destination · Mexico City

Mexico City in 2026: incredible food and culture, thin air, and a gentrification backlash you'll feel

Mexico City earns its reputation. The food scene runs from five-peso street tacos to multiple World's 50 Best restaurants, the museum density rivals Paris, and neighborhoods like Roma Norte and Condesa are genuinely beautiful, tree-lined and walkable in a way few Latin American capitals manage. It is also enormous, chaotic, and sitting at 2,240 meters above sea level, which means roughly 25 percent less oxygen than at sea level. Most visitors need 24 to 72 hours to adjust, and mild headaches, breathlessness on stairs, or fatigue on day one are normal, not a medical emergency. Most travelers land at AICM (Mexico City International Airport), a short metro or taxi ride from the center. Some budget carriers now fly into AIFA (Felipe Ángeles), a newer airport about 45 kilometers and roughly 45 minutes north of downtown on a former air force base, which is cheaper to fly into but adds real transit time and cost. For entry, the FMM tourist permit is free if you're arriving by air on a trip under seven days, or free by land for stays of a week or less; immigration officers can grant up to 180 days at their discretion, and a paper FMM for longer or replacement purposes runs about 983 pesos, roughly 54 dollars. Getting around the city is one of the genuine wins. The Metro is a flat 5 pesos per ride, a price that has not moved since 2013 and is heavily subsidized (the real cost per ride is closer to 13 pesos). A rechargeable Metro card costs 15 pesos, or 20 pesos total if you buy it with your first ride included. It is fast and cheap but also crowded and not a place for visible valuables. For the airport and late nights, Uber is the better call: it typically runs 50 to 70 percent cheaper than the official taxi kiosks inside the terminal, and it sidesteps the touts who approach arriving passengers offering unofficial rides, a well-documented scam vector at AICM. If you do take a taxi, use the staffed kiosk inside the terminal, not someone who walks up to you. The real friction points go beyond altitude. Air quality is a genuine issue, particularly in the dry season from November through May, when thermal inversions trap pollution in the valley the city sits in. Tap water is not safe to drink, full stop, about 70 percent of Mexico City residents avoid it too, and that includes ice made from tap water at less careful establishments, so stick to bottled or purified water even for brushing teeth if you're being cautious. The city also sits on an old lakebed that amplifies earthquake shaking by a factor of 5 to 50 compared to solid ground; the September 19, 2017 magnitude 7.1 quake killed 326 people, 187 of them in the city, and a magnitude 7.7 quake in September 2022 also caused damage and deaths. Building codes have been tightened repeatedly since 1985, but this is a seismically live city, not a hypothetical risk. The newest friction is social, not physical. The remote-work influx since the pandemic has driven serious displacement: rents in Condesa rose about 17 percent between April 2023 and April 2025, one-bedroom rents in the same window rose around 30 percent, and the surrounding Miguel Hidalgo borough saw rents jump nearly 98 percent. Airbnb listings in the Roma-Condesa-Hipódromo core rose from about 2,900 in 2019 to over 5,000 by 2023. That tension boiled into visible anti-gentrification protests in July 2025, and the mayor announced a 14-point plan in response, including capping rent increases at inflation. None of this makes the city unsafe for visitors, the US State Department keeps Mexico City at a Level 2, exercise-increased-caution rating, similar to much of Western Europe, but tourists staying in Roma or Condesa are, whether they like it or not, part of the story locals are angry about.

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