Why this survey exists and why it matters to you If you have ever tried to explain to a friend or family member back home that you feel perfectly safe living in Mexico, you know the frustration. You describe your morning walk to the market, your evening out at a restaurant, your life, and they respond with a news clip about something violent that happened 800 miles away from where you live. That gap between perception and reality is precisely what the MND ESPI™ was built to measure.

With data from hundreds of foreign nationals living across Mexico, we can now replace anecdote with evidence. This is the first edition of what will become a quarterly benchmark. Every three months, we will ask the same questions of expats living across the country, building a trend line that documents how safety perceptions evolve over time.

This survey does not intend to gloss over the prevailing security issues that impact a large sector of the Mexican population, such as organized crime, gender-based violence and kidnapping. Who responded? By our cutoff time, 773 people living in 29 of Mexico’s 32 states had responded to Mexico News Daily’s inaugural Expat Safety Perceptions Index (ESPI) survey.

The top six states where respondents live are Jalisco, Guanajuato, Baja California Sur, Nayarit, Mexico City and Quintana Roo. The top six cities/towns where respondents live are San Miguel de Allende, Puerto Vallarta (and nearby areas), Ajijic, Mexico City, Guadalajara and Mazatlán. Over half of the respondents have lived in Mexico for 6+ years and more than three-quarters have lived here for 3+ years.

More than three-quarters of the respondents are aged 60 or over, while the remainder are younger. Fifty-five per cent of the respondents are men, while almost 45% are women. The headline number: 88.97/100 The vast majority of respondents feel very safe in the Mexican city or town where they live.

The average personal safety score — i.e., the MND ESPI score for Q1 2026 — was 88.97. On a spectrum where 0 represents feeling completely unsafe and 100 represents feeling completely safe, the average foreign national living in Mexico scored their personal sense of daily safety at nearly 89 out of 100. That number sits firmly at the safe end of the scale — and it comes from people who live here, not people who are visiting.

How safe is Mexico compared to your home country? Respondents, on average, generally feel safer in the Mexican town or city in which they live than in the place they most recently lived in their home country. The average score respondents chose on a 0-100 spectrum measuring their personal sense of safety in Mexico was 63.71.

A score of 50 indicated that a person’s personal sense of safety in Mexico was “about the same” as in their home country, while a score of 0 represented “much less safe” and a score of 100 indicated “much safer.” The data does not say Mexico has no crime. It says that for the foreign residents surveyed — the majority Americans — the daily experience of personal safety in Mexico compares favorably to what they left behind. On Mexican police: Room to improve Respondents, on average, think that Mexican security forces, including their local police, are only doing an average job.

Asked to rate the responsiveness and effectiveness of police and other security forces in their community, the average rating of survey respondents was 3.1 stars out of five. While not a poor rating per se, it indicates that police and other security forces have plenty of scope for improvement. Many Mexicans would agree with that assessment.

The media gap: 26.55 out of 100 Most respondents think that the foreign media’s portrayal of Mexico is inaccurate. On a scale where 100 means “foreign media coverage of Mexico is completely accurate” and 0 means “completely inaccurate,” the average score among survey respondents was 26.55. What crimes do expats in Mexico report?

More than four in five respondents haven’t been a victim of crime in Mexico in the past 12 months, and neither has anyone in their immediate household. Among those who did experience crime, the most common by far was petty theft — phone, wallet or bag. Smaller numbers reported fraud, home burglary, extortion, vehicle theft, verbal harassment and robbery with a weapon.

On bribery: Approximately 85% of respondents had not been asked to pay a bribe to a government employee or police officer in the past 12 months. Mexico’s reputation for bri