New Mexico

New Mexico is a state of the American South-West, with Santa Fe as its capital and Albuquerque as its largest city. The Rio Grande runs through it from north to south. Chile is at the centre of its cooking: red or green, as a sauce over enchiladas, burritos and eggs, roasted, or dried and strung in ristras. “Red or green?” is even the official state question, asked by waiters about the chile you want.

The festival in this guide is in the south of the state, in the village of Hatch, where the Hatch Chile Festival celebrates the chile harvest. The organisers say it is held each year on Labor Day weekend, in 2026, on Saturday 5 and Sunday 6 September. The 2027 dates had not been published on 6 October 2026.

Getting around

Distances are long, and a car is the practical way to travel. Albuquerque has the state’s main airport. El Paso, just across the Texas line, serves the south.

Chile written into the law of New Mexico

The New Mexico Secretary of State keeps the list of official symbols, and food fills several lines of it.

New Mexico was the first state with an official cookie and, in 2023, the first with an official aroma, adopted by Senate Bill 188. The state question was passed to mark the weight of the chile industry: the Secretary of State records 99,000 tons of chile grown in 2000, worth nearly 49 million dollars, the state's number one cash crop by sales at the time. The same office explains that when chile ripens it turns bright red and is strung into ristras and hung to dry, and that the early Spanish settlers brought the plant from the Valley of Mexico, where the Aztecs had grown it for centuries.

A cuisine 400 years in the making

The state tourism department describes New Mexican food as a blend of Spanish and Native American cooking perfected over 400 years, with chile, red or green, used in everything from enchiladas to ice cream.