Michelin Guide 2026: New States, New Stars
The Michelin Guide Mexico 2026 ceremony landed in Guadalajara this week, as Jalisco celebrated its first year in the prestigious guide alongside two other newcomers: Puebla and Yucatán. The 2026 edition recognized 225 restaurants in total: 2 with Two Michelin Stars, 27 with One Star (7 new), 63 Bib Gourmand (16 new), 133 selected restaurants (31 new), and 11 Green Stars (3 new).
Michelin for sure brings visibility and a commercial lift that few other restaurant guides can match, but is not without its critics. Its expansion into new markets – first CDMX, and now Jalisco, Puebla and Yucatan – is often funded by tourism boards and destination agencies, raising questions on its objectivity. Food purists thus dispute its ever-increasing commercial approach, and of course its restaurant selection.
Mexico City’s Pujol (Enrique Olvera) and Quintonil (Jorge Vallejo and Alejandra Flores), both retained their Two Michelin Stars, and the seven restaurants earning their first star were spread across the new and old guard: Alcalde and Xokol in Guadalajara, Gaba and La Once Mil in Mexico City, and Huniik, La Barra de Huniik, and IXI’IM in Yucatán.
The night’s biggest story was the demotion of El Califa de León — the first taquería to ever receive a Michelin star in 2024 — which lost its star recognition this year. The restaurant was founded in 1968 and has a colorful history, but the Michelin star brought a stifling amount of attention (bordering on notoriety) as tourists swarmed to get in. The head parillero quit four months later, and media reported internal rifts caused by the blessing and curse of sudden global fame.
Tacos haven’t been left out of star ranking altogether this year, but they’ve definitely gone more upscale. La Once Mil in Lomas de Chapultepec earned its first star with a concept that “elevates Mexican street food to new levels” on a menu featuring premium-cut tacos of wagyu, sirloin, and arrachera, alongside specialties like the New York Delgadita and a truffle taco.
Special awards recognized Rodrigo Caltenco Núñez of Huniik (Service), Jonathan Robles of El Mural de los Poblanos (Sommelier), Priscila Moreno of Máximo (Exceptional Cocktails), and Xóchitl Valdés of Pancho Maíz (Young Chef). Puebla didn’t crack the starred tier but placed well in the Bib Gourmand category and its sommelier took home one of the night’s top individual honors.
According to CANIRAC, two years after the guide’s arrival in Mexico, those linked to Michelin recognition report workforce growth of between 20 and 50 percent, though the impact extends beyond the listed restaurants. The guide has opened new opportunities for auxiliary industries (linens, furniture, logistics, delivery platforms) while also elevating demand for premium local ingredients.
The restaurant sector already accounts for roughly 15 percent of Mexico’s tourism GDP and nearly 2 million jobs — and gastronomic tourism spending is projected to grow another 2 to 5 percent in 2026.
Paint The Town Purple
Axolotls are whimsical, adorable and endangered, but only now — thanks to Mayor Clara Brugada — have they become controversial. The endemic amphibian that once populated the canals of Xochimilco is multiplying in murals and illustrations across the urban landscape as part of a citywide makeover for the World Cup, which also includes painting underpasses, streetlights, pedestrian bridges, signage, and public transport in bright shades of purple. Some chilangos are bemused, but others bemoan Brugada’s “ajolotización” of the city as a waste of resources and an aesthetic blight.
The use of the axolotl as a city mascot isn’t new — in fact, if you visit the CDMX webpage, you’ll be greeted by Xoli the axolotl chat bot — but this latest amphibious assault began with the launch of a remodeled light rail, dubbed the Ajolote, on May 12. Brugada has embraced what began as a mocking term, saying that “if ajolotizar means making what was once grey full of color, building utopias, painting murals, transforming public space, painting in feminist purple, then of course we are ajolotizando.”
Brugada and her sympathizers have characterized the backlash as classist, coming from upper-class residents of the capital looking down their noses at the former mayor of Iztapalapa as a representative of embarrassing lower-class tastes. But critics say they aren’t just bothered for aesthetic reasons, raising concerns about urgent public transportation, drainage and traffic issues that should be prioritized before millions of tourists descend on the city for the World Cup in a few weeks. Former PAN mayor of Benito Juárez borough, Santiago Taboada, wrote on X: “Pardon my ‘classist’ comments, but Mexico City doesn’t need axolotls painted on the asphalt, much less does it need pedestrian bridges painted purple. We need more safe crosswalks, so people can walk without danger, and that there aren’t potholes and that the streets don’t flood.”
