The World’s 50 Best Restaurants 2026: Full List, with Asador Etxebarri at No. 1

The World’s 50 Best Restaurants 2026, now officially The 50 Best Restaurants, was announced on the evening of 4 November at Lima’s Teatro Municipal, the first time the ceremony has been held in Lima, and in South America. The top spot went to a small village in the mountains between Bilbao and San Sebastián: Asador Etxebarri in Axpe.

Maido, the host city’s own restaurant, was last year’s No. 1. The rule is simple: a winner leaves the ranking the following year and joins the former No. 1s in “Best of the Best”. Maido handed over its crown at home. Etxebarri, runner-up in both 2024 and 2025, finally took the top spot.

The organisation has a new name this year: in September, 50 Best became “The 50”, and the list is now officially called The 50 Best Restaurants. The ranking spans restaurants in 28 territories across six continents. Eleven restaurants entered the top 50 for the first time, and five returned.

The top five

1. Asador Etxebarri · Atxondo, Spain

Everything on the menu meets the fire, in grills Bittor Arguinzoniz designed himself, from the anchovy on toast to the milk ice cream. Fourteen courses. Also named The Best Restaurant in Europe.

2. Gaggan · Bangkok, Thailand

From sixth to second. Gaggan Anand’s Indian cooking, built on play, music and theatre, was named The Best Restaurant in Asia.

3. Alchemist · Copenhagen, Denmark

Rasmus Munk’s long menu is less a dinner than a performance. Up from fifth to third.

4. Quintonil · Mexico City, Mexico

Jorge Vallejo’s vegetable-led Mexican cooking slipped one place, but Quintonil remains The Best Restaurant in Latin America.

5. Wing · Hong Kong

Vicky Cheng’s expansive take on Chinese fine dining climbed from 11th to 5th. The Chairman follows right behind at No. 6, giving Hong Kong two of the top six.

What the list tells us

• Bangkok is rising. Five restaurants in the top 50: Gaggan (2), Sorn (12), Sühring (14), Nusara (18), Potong (32).
• Japan is absent from the top 50. Last year it had four: Sézanne, Narisawa, Florilège and La Cime. Sézanne has left the top 100 altogether; Japan’s remaining entries sit between 51 and 100.
• Paris is down to one: Plénitude (10). Arpège and Septime dropped into the 51–100, and Table by Bruno Verjus left the list.
• Spain stays strong. Four restaurants in the top 50: Etxebarri, DiverXO (9), Enigma (29) and Elkano (33). After El Bulli, El Celler de Can Roca and Disfrutar, Etxebarri is Spain’s fourth different No. 1. Ferran Adrià received the Icon Award.
• Lima and Copenhagen, three each. From Lima: Kjolle (7), Mérito (13) and Mayta (45); from Copenhagen: Alchemist, Kadeau and Jordnær.
• The biggest moves. Kadeau jumped from 41 to 8. The highest new entry is Tuju (16) in São Paulo. The steepest falls: Don Julio (10 to 44) and Ikoyi (15 to 48).

51–100: Türkiye’s Neolokal and the names that dropped

Türkiye has one restaurant on the extended list: Maksut Aşkar’s Neolokal, at No. 94, up from 100 last year. Once again, no Turkish restaurant made the top 50.

From Etxebarri’s own village, Txispa is No. 80. Japan’s entries all sit in this half of the list: La Cime (52), Sazenka (56), Narisawa (59), Florilège (61) and Den (91). Frantzén (58), Arpège (67) and Septime (81), all in last year’s top 50, are here too.

The full 51–100 list: the50.com.

The awards

• The World’s Best Restaurant and The Best Restaurant in Europe: Asador Etxebarri
• Asia: Gaggan · Latin America: Quintonil · North America: Atomix · Middle East: Trèsind Studio · Africa: La Colombe · Oceania: Saint Peter
• Highest Climber: Kadeau · Highest New Entry and Art of Hospitality: Tuju
• Best Female Chef: Jessica Rosval (Al Gatto Verde) · Chefs’ Choice: Junghyun Park (Atomix)
• Best Pastry Chef: Dej Kewkacha · Best Sommelier: Lesley Liu (Odette) · Sustainable Restaurant Award: Naar
• Icon: Ferran Adrià · Champions of Change: Ghana Food Movement · One to Watch: Yiaga · Scholarship: Doris Lam

Why Etxebarri?

For me, the answer is one Turkish word: kafi. Enough.

