Asador Etxebarri, a wood-fire grill restaurant in the tiny Basque village of Axpe, has been named The World's Best Restaurant 2026 at the World's 50 Best Restaurants awards in Lima on 4 November. Chef-owner Victor Arguinzoniz climbed from second place in 2025 to beat Gaggan in Bangkok, Alchemist in Copenhagen and Quintonil in Mexico City — and picked up Best Restaurant in Europe along the way.
Spain now has four restaurants in the 2026 top 50, two of them in the top 10: DiverXO in Madrid (ninth), Enigma in Barcelona (29th) and Elkano in Getaria (33rd) join Etxebarri at number one. Barcelona's Disfrutar, the 2024 winner, has graduated to the permanent Best of the Best list. At the same ceremony, Ferran Adrià received the Icon Award for his work at El Bulli, the legendary Roses restaurant that won the top spot five times before closing in 2011 and changed world cooking with foams, spherification and the famous liquid olive.
What's striking is the range. Etxebarri isn't experimental at all — its 14-course menu is built on Arguinzoniz's decades of grilling over wood fire, letting top-notch produce do the talking. Elkano is a traditional Basque seafood house. DiverXO and Enigma sit at the wild end of the spectrum. Chef Ángel León, whose Aponiente is Andalucía's first three-star restaurant, puts it simply: Spanish cuisine is about product and roots, and its chefs are veterans, not trend-chasers.
The deep roots matter here. The nueva cocina vasca movement started by a group of chefs including Juan Mari Arzak and Pedro Subijana in 1970s San Sebastián laid the groundwork for everything that followed, blending Basque tradition with creativity. Spain's 50 provinces each guard their own specialities — Catalan prawns, Basque baby peas, Andalucían red tuna, Asturian cave-aged blue cheeses — and the country tends to keep its best olive oil, wine and seafood at home.
For travellers, this all translates into something unusually accessible. A record 96.8 million international visitors came to Spain in 2025, more than a quarter of them taking part in food and wine activities. Even the humble pintxos and tapas often borrow techniques pioneered by the starred kitchens. León points to a thriving mid-range tier — solid meals for 20-40 euros a head that he says is hard to find elsewhere — and the Michelin Guide Spain & Andorra 2026 lists 204 Bib Gourmand restaurants for quality at friendly prices.
So whether you're booking months ahead for a grill-fuelled pilgrimage to Axpe, or just grazing through tapas bars in Cádiz or San Sebastián, you're plugging into the same food culture that just topped the world rankings. Book Etxebarri or DiverXO well in advance; everything else you can improvise on the spot.
