Many people see Uruguay as the calmest country in South America, and for most newcomers that picture holds true in everyday life. Even so, "Uruguay crime" is one of the most common searches people run when they look at the country from abroad. Since July there have been fresh official figures: the Ministry of the Interior has published its half-year crime report for January to June 2026. It shows a mixed picture. Murders went up, almost everything else went down.
The figures come from the Boletín Semestral de Estadísticas Criminales, which the ministry's new statistics unit (Área de Estadística y Criminología Aplicada, AECA for short) released on 20 July 2026. The full version with all tables is available as a PDF from the ministry. Unless stated otherwise, all Uruguay figures here are based on these two sources.
The key figures for the first half of the year
The essentials first, each time comparing the first half of 2026 with the first half of 2025:
So the direction is clearly split. The offences most likely to affect foreigners in daily life, theft, robbery and car theft, are falling. The most serious form of violence is rising.
How to read the 195 murders
195 murders in six months is, for Uruguay, the highest figure for a first half-year since 2018, when there were 224. In between, first halves ranged from 136 (2021) to 191 (2023). The ministry itself frames the increase cautiously: murders, it says, are still moving within the band of relative stability seen since 2022. Both are true at the same time. The half-year is not a dramatic outlier, but it is not an all-clear either.
The pattern within the half-year stands out. According to the ministry, the increase was concentrated in April, May and June.
For context across the full year: for 2025 the report shows 375 murders and a rate of 10.8 per 100,000 inhabitants. That figure is slightly higher than earlier ones, and there is a methodological reason for it: a new population estimate.
Where the violence happens
For a newcomer, the national statistic matters less than the question of where the crimes take place. And here the report is very clear.
Montevideo and Canelones together account for 144 of the 188 murders that the report breaks down by department (excluding killings in prisons), well over three quarters. Montevideo alone accounts for 114 (previous year 103), the neighbouring department of Canelones for 30 (previous year 17). The national increase is therefore almost entirely down to these two departments.
Other parts of the country show a very different picture. In Rivera and Durazno the numbers fell significantly, and several departments recorded between zero and three cases in the half-year. Colonia, where many newcomers from Europe live, recorded 3 murders. Maldonado, home to Punta del Este, came to 12 (previous year 8). With case numbers this small, the ministry itself warns against reading too much into percentage changes: one or two extra cases quickly produce a large percentage increase.
Montevideo by police district
The report even breaks Montevideo down by its 25 police districts (seccionales). The result is a strong concentration: districts 16, 17, 18 and 24 together account for 64 of the capital's 114 murders, more than half. Several other districts recorded no cases or a single case in the entire half-year.
The report does not say which streets belong to which district, and assigning them from memory would not be reliable. The UK Foreign Office (FCDO) does not name neighbourhoods either. It warns of street crime in Montevideo, from bag-snatching and pickpocketing to mugging and robbery that is sometimes armed, advises against walking downtown or in the port area alone, especially at night and at weekends, and says that criminals regularly break into cars left on the street. Crime rates elsewhere in Uruguay, it adds, are generally lower.
Before you move, read the travel advice of your own government, for example the UK Foreign Office or the US State Department: each foreign ministry words things differently, and each version has its own date.
What the figures mean for your daily life
For most newcomers the realistic risk is not murder but theft and robbery. And it is exactly these offences that fell in the first half of the year. Thefts were 7.5% below the previous year, robberies around 4%, vehicle thefts 8.3%. The number of theft reports is therefore the lowest for a first half-year in the report's comparison series, which sets 2015, 2020, 2024, 2025 and 2026 side by side.
Murder in Uruguay, by contrast, is closely tied to the drug trade and geographically tightly contained. The concentration in a few districts shows that it is not spread evenly across the country or the city. If you live in a quiet neighbourhood, enjoy the nightlife with good judgement and have no connections to that world, you live in a different statistical reality from the districts that push the average up.