Everything that reaches the table at Etxebarri is a product of the very highest quality, and what is done to it is kept to a minimum. A grilled Palamós prawn arrives on its own. Mozzarella made from the milk of the chef’s own buffalo comes with a single slice of tomato. And then there is the famous chop. No foams, no deconstruction, no technique put on display.

There is technique, a great deal of it, but it lives behind the plate rather than on it: in the grills Arguinzoniz drew and had built himself, in the choice of wood, in the heat of the embers, in the split-second decision of how long something stays over the fire.

That is what I mean by kafi: knowing what is enough for an ingredient, and stopping exactly there. It sounds easy. It is the hardest part of the job. Fine dining has spent years competing on more: more courses, more stories, more theatre. At a moment like this, it says a lot that the world’s best restaurant is a grill that has perfected the art of taking away.

I don’t say this from a distance. I first went to Etxebarri in 2018, and since then I have had a close friendship with Bittor and with Mohamed Benabdallah, who was named the world’s best sommelier last year. Between 2023 and 2026, while I was a partner in The Hungry Tourist, David Califa and I came here at least four times a year. In a place where a table is close to impossible for many, the relationship built over those years always made booking easy for us. And every time, it reminded me that a restaurant’s value begins with its people, long before it reaches the plate.

After all those visits, what still surprises me most is that Bittor can grill even an egg yolk. Something so fragile that most kitchens wouldn’t dream of putting it near a fire. To me, that is kafi at its clearest: knowing not only what to put on the fire, but how much the fire should touch it.

Arguinzoniz grew up just around the corner from where the restaurant stands today, in a house with no electricity or gas, eating what his mother and grandmother cooked on the hearth. He has been cooking with fire for more than thirty years. Since 2009, Etxebarri has dropped off the list only once. This No. 1 did not come overnight; it is the reward for doing the same thing, every day, with the same care.

Ten tables from the list this year

In 2026 I ate at ten restaurants on this list, seven of them in the top 10: Asador Etxebarri (1), Alchemist (3), Quintonil (4), Wing (5), The Chairman (6), Kadeau (8) and DiverXO (9). The other three are Vyn (23), Elkano (33) and Jordnær (40). In the full list below, they are framed in orange.

I don’t want to tell this as a collection. The real reward of going to these restaurants isn’t on the plate.

Going to Etxebarri begins with the winding road from Bilbao into the mountains and the small village square the dining room looks out over. For Vyn, you head to Sweden’s far south, to Skillinge on the coast of Skåne. At Kadeau’s table in Copenhagen, the island of Bornholm is always present. What you take in when you sit down is a journey, an act of hospitality, a rhythm, a light, sometimes a silence. The plate is the most visible part of it, but not the only one.

Years later, what stays with you is rarely a single bite. It is how the evening made you feel: the moment you walked in, the pace of the service, the feeling you carried out with you. In our restaurant and hotel projects we keep coming back to the same place: guests remember the plate, but above all they remember how they felt. This list looks like a list of meals. To me, it is a list of experiences.

Note: I have no commercial relationship with any of these restaurants. I paid my own bill at every one of them and asked for no discount.

The World’s 50 Best Restaurants 2026: the full list

A last word: the list and the work

I have plenty of criticisms of The 50 myself. Every ranking misses something; there is always a little friendship, a little visibility, a little pop culture in it. People cast the votes, and people live inside relationships. I read this list knowing that.

But none of it should overshadow the work of the restaurants.

No vote changes Bittor’s devotion to his craft, or the fact that he never leaves his kitchen.
No relationship can get ahead of Rasmus Munk’s creativity.
No ranking makes Dabiz Muñoz’s “clever madness” any bigger or any smaller.

A list lasts a year. The work starts again every evening.

Further reading

For a different and deeper read on Etxebarri, I recommend my friend Max Shapiro’s piece: Etxebarri Ruined Food for Me.

Max co-hosts the Los Angeles–based Mad Food podcast with Jordan Okun. Since 2018 they have been talking about restaurants, cooking and hospitality, with equal parts seriousness and humor. Max also publishes restaurant writing on the Mad Food World Substack.

In the piece, he describes how his first meal at Etxebarri, the day after a dinner at El Bulli in 2008, changed the way he thinks about food. He writes about Bittor’s devotion to fire and ingredients, Mohamed’s role in the dining room, and the restaurant’s lack of any plans to expand. He doesn’t hide the dishes he didn’t love, which is what makes it an honest read.

Sources: the50.com, The 50 Best Restaurants 2026; The 50 press release (5 November 2026). Restaurant photos courtesy of The 50 and its photographers.