National Geographic is best known for stunning photos of snowy, windswept mountain peaks and insights into shamanistic rituals among the Swahili tribes of Mozambique. When did it start exploring the pizza ecosystem of the U.S.?
As of this month, it seems. The venerable magazine/website has mapped out the country’s “best pizza spots”—with one catch. New York and Chicago were excluded, giving shops in cities like Winston-Salem and Oshkosh a fighting chance.
“Great pizza made with high-quality ingredients is no longer exclusively found in the large U.S. cities where Southern Italians migrated starting in the late 1800s,” the article notes.
Hear hear! If anything, most best-pizza lists from the national media in recent years have been worryingly predictable and repetitive. A notable exception was the New York Times’ list in 2024, which ventured into smaller cities and even obscure little hamlets across the country (think Bristol, Vermont, and Mountain Brook, Alabama).
Related: Small-Town Independents Shine in New York Times’ List of Best U.S. Pizzerias
For its roundup, the first best-pizza list of 2026, National Geographic picked only seven pizzerias as the best in the U.S. One of them, Guantonios Wood Fired in Lodi, California, recently suffered a heartbreaking loss when co-founder Nick Guantone Sr. passed away from a heart attack in late December. Here’s hoping this honor from a leading national magazine offers a little consolation to those who loved Guantone and the pizzeria he helped build.
Check out the best-pizza list below, and if you want to read what the publication liked about each restaurant, just click here:
Dough Pizzeria Napoletana—San Antonio
Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana—New Haven
Guantonios Wood Fired—Lodi, California
Mission Pizza Napoletana—Winston-Salem, North Carolina
PARM—Oshkosh, Wisconsin
Pizzeria Bianco—Phoenix
Pizzeria Vetri—Philadelphia
