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The 10 best cities in the world for food in 2026, ranked

From Ho Chi Minh City's fine-dining pho to Lima's daring reinventions, ten cities where locals voted on the world's best food scenes

Jay Wennington / Unsplash

Every year, a definitive ranking of the world’s greatest cities for eating and drinking celebrates the chefs, kitchens and street food stalls that feed a city, bringing locals and visitors together to savor life’s one greatest pleasure: an excellent meal. This year’s Best Cities for Food ranking drew on a survey of more than 24,000 locals based around the world, asking respondents to rate the overall quality of their local food scene, how affordable it is to eat out, and which specific food spots their city does best.

Those thousands of survey responses got paired with insight from an expert food panel made up of editors and food critics from across a global network, who voted for the cities they consider the most exciting dining destinations on the planet right now. Only the highest-scoring city in each country made the final ranking, ensuring the list reflects culinary capitals globally rather than clustering in any single region.

The 10 cities below appear on Time Out, covering the world’s best cities for food in 2026, with restaurants from Lisbon to Lima serving up some of the most striking, daring, and downright delicious food to be found anywhere right now. They span six continents and a considerable range of price points, from some of the most affordable street food scenes surveyed to cities known primarily for elevated, special-occasion dining. A recurring theme runs through much of this year’s ranking, since several cities on the list are actively reworking traditional dishes through contemporary technique, whether that means fine-dining phở in Ho Chi Minh City or reimagined Greek classics in Athens, instead of abandoning local culinary heritage entirely in favor of purely international trends that ignore what made each city’s food scene distinctive in the first place.

1. Lima pits new-guard chefs against Amazonian ingredients

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Hardly a week goes by without a hot-ticket new restaurant setting up shop in the Peruvian capital, though Lima’s bohemian district of Barranco recently saw a particularly high-profile opening. In March, Rodrigo Fernandini, who made a name for himself directing Peruvian fine-dining restaurants in Florida and New York, inaugurated his first flagship restaurant, Fernandini. Its highlight comes down to a tasting menu inspired as much by the country’s famously diverse culinary landscape, with ingredients including Andean root vegetables, moriche palm fruit and cacao from the Amazon $AMZN -0.71%, as it is by Virgilio Martínez’s award-winning take on that same subject at Central.

The team behind tiny patisserie El Pregón de las Once gives now widely forgotten historic Peruvian desserts new life, and their puff pastry ranfañote ranks among the standouts worth seeking out.

Lima’s restaurants consistently rank among the world’s best, and fusion restaurant Maido currently holds the title of world’s best restaurant for 2025. This impressive standing on the global culinary stage was reflected in strong scores from both survey respondents and the expert panel. Locals in Lima rated the city’s food scene 80% for quality and 85% for affordability, making it the cheapest city on the list for dining out. With a 70% share of the vote, Lima ranked joint-second among the expert panel.

This particular pairing of world-class fine dining and considerable affordability gives Lima real standing as one of the most complete food cities anywhere in this year’s ranking. Visitors hoping to sample the full range of Peru’s culinary diversity should pair a meal at Fernandini with a visit to one of Barranco’s smaller neighborhood markets, since the contrast between fine dining and everyday ingredients captures much of what makes the city’s food scene distinctive. This particular contrast between elevated technique and everyday ingredients tends to reward curious visitors with a considerably fuller picture of Peruvian cuisine. This small addition nicely rounds out a visit without requiring much extra planning.

2. Bangkok revives street food through younger chefs

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Bangkok feels especially exciting right now, not only because street food is seeing a serious revival, but also thanks to a new take on Thai fine dining that shows just how far local flavors can travel. Last year, Southern Thai restaurant Sorn became the first in Thailand to receive three Michelin stars, while Bangkok has seen a wave of younger chefs making local cuisine feel exciting again through contemporary cooking focused on lesser-known regional dishes. Ice cream brand iBerry Group’s foray into savory dishes brought ThongSmith to the table, turning classic boat noodles into a more polished yet still distinctly mainstream dish, while its newer sibling, Trok Maraga, does the same with bitter melon chicken noodles.

New food areas are booming too. The crowd-favorite Song Wat Road runs increasingly lively, with a growing mix of concept-driven restaurants, bars and cafes, where old-school flavors now appear alongside more design-driven hangouts. Meanwhile, Talat Noi still draws crowds to long-running street food spots such as Daeng Racha Hoi Tod, a favorite hole-in-the-wall where people line up in considerable numbers, hungry for a crispy oyster omelet.

Khao San Sek on Song Wat Road offers a standout dish: grilled catfish glazed with burnt palm sugar and served with wild leucaena, a smoky, sweet, and slightly bitter combination that tastes unmistakably Thai despite its unusual pairing of flavors.

Sixty-six percent of Bangkok locals said eating out remains affordable in the Thai capital, and 81% rated their hometown highly for the quality and diversity of its food, with the majority recognizing the city’s........

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