October 2026 closed with just four homicides in El Salvador — an average of 0.13 murders per day and 27 days without a single killing. That places it among the safest months the country has recorded in more than half a century, according to police data compiled by El Salvador Info.
The outright record still belongs to December 2024, when the country logged a single homicide and 30 murder-free days. July 2025 and June 2026 follow with two each. October's four homicides put it in a tie with several other months — August 2025, July 2026, January 2026 and November 2025 — but the broader trend is what stands out. In the first ten months of 2026, the country recorded 256 days with no homicides at all, on top of 305 zero-homicide days in 2025 and 279 in 2024. For context, in the 15 years before President Nayib Bukele took office in June 2019, El Salvador managed fewer than five homicide-free days in total, and the daily murder rate then stood at 7.7.
The government attributes the drop to two policies: the Territorial Control Plan, a seven-phase operation launched in 2019 to dismantle gang structure, and the State of Exception, in force since March 2022, under which more than 91,000 people have been detained on suspicion of gang ties. That measure has been extended 56 consecutive times and draws heavy criticism from human rights organisations over arbitrary arrests and deaths in custody — though domestic surveys consistently show majority public approval. Officials also note the homicide figures exclude alleged gang members killed in confrontations with police and bodies discovered in mass graves, so the numbers come with caveats.
For travellers, the shift is tangible. El Salvador has moved from being a country most guidebooks warned against to one actively courting tourism — surf towns like El Tunco, the Ruta de las Flores, Santa Ana's volcano and coffee country, and the colonial streets of Suchitoto are all firmly back on the map. Visitors in 2025 and 2026 will find a country where everyday street safety feels markedly different from the 2010s, even as the security policies behind the statistics remain a topic of international debate. Whether that trade-off sits comfortably is a personal call; the practical reality is that homicide risk to visitors is now historically low.
The year-end dry season — November through April — has traditionally been the sweet spot for a visit, and the data now shows those months are also among the country's calmest by this measure. December 2024's near-perfect record came right in peak holiday season.