Others have pointed out that the disappearance of the axolotl from its native habitat (mostly due to water contamination and invasive species) demonstrates a lack of genuine concern about biodiversity conservation. According to UNAM data, the population collapse has been dramatic: in 1998 there were an estimated 6,000 axolotls per square kilometer in Xochimilco; by 2014 that figure had fallen to 36. In the most recent 2024 scientific surveys, researchers failed to capture a single live specimen at several traditional sampling sites.
President Sheinbaum, however, has defended Brugada’s initiative, saying that it “makes the city look nice” and “gives joy” to residents.
In an inverse example — of removing rather than adding urban imagery — during her term as mayor of the Cuauhtémoc borough, Sandra Cuevas implemented a campaign in 2022 to remove the colorful hand-painted advertising on street carts (“rótulos”) and replace it with the borough’s logo, ostensibly to clean up the city’s image and bring “order and discipline”. The outcry was widespread: Cuevas was accused of erasing the city’s traditions and artistry, and eventually, the policy was reversed by her successor. Perhaps what provokes resentment isn’t axolotls or purple paint, but the top-down government imposition of an aesthetic change that no one asked for.
Mexico on the Croisette
The Mexican delegation at the 79th Cannes Film Festival includes both established icons and emerging new voices in film.
The festival opened with Guillermo del Toro presenting a new 4K restoration of Pan’s Labyrinth, twenty years after its Cannes world premiere to a still-record-holding 22-minute standing ovation. Del Toro had personally supervised every stage of the restoration from the original 35mm negative, and the film was once again met with enthusiasm, with del Toro receiving several minutes of applause as he took the stage.
Del Toro said the original shoot “was the second worst filmmaking experience of my life”, adding that no one had wanted to finance it and everything that could go wrong did go wrong. He also reflected on the film’s relevance today: “We are, unfortunately, in times that make this movie more pertinent than ever,” he said, “because they tell us everything is useless to resist, that art can be done with a fucking app.”
Diego Luna, a regular at the festival, returned this year in the director’s chair with Ashes (Ceniza en la boca), a family drama based on the book by Mexican author Brenda Navarro about a 21-year-old woman who leaves Mexico with her younger brother to reunite with their mother in Madrid, presented in the Special Screenings section. Luna’s fifth feature as director explores anti-immigrant prejudice which he said is rooted in “ignorance and selfishness” and can be found “everywhere”.
The reception from critics was mixed. Variety described the film as “middling and meandering,” praising lead actress Anna Díaz as “remarkable” but finding Luna’s direction structurally weak. The film’s stars, Anna Díaz and Adriana Paz — who won a joint Best Actress award at Cannes in 2024 along with the other leads in the critically acclaimed but popularly panned Emilia Pérez — traveled to the premiere.
Mexican cinema returned to official competition at Cannes, after an absence last year, with Seis meses en el edificio rosa con azul, the debut feature of young director Bruno Santamaría Razo, selected for the 65th Semaine de la Critique — dedicated to emerging talent. The section carries special weight in Mexico: it launched the careers of Guillermo del Toro, who won its top prize with Cronos in 1993, and Alejandro González Iñárritu, who won it with Amores Perros in 2000.
The film blends documentary and fiction to tell the semi-autobiographical story of an 11-year-old boy navigating his father’s HIV diagnosis in 1990s Mexico, at a time when there was no treatment and the disease was surrounded by homophobic misinformation. It was warmly received by audiences. “It’s been very emotional, very tender,” said director Santamaría Razo after the screening.
U2 Gets “Ajolotizado” in CDMX
U2’s visit to Mexico City to film the music video for the band’s new single, Street of Dreams, made rich viral fodder (and yes, it also involved axolotls). The shoot took place on May 12 at the Plaza de Santo Domingo in the historic city center, where the iconic Irish rockers performed atop a school bus decorated with graffiti by Mexican artist Chavis Mármol. The bus’s front sign read “La Calle de los Sueños” and Bono led the crowd in the song’s bilingual chorus: “La calle / Calle de los Sueños / Justice an obsession on the Street of Dreams.” Hundreds of fans who were secretly recruited through U2’s official website just days before the shoot participated as extras in the production.
