Mundo Mezcal festival returns to Mexico City on 16 October

The Mundo Mezcal festival returns to the Gardens of Campo Marte in Mexico City from 16 to 18 October, its second edition after a first year that drew more than 8,000 visitors and nearly 400 exhibitors.

Last year's festival set a world record with 457 mezcal labels on show at a single event, a number organisers are using as the benchmark for this edition rather than a one-off peak to quietly drop.

Tamaulipas holds the guest-of-honour slot for 2026. The northern state carries denominations of origin for both mezcal and tequila across 11 municipalities each, with an estimated annual output of 300,000 litres, a fraction of national production but enough to justify a dedicated pavilion at an event built around agave spirits from across Mexico.

A record set once becomes the number every edition after it has to clear.

A decade of fast growth

Mexico's mezcal production has grown more than elevenfold over the past ten years, reaching close to 12 million litres a year, according to figures cited by festival organisers. Ninety-seven percent of that is still made using artisanal methods, the small-batch, wood-fired processes the category has built its reputation on.

Roughly 70% of Mexican mezcal now leaves the country, headed mainly for the United States, Europe, Japan and Australia. A festival built to showcase hundreds of labels in one place functions as much as a trade floor for that export pipeline as a public tasting event.

Mexico City as the agave capital

Holding the record-setting edition in the capital rather than in Oaxaca, the state most associated with mezcal, says something about where the category now does its selling: close to buyers, press and tourists rather than close to the stills. Visitors who come for the agave spirits tend to stay for the food, and Mexico City's own dining scene gives them plenty to work through afterwards, from market stalls to the tacos al pastor sold a few streets from the fairground gates. Organisers have not said whether the figure will rise again next year, but a record this specific rarely gets set only once.