a new honorary award, the BCWP Cooking Legacy.
Six hectares supplying 60 restaurants
Usobiaga, who studied philosophy, co-founded the chinampa initiative Yolcan in 2011 and set up Arca Tierra in 2020. The network farms six hectares and works with about 50 producing families from Xochimilco, Puebla, Hidalgo and the State of Mexico. It sells to around 60 restaurants and 300 household subscribers, and close to 16,000 people visited its chinampas in 2025.
The group also runs the Iniciativa Agroecológica Xochimilco and opened Baldío, a zero-waste restaurant, in 2024 with the British chef Douglas McMaster. Usobiaga said he accepts the prize with gratitude and the certainty that it "opens new possibilities to keep building together".
The Basque Culinary World Prize lands in a city whose dining rooms are already in the spotlight this week, after Quintonil climbed to fourth in the World's 50 Best. The trophy will be handed over in the Basque Country in December. Six hectares remain a small share of Xochimilco's farmland; how the €100,000 is spent will show whether that share can grow.
