Few countries in Latin America have changed as much in so short a time as Ecuador. Ten years ago the country recorded around a thousand homicides a year; in 2025 it recorded more than nine thousand. If you are planning a move to Cuenca, to the coast or to Quito, you will want to know whether things are getting better in 2026. The official answer has been available since 20 October: from January to September 2026, 6,285 people died in intentional homicides, 8.1% fewer than in the same period of 2025. Behind that figure, though, lie two movements pulling in opposite directions, and for your choice of where to live the distribution matters more than the national average.
The figures come from Ecuador's Ministry of the Interior. Its Dirección de Estadística y Economía de la Seguridad publishes the Homicidios intencionales dataset on the government's open-data portal, not as a table of totals but as a list of every individual victim, with date, province, canton, weapon and presumed motive. The file for January to September 2026 carries a publication date of 20 October 2026, the series for 2014 to 2025 a date of 19 October 2026. Every figure that follows is counted from these two files, and comparisons with 2025 always cover the same nine months.
The key figures up to September 2026
The count covers victims of intentional killings: murder (asesinato), homicide (homicidio), femicide and contract killing (sicariato). Almost all cases in 2026, 5,981 of them, are classed by the ministry as asesinato; on top of that come 230 cases of homicide, 50 femicides and 24 killings classed as contract killings. From January to September 2026 the total was 6,285 people. In the same period of 2025 it was 6,838. That is 553 fewer deaths.
For context, the first nine months of previous years, also from the official series:
So the decline is real, but 2026 is still the second-highest figure since the series began in 2014. Over full years, the series shows 4,886 victims for 2022, then 8,247 for 2023, 7,065 for 2024 and, for 2025, 9,284, the highest figure on record. If you read that Ecuador has turned the corner, bear in mind that the country has come down from a record year to a level that is still above 2024.
Month by month
It gets interesting when you look at the months one by one:
From January to May every month was below the previous year, by 14% taken together. From June to August the picture reversed: with 2,199 victims, those three months were around 11% above the previous year. The whole of the year's decline therefore comes from the first half.
September stands out with a strikingly low 577 victims. Caution is needed here. The ministry itself states in the metadata that the data are subject to "variaciones", that is, changes caused by ongoing recording and possible updates to the registers. A month that ended only a few weeks before publication may still grow in later versions. The months up to August are the sounder basis.
Where the violence happens
Violence in Ecuador is extremely unevenly distributed, and the 2026 figures confirm it. 84% of all victims died in five coastal provinces: Guayas (2,555), Manabí (930), El Oro (886), Los Ríos (683) and Esmeraldas (249).
The decline comes almost entirely from two provinces. In Guayas the number fell by 616 victims, or 19%, and in Los Ríos by 242, or 26%. Within Guayas province, Guayaquil with 1,618 victims (2025: 2,000) and Durán with 240 (438) were well below the previous year, Durán by as much as 45%.
The counter-movement is in the south of the coast. El Oro, on the border with Peru, recorded 886 victims after 545 a year earlier, an increase of 341 or 63%. The provincial capital Machala rose from 266 to 406, Huaquillas on the border from 66 to 111, Pasaje from 52 to 100. Santa Elena (198 after 165), Sucumbíos in the Amazon region on the border with Colombia (121 after 87) and Azuay (33 after 20) also reported more victims. So the violence has not disappeared; in part it has shifted. Manabí (930 after 945) and Esmeraldas (249 after 263) were almost unchanged, and Pichincha province, home to the capital Quito, fell slightly from 226 to 203.
The places where newcomers often live
When you decide where to settle, cantons tell you more than provinces. Some values for January to September 2026, with 2025 in brackets:
Andean highlands: Cuenca 20 (8), Loja 14 (27), Quito 175 (192), Ibarra 17 (22), Cotacachi 0 (5), Otavalo 5 (3), Ambato 31 (28), Baños de Agua Santa 5 (0).
Pacific coast: Manta 251 (300), Montecristi 123 (74), Puerto López 9 (9), Salinas 48 (32), La Libertad 68 (61), Santa Elena canton 82 (72), Playas 53 (62).
Greater Guayaquil: Samborondón 56 (32), Daule 90 (85).
Galápagos: none of the three cantons of the island province recorded a single homicide in 2025 or in 2026 up to September.
