The Chicago Bulls have two three-peats and now their home city has notched a ten-peat.
On Tuesday, Conde Nast Traveler named Chicago the best big city in the U.S. for the 10th year in a row. Chicago has remained atop the magazine’s annual readers survey since 2017, an unprecedented run anointing the second city as the domestic destination of choice among the traveling cognoscenti.
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“These are people that know travel. They’ve been all around the world,” said Kristen Reynolds, Choose Chicago’s president and CEO. “That’s why it means so much to us when…people in the know still rank Chicago at the top.”
Conde Nast Traveler received nearly 800,000 votes for this year’s Readers’ Choice Awards, which covers everything from hotels and cruise lines to spas and airports. The best cities award has separate categories for small and big destinations, and Chicago has had a lock on the latter for a decade.
The annual survey praised the city’s “impressive architecture, first-rate museums, brilliant chefs, and massive brewing scene.”
Ranking behind Chicago on the 2026 best big cities list were San Francisco, Boston, New York and its neighbor to the north, Milwaukee, which was hailed as a “hotbed of locavore cuisine.”
Not surprisingly, Chicago civic leaders are taking a victory lap on the news, with plans to celebrate the 10th consecutive win by proclaiming Saturday, Oct. 10 “Best Big City Day.”
The festivities will include a set Saturday by house music pioneer DJ Lori Branch from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. aboard a docked boat on the Chicago River near City Winery. Goose Island will also roll out a limited edition “Perfect 10” beer at its local brewpubs in honor of the city’s award.
Adding some ice to the drinks, the Blackhawks will feature a “Best Big City” activation during their home game Saturday against the Carolina Hurricanes at the United Center.
“For 10 consecutive years, travelers have recognized what Chicagoans already know: there is no place quite like our city,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said in a news release. “This remarkable milestone is a testament to everything Chicago has to offer and one our entire city can celebrate with pride.”
Despite a sharp decline in international travel to the U.S., Chicago saw an increase in tourism last year, with 56.8 million visitors spending a record $21.5 billion in the Windy City, according to data from Choose Chicago, the city’s tourism arm.
The city welcomed nearly 1.5 million more visitors than in 2024 as it continues to climb back toward pre-pandemic levels, with domestic tourism up across the board.
While the Chicago Street Race packed up for San Diego this year and will not return next summer, preliminary tourism numbers are looking strong for 2026, bolstered by other tentpole events and the opening of new attractions such as the Obama Presidential Center, Reynolds said.
Winning the Conde Nast Traveler award for the 10th year in a row will help Chicago build on that momentum in attracting visitors, Reynolds said.
It may also help counteract some of the less-inviting messages about the city floating around the ether, including a social media campaign in September 2025 by President Donald Trump depicting Chicago as a war zone.
Trump’s “Chipocalypse Now” post, which showed helicopters flying past the city’s skyline ablaze, was a prelude to Operation Midway Blitz, a 64-day immigration enforcement surge that disrupted the Chicago area last fall.
Neither presented a “wish you were here” postcard from the city. But the annual Conde Nast Traveler survey tells a different story, one Choose Chicago plans to enthusiastically leverage in its marketing efforts, starting with Saturday’s celebration.
“We don’t always have the easiest narrative with Chicago. There’s a lot of forces that are sometimes out of our control that work against us with our image and our profile,” Reynolds said. “This is proof that Chicago belongs at the top, and that’s why I think this year more than ever we’re really excited about it.”
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