Mexico recorded an average of 43.4 intentional homicides per day in October (approximately half of the 86.9 recorded in September 2024, the last month prior to President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo's inauguration). The most recent federal figures show August and September at 43.3 per day.
The Secretariado Ejecutivo del Sistema Nacional de Seguridad Pública (SESNSP) initially reported 40.8 for August and 42.2 for September. Both figures were revised upwards on Tuesday at Palacio Nacional. The briefing provided no explanation for the revisions.
October’s daily average was 23% below the same month the year before and 48% below October 2024, Sheinbaum’s first month in office. Marcela Figueroa Franco, head of the SESNSP, said it was the lowest October in the agency’s series going back to 2015. Sheinbaum attributed the drop to her government’s security strategy.
The monthly figures come from investigations reported by prosecutors’ offices in Mexico’s 31 states and Mexico City. They count victims in cases classified as homicidio doloso, or intentional homicide. The SESNSP started using a new recording method in January 2026. INEGI, Mexico’s statistics agency, keeps its own count based on death records. Its final figures, also released Tuesday, show 29,488 homicide deaths registered in 2025, down 12.1% from 33,550 in 2024.
Where the October counts rose
The Nov briefing gave the year to date totals for each state. The Gabinete de Seguridad preliminary daily reports give an earlier indication of how the individual months have fared. In those reports Estado de México added 44 victims in October and Sinaloa added 41. Both were up by more than one per day on average (with the extra day in October). Guanajuato was up as well and Baja California was down.
Estado de México had the biggest increase in September of the five states (31 more than in August). Baja California added 11 and Chihuahua 8. Sinaloa was pretty much unchanged prior to October. The state’s own prosecutor’s office recorded 169 intentional homicides in October (up from 122 in September and 130 in October 2025). The fighting between the rival factions of the Cártel de Sinaloa goes back to September 2024.
In the SESNSP’s monthly series, Estado de México went from 818 victims in the Jan-Sep release to 1,564 in the Jan-Oct release. The agency’s public data files still only went through September on Wednesday, with the additional 746 in the new total having no month by month breakdown published.