Yes, Bogot\u00e1 is safe to visit, and that answer has two halves. The city’s own numbers are moving the right way: homicides fell in 2025 and have kept falling in 2026, and theft from people, the crime that touches visitors, fell by double digits in the first half of this year. The other half is that Bogot\u00e1 is a city of about eight million people where a phone is stolen about a hundred times a day, and the districts where visitors stay are on that list, not off it. We have lived and run tours here for years, so this is the answer the way we give it to our own guests: the 2026 figures, the risks in the order they really reach a visitor, the neighborhoods as they are, and the handful of habits that make almost all of it go away.<\/p>\n
Bogot\u00e1’s homicide rate is well below the national one and falling; the violence in the numbers happens in districts you will never see. What reaches visitors, in order: a phone taken from a hand or a table, a drink or a date that ends in a drugging, a taxi hailed on the street that turns into a “paseo millonario,” a cash machine at the wrong hour, and a march that closes the center for an afternoon. Keep the phone out of your hand on the street, never leave a drink or accept one you did not see poured, never hail a taxi on the street, use cash machines inside banks and malls in daylight, and take a car after dark instead of walking. Do that, stay in Chapinero, Usaqu\u00e9n, Teusaquillo or La Candelaria’s main streets, and Bogot\u00e1 is a cool, serious, wonderful city that treats you well.<\/p>\n
Bogot\u00e1 recorded 1,173 homicides in 2025, 3.4 percent fewer than in 2024, a rate of 14.8 per 100,000 people, while the country’s total rose; the figures were reported by Bogot\u00e1 C\u00f3mo Vamos in its 2025 quality-of-life report, published in August 2026. The trend continued into 2026: the secretariat reported 154 homicides in January and February against 176 a year earlier, a 12.5 percent drop, and by the second week of July theft from people was down 18 percent and phone theft down 9 percent on the same period of 2025. Common theft in 2025 was 144,982 cases, 85 percent of them theft from people, which is the number that describes a visitor’s risk.<\/p>\n
Two more figures complete the picture. Between January and May 2026 the city logged 14,274 stolen phones, about 101 a day, and three of the six districts with the most cases are the ones on every visitor’s map: Chapinero with 1,376, Teusaquillo with 1,246 and Usaqu\u00e9n with 1,005, alongside Suba, Engativ\u00e1 and Kennedy. And the same secretariat’s figures, obtained by a city councillor, put theft at TransMilenio stations at 3,600 cases in 2025, almost double the year before, with Avenida Jim\u00e9nez, Calle 100, Portal Norte and Calle 45 among the stations with the most. Almost seven in ten Bogotanos still tell the survey they feel unsafe. None of this makes the city dangerous for a visitor who knows it; it makes the phone rules below the most useful thing on this page.<\/p>\n
The United States keeps Colombia at Level 3, “reconsider travel,” in the advisory updated on March 31, 2026, with Level 4 reserved for Arauca, Cauca outside Popay\u00e1n, Valle del Cauca outside Cali, Norte de Santander and the ten kilometers along the Venezuelan border. Bogot\u00e1 is not on that list. The advisory’s warnings that do apply here are the ones about drugged drinks, dating apps and unlicensed taxis, and they are the warnings we repeat below.<\/p>\n
1. Your phone.<\/strong> The signature crime of Bogot\u00e1 is the phone: lifted from a back pocket in a crowd, taken from a caf\u00e9 table by a hand that never stops walking, or snatched from a hand by a passenger on a motorbike while you read a map at a corner. The habits are simple and they work: keep the phone in a front pocket or a bag, not in your hand on the street; step inside a doorway or a shop to check the map; do not leave it on the table; at a TransMilenio station or in a crowd, keep a hand on the bag. If someone takes it, let it go. Carry a copy of your passport and leave the original in the safe.<\/p>\n 2. A drink, or a date.<\/strong> Drugging robberies are the risk the city itself warns about most, and its advice is exact: tell someone where you will be, choose visible, busy places with controlled entry, never accept a drink already poured and never lose sight of yours, do not drink to excess, and distrust any pressure to move somewhere else. The substances are usually in liquids and usually tasteless and odorless, in the city’s own words, and the contact often begins on a dating app. In September 2025 the police took down a gang that worked Teusaquillo and Chapinero through apps and bars, one of two such operations that year. Meet dates in public and stay in public, and do not bring someone you met that night to where you sleep.<\/p>\n 3. The wrong taxi.