Aruba shifts its focus to foodie tourism in 2026

And that isn’t just first-timers’ infatuation. According to their tourist board, 65% of first-time visitors to Aruba plan a return visit. And if you ask any Aruban, they’ll give a lot of that credit to their food.

From volume to value

For 2026, the Aruba Tourism Authority’s Corporate Plan aims to leverage its popularity while increasing its priceless attractions. Offering more than just a nice place in the sand, Aruba will intensify their efforts towards innovation, community inclusion, sustainability and their unique culinary offerings this year.

The main thrust of Aruba’s new foodie-driven tourism is the return of the Autentico festival in late fall. Aruba is a blend of more than 100 different nationalities, and this festival is when it showcases it most proudly. Entering its third year in 2026, the festival is when the island comes alive with dishes that tell the story of Aruba’s rich heritage and diverse cultural influences.

During the festival and the week leading up to it, many chefs from Aruba’s top restaurants are invited to host pop-up dinners and supper clubs, offering their spins on traditional dishes from around the world. The culinary festival itself offers guests and residents immersive experiences, bold flavors and meaningful moments, where every bite celebrates culture, connection and community.

And this focus matters. Despite an incredible climate, Aruba imports most of its food from the mainland and other islands. A festival like Authentico is this family-friendly Caribbean island’s way of drawing attention to local talent and ingredients, highlighting the work of young, hard-working chefs who take pride in the island and their culinary traditions.

Aruba is a small island, no larger than Washington. But it boasts a winery and a couple of distilleries, distilling rum and Caribbean favorites, such as mango, coconut, coffee and aloe liqueurs. The island also features a large-scale experiment with a robotic system designed to optimize food product quality. The system leverages optimization algorithms and computer vision to identify the ideal conditions for producing beverages with the best quality.

Inspired by the chapel on a hill

Everyone knows about Aruba’s beaches, but have you ever tried Aruban wine? Alto Vista Winery & Distillery produces some 5,000 bottles of rum and 10 to 11,000 bottles of wine every year. Just like the food and the citizenry, Alto Vista’s wine grapes are a fusion of multiple worlds. In order to grow the four grape varietals used in their wines in the desert sand, the vintners grafted them onto the roots of a California vine.

Along with the grape vines, the estate winery also grows its own sugarcane that it uses to produce Red Star Rum, named for the star on Aruba’s flag. While the weather would allow three harvest periods, the family-owned winery only does two to maintain quality. These produce two reds, two whites and occasionally a rosé, all with a distinctive Aruba terroir.

The family takes the name from the nearby Kapel di Alto Vista, or Alto Vista Chapel, built in 1750. It’s the first chapel to ever be constructed on the island. It was destroyed and then rebuilt during the Dutch colonization, and it holds great spiritual significance to the people of Aruba. You can see the chapel while walking the winery grounds, and according to the staff, it’s a symbol of local rebirth that guides all that they do.

The art of gastronomy

One of Aruba’s top restaurants is Infini, and even here, young talent is at the forefront of leading Aruba’s tourism. Head Chef Urvin Croes gives his staff a chance to develop dishes and present them to diners.

Take, for example, line cook Chef Brian Esguerra, who is 31 years old and originally from the Philippines. After over eight years of experience across Dubai’s luxury restaurants, Esguerra came to Aruba to learn from the best. “With such a small island, you have a rich history and you’re going to learn so much about the food,” Esguerra explains. He now thrives under the tutelage of Head Chef Croes.

Every four months, the eight-course meal menu rotates as diners proceed around a semicircle table overlooking the kitchen theater, where the staff performs a carefully choreographed dance de cuisine.

Croes is half Chinese and half Aruban, and explains the menu is a celebration of the settlements that came to Aruba. Starting with the flavors of the indigenous Taino population, then moving to the West African laborers who came to cultivate Aruban fields. Then, the main dishes are a tribute to the latest groups of Asian settlers: first, the Chinese, then those from India.

Desserts also represent the melting pot of Aruba’s cultures; every flavor from sweet to sour and bitter. Influences from the Caribbean, Colombia and even America are present in every bite. The result is as unique and layered as Aruba itself.

Other high-end restaurants in Aruba showcase this melting pot. Imagine the unique tastes of Peru combined with the spice of Aruba, and you’ll get a hint of the bucket list dinner you’ll find at the Lima Bistro restaurant. Chef Jaime Pesaque worked in several of the finest restaurants in Peru before coming to the island. Today, the à la carte or wine-pairing dinners at Lima are not to be missed.

Medicinal mushrooms

From wine to mushrooms, everywhere you look in Aruba, you’ll find young people leading the charge on Aruba’s culinary renaissance. Rachell Peterson, a tattoo artist on the island, developed an obsession with faeries and mushrooms at the age of 17. She started with a kit to cultivate oyster mushrooms, the easiest to grow. She didn’t know then it would become her life’s work.

