★ The World's 50 Best Restaurants

01Waarom het relevant is

A movement of a few places on this list measurably changes a restaurant's booking book, and reaching number one changes its life — which is why the organization introduced the Best of the Best rule in 2019, retiring former winners from the ranking so that the top of the list keeps moving. That the award travels matters almost as much as the award. A host city buys, through its tourism agency, the presence of several hundred of the world's most-photographed chefs and the food press that follows them, and the 2026 choice of Lima after Maido's win in 2025 is the clearest illustration of how the circuit now works: win the award, then host it. In our reading the list's real function is as the restaurant world's annual census — it is where the industry finds out who is ascendant, which is a different question from who is best, and the organization is reasonably candid that a poll of panellists' favourite meals is what it is.

02De week eromheen

The host city does the work. Restaurants on the list send their chefs, sponsors stage dinners, and the local industry opens its kitchens to visitors for a few days around the ceremony — in Lima that is formalized as the ticketed Signature Sessions, where a visiting chef cooks in a local dining room. The practical effect on the host city is a short, intense spike in restaurant demand rather than a street festival: the tables that matter are booked out, the hotels near the ceremony venue fill with delegations, and very little of it is visible to anyone not eating in a restaurant that week.

03Wanneer aan te komen

Two nights before the ceremony if you have a reason to be there, which for most people means a Signature Session booking. The Talks fall the day before the ceremony and the best of the host-city dining happens in the forty-eight hours around it. Anyone coming purely to eat should consider the days immediately after instead, when the visiting chefs have gone and the city's own restaurants are still at full stretch.

04Waar te verblijven

Set by the host city and impossible to generalize. For Lima in 2026 the answer is the Miraflores and Barranco districts along the coast, which hold most of the city's hotels and most of the restaurants on the lists, and San Isidro for the business-hotel end. Book the neighbourhood the ceremony is in, because the host-city traffic on the night is the single biggest practical problem.

05Toegang en hospitality

The ceremony is not sold. Seats go to the ranked and nominated restaurants, the voting academy, the organization's partners and accredited press, and there is no public ticket at any price. Everything else around it is more open than the ceremony suggests: the 1-50 reveal is streamed free on the organizer's YouTube channel, #50BestTalks is programmed as a public-facing session, and the 50 Best Signature Sessions are explicitly ticketed and bookable by both local and visiting diners, with the organizer stating that the line-up is published in advance. Press accreditation runs through the organization's media centre. Commercial involvement is by sponsorship, and the organization states that partners have no part in compiling the results.

06Waar de sociale activiteit plaatsvindt

In restaurants, almost entirely, and in the bars attached to them. The host city's best-known dining rooms and the hotel bars nearest the ceremony carry the days either side; the after-events are private functions of sponsors and of individual restaurants and are not described here. The public face of the week is the Signature Sessions table you can book and the livestream you can watch.

07Hoe u er komt

08Praktische informatie

09Geschiedenis

The first list appeared in Restaurant in 2002, with El Bulli at the top; an awards night was added shortly afterward. William Reed extended the franchise into regional rankings — Asia's 50 Best and Latin America's 50 Best from 2013, Middle East & North Africa's from 2022 — and into separate lists for bars, hotels and vineyards. The 2019 rule retiring former number ones into a Best of the Best group was a direct response to criticism that the same restaurants recycled through the top places. The ceremony left London for a rotating international host some years ago, and Turin held the 2025 edition on 19 June. In September 2026 the owner announced that the whole family of rankings would be rebranded as The 50, with the restaurant awards adopting the new identity during the rollout, so the name on the room in Lima may not be the name in this record.

10Wie is er

Chefs and restaurateurs from the ranked and nominated restaurants, with their teams; the voting academy's regional chairs and panellists; food critics, editors and broadcasters; the organization's commercial partners; and the host city's own restaurant industry and tourism agency. The Signature Sessions add paying diners, local and visiting.