The Maré Food Festival, a month-long celebration of food across 16 restaurants in one of Rio de Janeiro’s largest favelas, has won Best Culinary Festival for Latin America at the 2026 World Culinary Awards.
Maré, home to about 140,000 people and sited between two highways and Guanabara Bay, hosted restaurants and street vendors through October for the festival, organised by Redes de Maré, a community development NGO run by Mariana Aleixo, who was born and raised in the favela. “Food is something that connects people and brings them together,” Aleixo said, adding that the festival aims to “challenge the narrative around the favela.”
Among the participating vendors, Maria de Fatima Alves de Sousa, owner of a hamburger restaurant known for its “Burger Supreme,” said everything she has achieved in life happened in Maré. At Braseiro, Augusto Cesar Trindade da Silva and Tiago da Conceicão Cordeiro created a “Nordestino” burger for the festival. Luiz Ramos, a Rio resident who joined a weekend van tour of the favela’s restaurants, called it a great experience.
Cooking up a different story
The festival’s organisers have been explicit that the award is as much about perception as about food. Shirlei Rosendo, a Maré native, said the dishes served by vendors like Favelas RJ bring back memories of growing up there. Bia Giacomo, also of Redes de Maré, said organisers hope the festival’s recognition encourages more residents to take part in future editions, widening a showcase that so far has drawn outside visitors in via guided van tours rather than relying on foot traffic alone.
Favelas across Rio have long been stereotyped in media coverage focused on crime and poverty; Redes de Maré has run cultural and economic programming in the neighbourhood for years aimed at shifting that framing, with the food festival its most recent high-profile vehicle.
A measurable boost
Verônica de Moraes Pires, owner of Favelas RJ, said the festival has more than doubled her sales this month, giving the award a concrete economic dimension alongside its reputational one. Organisers have not released aggregate figures for how much the festival as a whole generated for Maré’s restaurant economy.
The World Culinary Awards, now in its sixth year, recognises culinary achievements globally across categories spanning restaurants, chefs and, as in Maré’s case, festivals.
