EatingWell names Asheville best wellness town of 2026

EatingWell named Asheville the No. 1 Best Wellness Town in America for 2026, putting the city ahead of six other winners on a list built around air quality, outdoor recreation, happiness, walkability, bike-lane availability, farmers markets, fitness studios and spas. The magazine’s methodology also focused on places under 150,000 people that sit within about an hour of a major airport, a profile Asheville fits neatly.

The honor lands because Asheville has spent years selling the same mix the ranking rewards: the Blue Ridge Mountains, trail access, a lively downtown, the River Arts District and a restaurant scene that leans hard into local ingredients. Coverage tied to the ranking pointed to Plant for upscale vegan dishes, Luminosa for Italian food made with Appalachian ingredients, The Market Place as Asheville’s first farm-to-table restaurant, open since 1979, and Farm Burger’s local toppings as examples of how food culture has become part of the city’s wellness image.

That image is more than branding. Explore Asheville says visitors contribute nearly $3 billion a year to the Asheville and Buncombe County economy, supported 29,148 jobs in 2023 and generated $265 million in state and local tax revenues. Buncombe County logged a record 13.9 million tourists in 2023, while the Asheville Chamber of Commerce says tourism is the region’s second-largest driver of economic growth and supports 1 in 7 Buncombe County jobs. For a county still balancing recovery, affordability and infrastructure pressure, the wellness label doubles as an economic signal.

The local reality check is that the same features making Asheville attractive to visitors do not land equally for everyone who lives here. A walkable core exists in parts of downtown, and the trail network and river access are real, but access to housing, daily errands and the full lifestyle package remains uneven across Buncombe County. That is why the ranking reads as both compliment and contradiction: Asheville can look effortless from a hotel balcony, while the day-to-day version depends on neighborhood, income and commute.

The city’s air quality work also sits inside that contradiction. Buncombe County’s Asheville-Buncombe Air Quality Agency says its mission is to protect and monitor air quality to safeguard public health and the environment, a reminder that one of the magazine’s headline criteria is already part of local public policy. Explore Asheville and the Asheville Chamber both promoted the ranking, folding it into a regional story that is as much about economic draw as it is about livability.