A torrential downpour halted filming after just three takes, but when the storm eased, the band moved to the balcony of a nearby building for an impromptu acoustic set of classics — and later went viral after a video showed them entering an apartment to personally thank the family who let them use the balcony.
Bono and The Edge also attended the Street Child World Cup at the Teatro Hidalgo, where they had a starstruck encounter with President Sheinbaum. The Edge said they were “such fans” of the president, and Bono praised her for “universal health care” (maybe thinking he was in Denmark) and “raising the minimum wage”, referring to her as “my president” as they walked off the stage.
The band also met with Mayor Clara Brugada, who gifted each band member with an artisanal axolotl figure. Brugada called U2 “the most beloved band in this city” (don’t tell BTS) and after they were “ajolotizados”, handed Bono a formal invitation to perform at the Zócalo. In response, Bono told Brugada that it was his dream to kick off the band’s next tour in Mexico City.
Panini Pandemonium: (Capitalism 3: Nostalgia & Heritage 0.)
Every four years, the Panini World Cup album (first launched for the 1970 Mexico World Cup) becomes a collective obsession that transcends age, language, and borders. School recesses become trading floors, office desks and kitchen counters fill with stickers, and social media buzzes with meetups to swap duplicates. Certain stickers take on near-mythical value, and the pressure to complete the album can reach surprising heights — during the 2022 Qatar World Cup, Argentina’s government actually intervened over a sticker shortage, with the Secretary of Commerce meeting with Panini representatives to resolve the national crisis.
The 2026 edition is the largest in the album’s history, reflecting a tournament that for the first time features 48 national teams and 104 matches — and sales in Latin America are already running 24% ahead of the Qatar 2022 edition, driven by strong demand across the region.
The album also highlights inequality, in a tournament that is increasingly becoming an elite event (2026 ticket prices cost more than double what they did in 2022, adjusted for inflation). Some children save weeks to buy a few packets, while others completed it within 48 hours of launch (filling in the album can cost more than 4,000 pesos). Counterfeit printable sticker sheets are circulating on social media and messaging apps, offered as free PDF downloads, but experts warn these files can hide dangerous malware.
What collectors may not know is that 2026 could be one of the last chances to experience the traditional Panini album. The company’s licensing agreement with FIFA expires in 2030, after which American sports collectibles giant Fanatics (through its Topps brand) will take over production. For Panini, it marks the end of a tradition spanning more than 60 years and 15 World Cup albums. The Italian publisher says the end of the license was FIFA’s decision and is already pivoting toward a more diversified business, expanding into comics, manga, and global entertainment licenses. Behind the scenes, the company has reportedly hired Citi to explore strategic options, including a possible sale.
Chatter Box
Turn Off Your Phones, Please: Mexico City’s Congress unanimously approved a reform to the city’s Education Law to regulate the use and possession of mobile phones by students in primary and secondary schools during school hours. The reform does not impose an outright ban and removes any punitive or automatic-sanction approach; phones may still be used in exceptional cases related to educational activities, emergencies, or situations authorized by teachers. Mexico City joins several other states (including Querétaro, Guanajuato, Morelos, Aguascalientes, and the State of Mexico) that have recently moved to limit phone use in basic education schools.
The legislative debate is playing out against the backdrop of screen-time data presented by Mexico’s Undersecretary of Higher Education, who noted that Mexicans over age 16 spend an average of 7 hours and 32 minutes online daily — nearly a full workday, and almost an hour more than the global average of 6 hours 38 minutes. He added that 79 countries have already regulated smartphone use in schools, and that the federal government’s approach favors dialogue with academics and scientists over outright bans. Lawmakers also cited that 75 percent of teachers report students are constantly distracted by phones in class, and that more than three million adolescents in Mexico have been victims of cyberbullying or online sexual exploitation.