One point still deserves attention: the number of people wounded by gunfire also rose, to 640 from 596 in the same half of the previous year, an increase of 7.4%. Together with the murders, this is the part of the statistics that does not touch the calm of daily life but makes the overall picture more serious than the country's reputation suggests.
Fraud keeps growing
The only property crime category that rose is fraud and online fraud. With 14,035 reports in the half-year, it is now the third-largest group in the report, after theft and domestic violence. Compared with 2015, when 930 cases were reported in the first half, the number has multiplied. For newcomers who are opening new bank accounts, making online transfers in pesos for the first time and do not yet know local habits, this is the area where caution pays off most. Never give out login details over the phone, even if the caller claims to be your bank, and never confirm a transfer you did not initiate yourself.
A note on method: why older rates shift
From this edition onwards, the ministry calculates its rates using the new population estimates of the national statistics institute INE, based on the 2023 census. Until now the 2013 revision was used. The new series estimates the population slightly higher for the years up to about 2017 and slightly lower for the years after.
The result: the murder rate for 2025 rises on paper from 10.4 to 10.8 per 100,000 inhabitants, without a single additional case. Keep that in mind when you read older articles, rankings or comparisons. Differences of a few tenths can simply come from the method, not from reality. That is why the report shows both series side by side in its annual tables.
There is a second point the ministry itself stresses: the statistics reflect what becomes known to the police, through reports or its own investigations. For theft and fraud, the actual number is higher than the reported one in every country. For comparisons over time the series is still the best instrument available, because it is counted by the same rules.
How Uruguay compares
With a murder rate of 10.8 for 2025, Uruguay is well above what readers from Western Europe are used to, and also above Chile, for which the Chilean government reports a rate of 5.4 for 2025 in its official annual report. That Uruguay still ranks high in comparisons such as our ranking of the safest countries in South America has reasons beyond the murder rate: such comparisons also weigh political stability, institutions and how reliably the state works in everyday life. For your daily life, these factors often matter more than any single indicator.
What this feels like in practice, with neighbourhoods, the attack on the country's top prosecutor and the role of drug trafficking, is covered in detail in our reality check on safety in Uruguay. The new half-year figures do not change its core message, they sharpen it: the violence is real, it is concentrated, and it rarely affects people outside that world.
What you can do now
If you already live in Uruguay: read your foreign ministry's advice for your neighbourhood and adjust habits where they match the patterns described. The FCDO's warning about cars applies in every neighbourhood: thieves smash windows and grab valuables at traffic lights and junctions, so keep bags out of sight even in Pocitos or Carrasco. When paying and transferring money, rely on routines that stop fraud attempts in their tracks.
If you are planning the move: make the choice of where to live a security decision. The figures show that Montevideo and Canelones carry most of the serious violence, while departments such as Colonia, Flores or Lavalleja recorded few or no cases in the half-year. Where many European newcomers settle, from Nueva Helvecia to the coastal towns, is covered in our article on Nueva Helvecia and Uruguay's European settlers. The costs, requirements and catches of the move are summarised in the Uruguay guide, and the route to residence in the article on residence permits in Uruguay.
If you are comparing figures: check the date and the method. A rate of 10.4 and one of 10.8 for the same year do not contradict each other, they are based on different population estimates. And half-year figures cannot simply be doubled: in some years the second half was calmer in Uruguay than the first, in others more turbulent.
When the next figures are due
The ministry now publishes its crime statistics on a fixed schedule, with half-year reports like this one and annual reports. The data for the first half was closed on 7 July 2026 for murders and on 6 July 2026 for all other offences. According to the report, the most recent figures may still be adjusted slightly in later editions, for instance when investigations change how a crime is classified. As a rule, the trends do not change as a result.
For the question of whether Uruguay is the right country for you, the security situation remains one building block among several. The new figures give you a solid basis for that decision: less everyday crime than the year before, more lethal violence within a narrowly defined world, and statistics transparent enough to read for yourself.