World's 50 Best 2026: Etxebarri wins, Lima counts the gains
Spain's Asador Etxebarri takes the world's best restaurant title as the awards reach South America for the first time, and Peru's tourism board explains the return it expects.
Asador Etxebarri, a grill restaurant in the Basque hills above Bilbao, topped the World's 50 Best Restaurants 2026 awards in Lima on Wednesday, as the ceremony reached South America for the first time and Peru's tourism ministry collected on a bet it placed back in July.
The Atxondo restaurant, run by chef Bittor Arginzoniz since 1990, moves up from second place in 2025 to first in 2026. Maido, last year's winner, retires into the ranking's Best of the Best hall of fame and will not compete again. The ceremony, at the Teatro Municipal de Lima, also named Jessica Rosval the world's best female chef and added Al Gatto Verde, in Modena, to the list for the first time.
The win closes a run Etxebarri has had near the top since it first appeared on the list in 2008, finishing runner-up as recently as 2025. Arginzoniz still smokes, grills and chars nearly everything over wood and coals he burns himself, a technique the ranking has rewarded for most of two decades without once making him number one, until now.
One restaurant's wood smoke, now measured in a host city's millions of tourism dollars.
Why Lima bid for the gala
Peru's Ministry of Foreign Trade and Tourism, Mincetur, and its export and tourism promotion agency, PromPerú, pushed to bring the ceremony to Lima, arguing that hosting pays for itself. Minister Berthin Gómez and PromPerú's Michael Guevara Varela cited past regional spin-offs of the franchise as evidence.
Las Vegas, which hosted North America's 50 Best in 2025, reported that 92% of visiting guests stayed in hotels or serviced apartments and generated more than $750,000 in direct revenue. Rio de Janeiro's Latin America edition the same year produced $40.8 million in advertising value equivalent. Seoul's Asia ceremony logged 82 million social interactions, and Abu Dhabi's Middle East and North Africa edition reached a claimed 6 billion people.
What the ranking leaves behind
PromPerú's own research found that culinary motivation is already the third-largest reason foreign tourists fly in for leisure. A win for a Lima restaurant, as in 2023 and 2025, has typically been followed by a reservations spike that lasts months, not just a single plate of ceviche.
Etxebarri has no such bump to manage: a handful of tables, a years-long waitlist, and a chef with no stated interest in opening a second site. Lima's tourism board, by contrast, now has the harder job of proving a one-night gala was worth the bid.