“La Princesse Rouge” turns 94: Elena Poniatowska still ventures out from her Coyaoacán home to walk around the city, talk to people and write “crónicas” as she has done since her early days working as a journalist in Mexico City in the 1950s and 60s. Poniatowska celebrated her 94th birthday this week and in an interview with La Jornada, said that “I write because everything moves me.” Born in Paris on May 19, 1932, as Hélène Elizabeth Louise Amelie Paula Dolores Poniatowska Amor (a descendant of the last king of Poland) she is known by a string of affectionate nicknames: la Poni, Elenísima, la Princesa Roja, la Cervantowska. Her son Felipe Haro Poniatowski turned down the opportunity to sell a potential sale of her personal library and archive by the family — thousands of books, hours of recordings, and uncatalogued manuscripts — to Princeton University, keeping it in Mexico, and leads the Fundación Elena Poniatowska Amor to preserve what he considers a cultural patrimony belonging to the Mexican people. President Sheinbaum recently urged that the archive be protected.
Some are skeptical. In an op-ed in La Jornada, Javier Aranda Luna points to the neglected archive of Octavio Paz — held in state custody but apparently neither classified, stabilized, nor properly conserved, alongside 476 artworks by Tàpies, Tamayo, Carrington, and others — and to the government’s recent indifference toward the archive of playwright Miguel Sabido, as evidence that official disdain for cultural heritage is “almost an administrative tradition”.
Ruins Reroute Railway: Archaeological salvage work along the Mexico City–Querétaro passenger rail corridor has uncovered a significant pre-Hispanic site near the community of Ignacio Zaragoza, Hidalgo, forcing engineers to reroute the project once again.
Since September 2025, an INAH team has been excavating a roughly 2,400-square-meter area that overlaps directly with the proposed rail line. Using precision orthophotography alongside traditional excavation, researchers identified a pattern of small residential compounds connected by central and lateral patios in a layout consistent with Teotihuacan-era settlements. The site dates primarily to the Tlamimilolpan and Xolalpan phases (225–550 AD), during Teotihuacan’s peak expansion.
Archaeologists uncovered five shaft-style tombs and more than a dozen individual and collective burials, containing both complete and fragmentary skeletal remains, predominantly adult but with some juveniles. One tomb held eight individuals in a seated position, surrounded by 47 miniature ceramic vessels placed at their feet. Evidence suggests the funerary spaces were reused over time, with earlier burials deliberately displaced to accommodate new ones — pointing to complex, evolving ritual practices.
The site also appears to have served as a limestone quarry supplying Teotihuacan, located 90 kilometers away. INAH researchers say these discoveries are invaluable for understanding the beliefs, social structure, and culture of communities that thrived in Teotihuacan’s orbit and that Hidalgo may hold far more of this buried history than previously known.
Frida and Diego at The Met: El último sueño de Frida y Diego, with music by Gabriela Lena Frank and libretto by Nilo Cruz, premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City on May 14 — the most anticipated debut of the season. It will be broadcast live in HD on May 30 to theaters in over 70 countries, including Mexico, where it will screen at the Auditorio Nacional alongside other venues across the country. The opera, which had its world premiere at the San Diego Opera in 2022, imagines a reunion for the tempestuous artists in the afterlife. Diego Rivera asked for his ashes to be mixed with Frida Kahlo’s at her Casa Azul, but was buried instead at Mexico City’s Rotonda de las Personas Ilustres. The opera gives the couple the reconciliation history denied: Frida returns from the underworld on the Day of the Dead to guide Diego across to join her.
For Spanish baritone Carlos Álvarez, the political context was inseparable from the artistic one. Performing a Spanish-language opera at the world’s most prestigious opera house, under the Trump administration, felt to him like an act of cultural affirmation. “The Spanish language and Mexican culture as civilizing and humanist elements,” he said, were his dual purpose in taking the role. Of Frida and Diego themselves, he concluded: “They transcended the merely artistic to become an epitome of the human.”
More Museum Visits: Mexican museums saw an uptick in visitors last year, with 52.2 million visitors recorded across 1,215 museums surveyed by INEGI — up from 51.5 million in 2024 and 48.4 million in 2023. The rebound from the pandemic low of 12.8 million visitors in 2020 is clear, though the sector is still well below its 2017 peak of 75.2 million. Attendance is heavily concentrated geographically: Mexico City alone drew 25.8 million people across 166 museums, making it the country’s dominant cultural hub by a wide margin, followed by Nuevo León (4.7 million, 47 museums) and Guanajuato (2.4 million, 60 museums).
