Costa Rica has two years of very high homicide numbers behind it, and many readers ask whether the country still fits their plans. For 2026 there are now solid official figures running into September. They show a clear fall compared with last year, but also how unevenly the violence is spread across the country and how closely it remains tied to one particular milieu.
The figures come from the Organismo de Investigación Judicial (OIJ), the criminal investigation police of Costa Rica's judiciary. They are analysed and published by the Observatorio de la Violencia, the monitoring office of the Ministry of Justice and Peace. The latest release is the infographic Ocurrencia de delitos enero-setiembre 2026, put online in early October. Unless stated otherwise, every 2026 figure in this article comes from it.
The headline figures for January to September 2026
From January to September 2026 the statistics record 551 victims of intentional homicide (homicidio doloso). By month, that breaks down as follows:
August, with 76 cases, was the worst month of the year. The low September figure should be read with caution, because the most recent month always rises in later releases.
Of the 551 victims, 466 were men and 51 women; for 34 the sex was not recorded. Homicide in Costa Rica overwhelmingly affects men, as it did in previous years.
The comparison with 2025
For the whole of 2025 the Observatorio's annual analysis reports 873 intentional homicides, a fall of 0.5% on 2024. Of these, 443 fell in the first half of the year and 430 in the second.
The fairest comparison is therefore the first half. On the current data, 2026 reached 362 cases from January to June. Against 443 in the first half of 2025, that is 81 fewer killings, a drop of just over 18%. That is a noticeable fall, but not a collapse: a half-year with 362 dead is still a high figure for a country with Costa Rica's reputation, and August showed that individual months can spike again at any time.
How the OIJ counts, and why the figures shift
Anyone who follows the figures over several months soon notices that the most recent month is later revised upwards. You can read this straight off the successive releases. In the January to June infographic, June still stood at 43 cases. In the January to July release it was 55, and in the September release 57. July rose from 63 in the July release to 65, and May went from 63 in the June release to 64 in July and then 65.
Victims are counted by the month in which the crime took place (mes de ocurrencia), drawn from the OIJ's administrative records. Each new release is therefore a snapshot, and the earlier releases show that the most recently recorded month keeps picking up cases afterwards. The September figure of 48 should be read as provisional.
There is a second point. Figures with a different cut-off date or from a different analysis need not match these values. For comparisons across years, the safest approach is always to compare the same source at the same cut-off date, as with the 2026 against 2025 half-year comparison.
What the OIJ means by intentional homicide is set out in the analysis of the first four months of 2026: injuries inflicted on purpose that lead to the death of another person. Only intentional acts are counted.
The motives: what lies behind the killings
The most telling figure for anyone planning a move is not the total but the motive. The OIJ assigns each case a móvil. For January to September 2026 the picture is:
Two thirds of all killings thus fall into the category of score-settling and revenge. This is violence between criminal groups and within them. In the first four months, according to the Observatorio, the share was already 61%. For 2025 the annual analysis notes that ajuste de cuentas was the most common motive, and that 82% of the victims who were hit purely by chance (víctimas colaterales) also came from such attacks. In 2025 there were 85 of these bystanders.
This is where you have to read the statistics honestly. The great majority of the dead are linked to conflicts within the criminal milieu, and people outside that milieu are statistically affected far less often. But the risk is not zero: anyone near a shooting can become a victim without having anything to do with it.
The origin of the victims is also worth a look. In the first four months of 2026, according to the Observatorio, 83% were Costa Ricans and 11% people of another nationality. The statistics do not say how many of them were tourists or newcomers from abroad.
Where the violence happens
For choosing where to live, the regional distribution is what matters. The provincial breakdown for 2026 so far covers the first four months, January to April, with 228 cases. Of these,
Limón on the Caribbean coast thus accounts for almost a quarter of all killings. Cartago also stands out: the province east of the capital, at 12%, is ahead of Alajuela. In the atlas for the first half of the year, Cartago's urban districts Oriental (4.33) and Occidental (2.92) also reach noticeable rates. In 2025, according to the annual analysis, 595 of the 873 cases, or 68%, were concentrated in San José, Puntarenas and Limón.
The districts: where newcomers often live
The atlas for the first half of 2026 goes into even more detail. Its statistical annex gives a rate per 10,000 inhabitants for every district, calculated from the OIJ data and the 2026 population projections of the national statistics institute INEC. The values cover six months. A few examples from areas popular with newcomers:
Central Valley, west of San José: the district of Escazú came to 0.77, San Rafael de Escazú to 0.34, San Antonio de Escazú to 0.00. In the canton of Santa Ana the central district stood at 1.63, Pozos at 0.48, and Piedades, Brasil, Salitral and Uruca at 0.00. All eight districts of the canton of Atenas recorded zero for the half-year, as did the district of Grecia.