These numbers are small, and a single case changes a canton's picture at once. That the figure in Cuenca has more than doubled sounds dramatic, but it means twelve more victims in a large city. Even so, a clear pattern emerges. The highlands remain calmer than the coast by orders of magnitude: the whole canton of Cuenca recorded 20 victims in nine months, while the canton of Guayaquil reached that number in under four days on average. On the coast, by contrast, violence is present even in popular places such as Manta, Montecristi or Salinas, in some cases with a rising trend.
Who the victims are and how they die
The victim-level data allow a look behind the total.
87.6% of victims were killed with firearms, 7.6% with knives or other bladed weapons. That is a high share and typical of violence between armed groups. 76% of killings took place in urban areas.
As the presumed motive, the ministry assigns 96.4% of cases to "delincuencia común", that is, general crime. In the dataset this category also includes, for example, cases where small-scale drug dealing is recorded as the observed motive. Domestic violence accounts for just under 1% according to the dataset, and violence within neighbourhoods and communities for 2.4%.
90.6% of victims were men. 5,682 victims, or 90.4%, held Ecuadorean nationality. Among the rest, Venezuelans (122) and Colombians (71) are the largest groups; for 338 victims the nationality is undetermined or not recorded. The dataset does not list European or North American nationalities separately: they fall under the catch-all category "otros", with 62 cases.
For your own assessment this means that the risk is concentrated in a particular milieu, in particular neighbourhoods and in particular regions. If you do not live there and do not move in that world, your risk profile differs from the national statistics. It is not zero, though, because shootings in public places, extortion and robberies also hit bystanders.
What the foreign ministries advise
The statistics are one thing; how governments abroad assess the country is another. The UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), in travel advice for Ecuador last updated on 2 October 2026 and still current on 1 November 2026, advises against all but essential travel to the coastal provinces of Esmeraldas, Manabí, Santa Elena, Guayas, El Oro and Los Ríos and to Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas, with an exception for airside transit at Guayaquil airport. It advises the same for areas within 20 km of the border with Colombia, except for a few places in Carchi province such as the town of Tulcán, the Rumichaca border crossing and the Pan-American Highway. It points out that your travel insurance could be invalidated if you travel against its advice.
On crime, the FCDO says armed robbery is a risk throughout Ecuador, and that most violent crime is gang-related, but tourists can be affected. It describes the murder rate in Guayaquil as very high, mainly gang-related, and urges particular caution in the city centre, the southern parts of the city and the port areas. It also reports that express kidnappings are common throughout the country, many involving taxis hailed in the street. It notes a 60-day state of emergency declared on 15 September 2026 for security reasons in eight provinces, including Guayas, Manabí, El Oro, Los Ríos, Esmeraldas and Pichincha, with a greater police and military presence.
Your own government publishes its own advice, for example the US State Department, Canada or Australia's Smartraveller. Read yours before you move, because each ministry words things differently and updates at a different time.
What stands out is how closely the advice matches the figures: the provinces under the strictest warnings are exactly the ones where the victims are concentrated. El Oro, where the numbers are rising fastest in 2026, is on the FCDO's list, and so are Manabí and Santa Elena, the provinces of Manta and Salinas.
What the figures mean for your daily life
Ecuador remains a country with a very high homicide rate, and the decline in 2026 changes little about that. What matters for your daily life is where you live.
If you want to live in the highlands: Cuenca, Loja, Ibarra, Cotacachi and the smaller towns of the Sierra have low case numbers, even though Cuenca recorded more victims in 2026 than in 2025. Quito, as the capital, sits in between with 175 victims, with big differences between neighbourhoods. How Ecuador's safety picture looks beyond crime, from volcanoes to earthquakes, is covered in our overview of safety in Ecuador.
If you want to live on the coast: here you need to look more closely. Manta, Montecristi and the Santa Elena peninsula are popular with foreigners, but they lie in provinces with high figures and the strictest warnings. Places such as Puerto López show low values, but the situation can change within months, as El Oro shows in 2026. What a move costs and which visas exist is explained in our article on moving to Ecuador, and the key facts on tax and residence are on the Ecuador country page.
If you are comparing countries: the 6,285 victims cover nine months, so a comparison with other countries' annual figures only makes sense on that basis. How Ecuador compares with its northern neighbour is shown in the article Ecuador or Colombia, and an official analysis from Central America in our look at the homicide figures in Panama.
When the next figures are due
According to the ministry, the dataset is updated monthly. The file up to September appeared on 20 October. Each new version can also slightly change months already published, so when you compare, it pays to use the same version for both years. If you want to run the numbers yourself, the dataset page offers the victim-level data since 2014 for download, broken down to the level of police sub-districts.