Access is broadly free: 59.8 percent of museums operated with free entry year-round, 21.1 percent charged an admission fee, and 19.1 percent offered free days on a rotating basis. Nine in ten museums offered guided tours, and just under half had arts and cultural programming. Some 37.8 percent of the roughly 32,000 museum workers were volunteers or social service participants, highlighting the sector’s reliance on unpaid labor.
The visitor profile skews educated and surprisingly young. Nearly 62 percent of the more than 191,000 visitors surveyed had university-level education, and the biggest single age bracket (15 percent of the total) was 20 to 29 years old. Two-thirds of visitors reported having received family encouragement to visit museums during childhood, underscoring the role of early cultural exposure in shaping adult habits.
100 years of Teodoro González de León: Mexico City is marking the centennial of the birth of Teodoro González de León (1926-2016) with a wide-ranging program titled “TGL: Cien años de legado”, running from May through October 2026. González de León was one of Mexico’s most celebrated architects, whose work fundamentally shaped the visual identity of the metropolis over six decades. A student of Le Corbusier in Paris, he developed a signature aesthetic rooted in brutalism but distinctly his own, through his use of “Teodorocreto,” an exposed concrete mixed with crushed white tezontle volcanic stone that gave his buildings a luminous, textured surface. His major works include the Museo Tamayo, the MUAC, the Colegio de México, the Fondo de Cultura Económica, the Lunario del Auditorio Nacional, and Reforma 222, among many others scattered across the capital. González de León was also a painter, urbanist, and public intellectual, making him one of the most multifaceted cultural figures of 20th-century Mexico. The celebrations began this week with free guided tours along two routes visiting his most iconic buildings across the city. On his birthday (May 29), a street near the Parque La Mexicana in Santa Fe will be renamed in his honor, and that week, screenings of Maillé’s documentary Teodoro en Concreto will take place at cinemas housed in buildings he designed, in Mexico City, Monterrey, and Guadalajara.
Culture Conversation
Juan Villoro on Aristegui Noticias
Prolific author Juan Villoro discusses his latest book about football (“one of the few passions I haven’t abandoned”), Héroes Numerados, in this interview with Carmen Aristegui. Villoro’s expansive look at the history of the sport, the culture of fandom and its societal and political relevance is a fun and enlightening listen.
Culture Outing
Mexico City is home to 194 museums and many of them have gone full World Cup mode. Here are six exhibitions that football history fans will enjoy:
- The Museo Franz Mayer (Centro Histórico) is hosting Fútbol. Diseñando una pasión, a visual history of American World Cups through the design of jerseys, balls, and logos — featuring 309 objects including shirts worn by Pelé, Maradona, Messi, and Hugo Sánchez. Open until August 16; entry $180 pesos.
- The Museo Jumex (Polanco) presents Fútbol y Arte: Esa misma emoción, exploring the intersections between contemporary art and football through paintings, sculptures, video, and installations. Open until July 26; free entry.
- The Museo Memoria y Tolerancia (Alameda Central) has Juego Limpio: la cancha que nos une, spanning six rooms with 150 objects tracing football’s ancient roots through to its social and cultural impact today — including cases like Didier Drogba’s role in the Ivory Coast peace process and Megan Rapinoe’s fight for equal pay. Open until September; entry $100 pesos.
- The Museo Yancuic (Iztapalapa) features Álbum Épico, with more than 15,000 pieces celebrating the World Cups held in Mexico (1970, 1986, and 2026), including personal objects and match-worn items from Pelé, Maradona, Ronaldo Nazário, and Jorge Campos, plus interactive areas with vintage broadcasts and foosball tables. Open until July; free entry.
- Universum (Ciudad Universitaria) is running La ciencia está en la cancha through October 4, exploring football from a scientific angle — the geometry of balls, the physics of impossible goals, and real training methods. Entry from $90 pesos.
- The MIDE (Museo Interactivo de Economía, Centro Histórico) has transformed its courtyard into a stadium-like space for Pasa el balón, where visitors can act as referee, commentate plays, and explore football’s economic and cultural impact. Open until August 30; entry $160 pesos.