<\/strong> The “paseo millonario” is a Bogot\u00e1 crime with a name: a taxi hailed on the street, accomplices who board, a victim drugged or driven from cash machine to cash machine. The alert the authorities issued in February 2026 named the Zona T, Modelia and Galer\u00edas and the streets around bars as the places it starts, and its recommendations are ours: use an app with the plate on the screen, share the trip with someone, check the plate before you get in, and get out if the route makes no sense. It is the reason for our rule about not taking street taxis in Bogot\u00e1<\/a>. At the airport, the authorized lane between Doors 8 and 10 is the organized exception, and a pre-booked transfer is what we do; both are in our El Dorado airport guide<\/a>.<\/p>\n 4. Cash, cards and the machine.<\/strong> Use cash machines inside bank branches or shopping centers, in daylight, and take out what you need for a day or two rather than a week; the specifics are in our guide to what locals do to stay safe at the ATM<\/a>. Pay with a card where you can, keep it in sight, and carry small notes for taxis and markets. The Colombian phrase is “no dar papaya,” do not offer the fruit: do not display what you would mind losing.<\/p>\n 5. Marches, and the center on a bad day.<\/strong> Bogot\u00e1 is the capital, and protests along Carrera S\u00e9ptima and in Plaza de Bol\u00edvar are part of the calendar. They are almost always peaceful and almost always announced; the practical effect is closed streets and suspended TransMilenio stations for an afternoon. Ask your hotel in the morning, keep away from the front of a march, and do the center on another day if one is called.<\/p>\n 6. Violence.<\/strong> The homicides in the figures above are concentrated in the city’s southern and western districts and almost never touch the areas on this page. The way a visitor meets violence in Bogot\u00e1 is by resisting a robbery, and the advice of every police force in the country is the same: do not.<\/p>\n La Candelaria.<\/strong> The colonial center, where the museums, the university crowds and most of the hostels are. Fine by day on its main streets and squares; after dark keep to the lit, busy streets between Plaza de Bol\u00edvar and Chorro de Quevedo and go by car, not on foot, anywhere south of Calle 7 or up toward the hills. The Avenida Jim\u00e9nez station on its northern edge is on the list of the stations with the most theft: be awake there. The neighborhood by day and by night, with the hours of the museums and the streets to keep to, is in our La Candelaria guide<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Centro Internacional and La Macarena.<\/strong> Museo Nacional, the towers along Carrera S\u00e9ptima, and La Macarena’s restaurants on the hillside behind. Busy by day and early evening; La Macarena at night is a car ride, not a walk.<\/p>\n Chapinero, the Zona G and the Zona T.<\/strong> Where most of our guests stay and where the restaurants and the nightlife are. It also leads the visitor districts for phone theft and is named in the city’s taxi alert, which tells you what to do: phone in the pocket, apps only, drinks watched. Chapinero Alto and the Zona G are quiet residential streets by day; take a car home at night instead of walking the side streets.<\/p>\n Parque de la 93, Chic\u00f3 and Usaqu\u00e9n.<\/strong> The north: embassies, business hotels, brunch, the Sunday market in Usaqu\u00e9n’s colonial center. The quietest part of the visitor map, with the same phone rules; Usaqu\u00e9n still logged a thousand stolen phones between January and May.<\/p>\n Teusaquillo, Galer\u00edas and Salitre.<\/strong> Residential and university districts west of the center, with Corferias and the fairgrounds; fine by day, unremarkable at night, and Galer\u00edas is on the taxi alert’s list.<\/p>\n Everywhere else.<\/strong> The districts where the city’s violence lives are in the south and the far west and are not on any visitor’s route. Bogot\u00e1’s borders with them are not walls, so the rule is simple: if you do not know why you are going somewhere, do not go there after dark.<\/p>\n The night-time version of this page, district by district, with the closing-hour decree, the city’s drugging figures and the rule for getting home, is our Bogot\u00e1 nightlife guide<\/a>.<\/p>\n By day, walking is the best thing about Bogot\u00e1’s center and its northern neighborhoods, with the phone rules. For everything else, an app with the plate on the screen or a car booked through us. TransMilenio is fast and cheap and we ride it, but we ride it without a phone in hand, with the bag in front, and not with luggage; the stations named above are where to be most awake. After dark, take a car door to door, whatever the distance. On a first night, when the altitude and the flight have done their work, do not improvise: a pre-booked transfer, with a host waiting inside the terminal, exists for exactly that hour.<\/p>\n The full picture of the buses, the cards, the apps and the driver option is in our guide to getting around Bogot\u00e1<\/a>.<\/p>\nThe neighborhoods<\/h2>\n
Getting around safely<\/h2>\n