Mexico's No. 1 Resort for 2026 Sits in a 3,000-Acre Reserve — Nowhere Near Cancun

Four Seasons Resort Tamarindo has been named the No. 1 resort in Mexico in Travel + Leisure's 2026 World's Best Awards, one of the industry's most closely watched reader-voted rankings. The win is notable for where it points travelers: not to the crowded beaches of Cancun or the Riviera Maya, but to Costalegre, a rugged and lightly developed stretch of Pacific coastline in the state of Jalisco.

The resort sits inside a 3,000-acre private nature reserve, trading the mega-resort model for seclusion and a heavy dose of surrounding wilderness. General Manager Felix Murillo credited the recognition to the property's staff, whose service scores drive these reader surveys year after year.

The result underscores a shift in how luxury travelers are choosing Mexico. While the Caribbean side of the country continues to add all-inclusive towers at a rapid clip, the World's Best voting rewarded a property built on the opposite premise: low density, private land and immersion in nature rather than nightlife. Travel + Leisure's World's Best Awards are compiled from hundreds of thousands of reader votes and published each summer, making the Mexico title a meaningful signal of where high-end demand is heading.

For a region still overshadowed by Riviera Maya in most travelers' minds, the top ranking is the kind of recognition that tends to reshape itineraries.