“I started growing mushrooms at home as a hobby,” she explains. “I was working on a tattoo for Chef Urvin Croes and noticed the mushroom on his tattoo sleeve and we started talking about my hobby of growing them. He was very interested in sampling them, and once he did, he started buying from me regularly and even put them on his menu.”

That became FarmaCure Fungi in 2022. Today, they grow 38 different species of mushrooms, in rotation on wood logs. The mushroom farm produces up to 2,000 pounds a month, and the ones that aren’t sold are dehydrated and made into vitamins. One such variation, Lion’s Mane, is being studied as a potential treatment or preventative for Alzheimer’s disease.

FarmaCure Fungi does have some competition, sort of. White button mushrooms are also grown on the island, but they’re grown in mass production conditions and on manure, which cannot be mixed with the more unique mushrooms.

Baking with love

The local experimentation doesn’t stop at wine or mushrooms. Taking a bite from the bread basket at top restaurants like Infini or Lima Bistro, one wonders where the unique flavors came from. In Aruba, the answer is right around the corner.

In 2020, a lot of people tried their hand at baking bread. But one Aruban woman turned it into an art form and then a profitable business. Seeking a healthy alternative for her daughters, Zaida Everon quit her job as a high school biology teacher to leverage her knowledge of microbiology into the art of crafting sourdough bread.

She quickly finished the Bake for Health course at the Sourdough School and the Artisan Baker course at the Artisan Baking Center, and then set out on a mission to strip away the undeservedly negative reputation of bread. Today, she is “ Aruba’s only bread sommelier,” supplying handcrafted artisanal sourdough bread to 90% of the island’s restaurants, under the name T2PAN, a numeronym in honor of her beloved father, Tito.

The freshest fish

Aruba isn’t just fancy hotel restaurants. Some of the island’s top eateries are small family establishments, showcasing the freshest catch of the island. How fresh? Cleaned and cooked in front of you.

Zeerover, located near Savaneta Beach, is family owned and operated. The father used to buy fish from local fishermen and resell it. Then they started cooking the fish and selling small portions. As demand grew, the family kept adding tables, and eventually even the docks became informal dining areas. Today, Zeerover is a sprawling establishment where one has to arrive before 11 a.m., or risk waiting for hours for a table to open up.

Zeerover translates to pirate or sea robber in Dutch, and is an example of how the Netherlands has influenced the Afro-creole of the Papiamiento dialect. The restaurant operates from Tuesday through Sunday and is packed all day from lunchtime and onwards. On many days, you can order from four to nine types of fish, all caught in local waters.

Twist on island flavor

The small island, with its overlapping cultures and young population, is a forgiving place to take culinary risks. And for families who don’t want to go to a restaurant but want to bring island flavors into their vacation home, the best answer is a private chef like Xperience by Xavi.

Xavi Jaramillo is a young half-Colombian and half-Caribbean Aruban. He trained and worked in some of the island’s restaurants, but became disillusioned with a lot of the cooking on the island. So he struck out on his own, with private dinners and cooking classes. Today, booking Xavi for a special meal or your whole vacation is a way to not only taste some of Aruba’s culinary chameleon flavors, but if you’re so inclined, to learn how to make them yourself.

‘One Happy Island’

Whether you come specifically for Autentico or just want to enjoy good food in the sand and sun, the people of Aruba ask that you embrace a guest mindset with a slow pace. There is a Sustainability Fee for visitors traveling by air to the island. The fee supports several projects aimed at enhancing and improving ecologically friendly efforts. Respect the Fofoti trees, coral reefs, donkeys and sea turtles. Don’t stack rocks or take shells home, and driving on the beach is forbidden.

Despite the island’s size, there is a stretch of luxury hotels, timeshares, Airbnbs and even one boutique hotel named The Boardwalk. Aruba is very family-friendly, but also welcomes solo or couple travellers. There is no need to buy bottled water. Aruba’s tap water is of excellent quality. In fact, locals call it Paradise on Tap. The official local currency is the Aruban Florin; however, U.S. dollars are widely accepted. Be aware: taxis and some activities only take cash.

Outside the hurricane belt, visitors can expect reliably great weather year-round: sunny, 82 degrees with calming trade winds to keep cool. Don’t be fooled, though. The sun’s UV rays are intense, and the use of 50 SPF or greater, mineral-based sunscreens is strongly recommended to avoid burning.

Eating good in the neighborhood

Dates for the 2026 Autentico have yet to be announced. The 2025 event took place in October. Based on its success and the island’s future plans, there’s a good chance it will expand past the nine days of the inaugural event. Regardless of when you plan your visit to this island paradise, there’ll be plenty of culinary delights to enjoy.