Costa Rica Michelin Keys 2026: 8 Gained, 0 Lost
Costa Rica gained 8 Michelin Keys in the 2026 selection and lost 0. Every hotel that lost a Key was verified against its own MICHELIN Guide page.
Costa Rica came through the 2026 MICHELIN Key selection without a single removal. 8 hotels gained a Key or moved up a tier, and none lost ground.
One hotel reached the top tier: Nekajui, a Ritz-Carlton Reserve.
Chart: hotels in Costa Rica whose MICHELIN Key standing changed between the 2025 and 2026 selections. Source: MICHELIN Guide 2026 Key selection, released 18 September 2026. Every loss shown was re-checked on that hotel's own MICHELIN Guide page.
The scoreboard
| Movement | Hotels |
|---|---|
| New Keys awarded | 6 |
| Upgraded a tier | 2 |
| Dropped a tier | 0 |
| Key removed | 0 |
| Key hotels, 2025 → 2026 | 17 → 23 (+6) |
What Costa Rica gained
| Hotel | Where | 2025 | 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nayara Gardens | La Fortuna de San Carlos | no Key | Two Keys | New Key |
| Nayara Tented Camp | La Fortuna de San Carlos | no Key | Two Keys | New Key |
| Hacienda AltaGracia, Auberge Collection | Santa Teresa | no Key | One Key | New Key |
| Hotel Fermata | Santa Teresa | no Key | One Key | New Key |
| The Retreat Costa Rica - Wellness Resort & Spa | Atenas | no Key | One Key | New Key |
| Tierra Magnifica Boutique Hotel | Nosara | no Key | One Key | New Key |
| Nekajui, a Ritz-Carlton Reserve | Guanacaste | Two Keys | Three Keys | Upgraded |
| Rancho Pacifico | Uvita de Osa | One Key | Two Keys | Upgraded |
What Costa Rica lost
No hotel in this country lost a Key or dropped a tier in the 2026 selection.
Notable results
The single most significant result is Nekajui, a Ritz-Carlton Reserve in Guanacaste, which now holds Three Keys — a tier MICHELIN added only twelve hotels to, net, across the entire world this year. Promotions are the scarcer currency — worldwide only 86 already-listed hotels moved up a tier — and Nekajui, a Ritz-Carlton Reserve and Rancho Pacifico managed it in Costa Rica. No hotel in Costa Rica lost a Key or dropped a tier. Worldwide, 114 hotels did, so a clean sheet is not the default outcome it might appear to be.
What the gains looked like
The eight hotels that gained ground break down as 1 at Three Keys, 3 at Two Keys, 4 at One Key. Two entered the list directly at Two Keys or better rather than climbing to it, led by Nayara Gardens. The gains clustered in La Fortuna de San Carlos (2) and Santa Teresa (2).
The shape of the country's Key list
| Tier | Hotels 2026 |
|---|---|
| Three Keys | 2 |
| Two Keys | 8 |
| One Key | 13 |
| All Key hotels | 23 |
That places Costa Rica 24th of the 123 countries and territories holding at least one Key hotel. Adjusted for population it works out at 4.51 Key hotels per million residents, against a Swiss rate of 10.00, an Italian rate of 3.80 and an American rate of 1.06. Three-Key hotels make up 8.7 percent of its list, against 5.47 percent worldwide.
Where the country's Key hotels are
| City or area | Key hotels 2026 |
|---|---|
| Guanacaste | 5 |
| Nosara | 4 |
| La Fortuna de San Carlos | 3 |
| Uvita de Osa | 2 |
| Bijagua | 2 |
| Santa Teresa | 2 |
How this compares with the rest of the world
Worldwide, MICHELIN's second Key selection named 2,832 hotels on 18 September 2026 against 2,457
a year earlier — growth of 15.3 percent. The tiers did not move together: One-Key hotels rose 16.0
percent and Two-Key hotels 14.9 percent, while Three-Key hotels rose only 8.4 percent, from 143 to
155, cutting the top tier's share of the list from 5.82 percent to 5.47 percent.
Across the full selection, 482 hotels gained a Key they did not hold in 2025 and 86 moved up a
tier. In the same announcement 88 lost their Key and 26 dropped a tier. The additions were
publicised; the 114 downward moves were not.
| Worldwide | Costa Rica | |
|---|---|---|
| Hotels that gained or improved a Key | 568 | 8 |
| Hotels that lost a Key or dropped a tier | 114 | 0 |
| Key hotels, 2025 | 2,457 | 17 |
| Key hotels, 2026 | 2,832 | 23 |
Costa Rica holds about 0.8 percent of the world's Key hotels.
How these numbers were checked
The 2026 and 2025 selections were read hotel by hotel from the MICHELIN Guide's own country
listings, where every property carries an explicit One-, Two- or Three-Key marking. Country totals
reconcile to the figures the Guide published on 18 September 2026.
Every downward move in the full worldwide selection — all 114 of them — was then checked a second
time against that hotel's own page on the Guide. That second pass is not optional: a hotel missing
from a country listing has not necessarily lost anything, because several properties that plainly
still hold Keys never appear in those listings at all. Only a hotel the Guide still lists, now
without a Key, has actually lost one.
Ten hotels turned out to be a third case: their Guide page has been taken down altogether. Those
have left the selection rather than been demoted, and they are marked as such in the table above
rather than counted as downgrades.
What a MICHELIN Key is
MICHELIN introduced the Key in 2024 as the hotel counterpart to its restaurant Star. Inspectors
assess architecture, interior design, service, character, consistency and value across a selection
of more than 9,000 hotels in over 100 countries, and award One, Two or Three Keys — a very special
stay, an exceptional one, an extraordinary one. Nightly rate is not a criterion, which is why a
four-room guesthouse and a 500-room resort can hold the same distinction.
The criteria are set out in the Guide's explainer on the Key; the full country-by-country
2026 list is published here.
Author
2026/09/19
