West London has done the unthinkable: beaten Naples at its own game. Napoli on the Road, chef Michele Pascarella's pizzeria, has been named the best pizza in the world for 2026 by the international guide 50 Top Pizza — the first time the top spot has gone to a British restaurant.
The guide, which publishes an annual world ranking, usually splits its honours between Italy and the US, so a London winner is genuinely surprising. Napoli on the Road now has three outposts — Chiswick, Richmond and Soho — and its appeal is a modern spin on Neapolitan tradition: that puffy, leopard-spotted crust, but with inventive toppings. The Wild Marinara pairs semi-dry cherry tomatoes with taggiasche olives, Cetara anchovies and wild garlic pesto, and there are four vegan pies, including a zucchini pizza with vegan stracciatella and fried mint.
Second place went to Una Pizza Napoletana on New York's Lower East Side, which topped the list three years running before this year. Pizzaiolo Anthony Mangieri has spent three decades perfecting his dough — from New Jersey to the East Village to San Francisco before settling in the LES — and the menu is famously austere: six pizzas, one pie per guest at the table, no exceptions.
Italy still looms large. Milan's Confine, in a former ironmongery near the Duomo, takes the tasting-menu route with wine and cocktail pairings and a 500-bottle cellar weighted toward Campanian whites. In Caserta, Francesco Martucci's I Masanielli goes maximalist — its Assoluto di Pomodoro features tomatoes prepared seven different ways — and Rome's Seu Pizza Illuminati offers five-to-eight-course pizza tasting menus in a contemporary art-lined dining room. Martucci has also exported his craft to Miami's Wynwood district.
The sleeper hits are just as interesting for travellers. São Paulo's Leggera Pizza Napoletana, in the leafy Jardim Paulista district, ranks among the world's best for both a purist Margherita Verace and a decadent Cacio e Ragù finished with Wagyu. Tokyo lands two spots: RistoPizza by Napoli Sta Ca, where Neapolitan-born chef Peppe Errichiello pairs smoked provola with sansho pepper and stracciatella with Botan shrimp and wasabi, and The Pizza Bar on 38th at the Mandarin Oriental, where just eight seats surround a marble counter and chef Daniele Cason serves ultra-hydrated, two-day-fermented dough in a sushi-counter format.
Rounding things out: Pizzeria Sei in Los Angeles for Japanese-precision Neapolitan pies, Tony's Pizza Napoletana in San Francisco with its dizzying range of regional American styles, and Baldoria in Madrid, which serves both Neapolitan and Turin-style Padellino pizzas alongside nightly live music and a Truffle Negroni.
The takeaway? A great pizza pilgrimage no longer requires a flight to Naples. London, New York, São Paulo and Tokyo all now host genuinely world-class pizzerias — and booking ahead is the name of the game at nearly all of them.