Guanacaste coast: Tamarindo and Nosara reported 0.00, Sámara 1.93, Tempate 1.45, Cabo Velas 4.19.
Central and southern Pacific: Jacó stood at 2.02, Quepos at 2.22. The districts of Savegre (canton of Quepos) and Bahía Ballena (canton of Osa) on the southern Pacific coast had 0.00.
Caribbean: the district of Cahuita in the canton of Talamanca came to 1.32, the central district of Limón to 5.31.
For comparison, the highest values: Desmonte in the canton of San Mateo reached 23.49, the downtown district of Carmen in San José 10.99, Cuajiniquil in the canton of Santa Cruz 10.07 and Bahía Drake in the canton of Osa 8.76. The central district of Limón, at 5.31, was also in the top group.
Keep two things in mind with these figures. First, case numbers in small districts are tiny. A single case can lift a rate from zero to a peak value, and one quiet half-year says little about the next. The 2025 annual analysis shows this: back then the Observatorio counted Bahía Ballena, Cabo Velas, Nosara, Sámara, Tamarindo, Tempate and Quepos among the districts with a high or very high rate. In the first half of 2026, Tamarindo, Nosara and Bahía Ballena stood at zero. Both are true, and both show how strongly coastal towns with few residents fluctuate.
Second, the rates refer to the projected resident population, not to tourists and seasonal visitors. In beach towns with many visitors, a rate per resident therefore says only so much about the risk per person actually present. The absolute numbers, by contrast, say more about the major hotspots: in 2025 the central district of Limón, with 63 cases, had the most killings of all high-rate districts, followed by Chacarita in Puntarenas with 21 and Quepos with 19. Among the districts with a medium rate, Pavas (39) and Hatillo (34) in the canton of San José and San Felipe in the canton of Alajuelita (23) led the list.
What foreign ministries advise
The statistics are one thing; how governments abroad assess the country is another. The UK Foreign Office (FCDO), in advice last updated on 19 May 2026, does not advise against travel to any part of Costa Rica. It calls muggings and theft significant problems, particularly on the Atlantic coast, and says that gang-related violence, including shootings, has become more frequent in urban areas, including some locations popular with visitors. A number of foreign nationals, including one British national, have gone missing in recent years, some of them in incidents related to criminal activity. The FCDO also reports that rapes and sexual assaults have increased, some of which appear to have targeted tourists.
The FCDO also advises against walking alone in poorly lit or remote areas at night, says that gangs occasionally carry out muggings and armed robberies, and asks you to watch wallets and valuables on the beach.
Your own government publishes its own advice, for example the UK's GOV.UK travel advice for Costa Rica or Canada's travel advice, and likewise the US State Department and Australia's Smartraveller. Read yours before you move, because each ministry words things differently and updates at a different time.
What the figures mean for your daily life
The data shows a clear pattern. Serious violence in Costa Rica is to a large extent violence between criminal groups, it is concentrated in a few port cities, parts of the capital and individual coastal towns, and so far in 2026 it has fallen significantly. The districts in the west of the Central Valley, where many newcomers live, were at zero or low values in the first half of the year.
For your daily life, the homicide statistics are therefore usually not the most important factor. Foreign ministries' advice centres mainly on theft, car break-ins and robbery, and that is where caution pays off most: no valuables in a parked car, no resistance during a robbery, no lonely beaches at night, cash machines in daylight. How the safety picture looks beyond crime, with earthquakes, the rainy season and ocean currents, is covered in our overview of safety in Costa Rica.
If you are planning the move: make the choice of district part of your safety decision, and do not look at a single half-year only. The Observatorio's atlas appears regularly, and you can look up the rates per district in its annex yourself. What life there costs is shown in the cost of living in Costa Rica, and the country's basic pros and cons in our article on moving to Costa Rica.
If you are coming as a retiree: many retirees deliberately look for quiet places in the Central Valley or on the coast. The figures support that choice for large parts of the Central Valley. For coastal towns it is worth looking at several years, because individual cases move the rates strongly there. More on retirement in the country is in retiring in Costa Rica.
If you are comparing countries: check whether you are looking at annual figures, half-year figures or rates, and which cut-off date they refer to. What such an official half-year report looks like in another country is shown in our analysis of crime figures from Uruguay.
When the next figures are due
The Observatorio publishes its analyses at short intervals: infographics covering several months, an analysis of the first four months, an atlas for the half-year and an annual analysis. The annual analysis for 2025 is dated February 2026, and the atlas for the full year 2025 followed in the spring. On that pattern, the complete figures for 2026 can be expected in the first months of next year.
Until then, the trend is encouraging: 2026 is so far noticeably below last year. Whether the year ends clearly below the 873 killings of 2025 will be decided in the final quarter. And the most recent month in each new release will still be revised upwards in the releases that follow.