Chichen Itza New Seven Wonders 2007: What the Title Actually Means

Two Honours, Two Institutions

Almost every misunderstanding about Chichén Itzá's titles comes from treating these two lines as one. They are not the same honour at different dates: they are different kinds of honour, awarded by different bodies, for different reasons.

	UNESCO World Heritage	New7Wonder of the World
Who awarded it	The World Heritage Committee, through UNESCO's World Heritage Centre	The New7Wonders Foundation, a private foundation based in Zurich
When	1988	Announced 7 July 2007
How chosen	Expert evaluation against published cultural criteria	A global public vote by internet and telephone/SMS, after an expert panel cut the field to 21 finalists
Official name / form	“Pre-Hispanic City of Chichen-Itza”, World Heritage List dossier 483	One of seven winners, announced as an unranked group
What it grants	International recognition inside the World Heritage framework, with the conservation commitments that come with listing	A popularity title and a licence-able brand for tourism promotion
What it does not grant	It does not make UNESCO the site's manager: INAH administers Chichén Itzá	No UNESCO status, funding, protection or obligations, and it changes nothing about the 1988 inscription

Keep this table in mind and the rest of the page falls into place: whenever you see the 2007 title credited to UNESCO anywhere, you are looking at the confusion this page exists to correct.

How the 2007 Vote Worked

The selection was a funnel, not a single ballot. According to the New7Wonders Foundation's own project history, roughly 200 sites were nominated worldwide; an expert panel cut that field to 77 candidates on 1 January 2006, and then to 21 finalists; the public vote among those 21 produced the seven winners. The middle step, the cut to 77, is the one tour copy most often skips, and it matters: the finalists the public voted on had already been filtered by experts, not by votes.

~200Sites nominated from around the world

77Candidates after the expert panel's cut, 1 January 2006

21Finalists put to the public vote

7Winners announced 7 July 2007, Lisbon

Voting was by internet and by telephone/SMS. The winners were announced on 7 July 2007, 07/07/07, at a ceremony in Lisbon's Estádio da Luz, as AP reported that day. The seven were announced as a group, with no ranking among them.

Who Ran It: Bernard Weber and the New7Wonders Foundation

The campaign was a private initiative organised by the New7Wonders Foundation, founded in 2001 in Zurich by Bernard Weber, a Swiss-born Canadian filmmaker. That outline comes from the Foundation's own project history and is corroborated by AP and CBS reporting from 2007.

You will see three different start years attached to the campaign, and all three appear in the sources, which is why this page gives no single launch year. AP reported a 1999 conception and launch; UNESCO's statement describes the campaign as “launched in 2000”; the Foundation itself was founded in 2001. Each date belongs to a different step, and collapsing them into one year misstates the record.

By its own account, the Foundation is funded entirely by licensing, commercial partnerships, TV rights and campaign services, with no public subsidies, and its commercial side licenses the New7Wonders brand to winners' tourism organisations. It is a campaigning and licensing organisation, not a heritage body, and it neither owns nor manages Chichén Itzá.

How Many Votes? The Number, Graded

“More than 100 million votes”

That is the New7Wonders Foundation's claim for the whole campaign. AP reported “approximately 100 million”, attributing the figure to the organiser. Treat it exactly that way: an organiser's claim, reported as such, not an audited count.

Three cautions belong with the number wherever it is used. First, no independent audit of the total exists. Second, votes are not voters: the organiser acknowledged there was no foolproof mechanism against repeat voting, as AP and CBS reported, so “100 million votes” must never be rewritten as 100 million people. Third, no per-site totals or rankings were ever published: the seven winners were announced as an unranked group, so the honest answer to “how many votes did Chichén get?” is that it was never released, by anyone, ever.

The Seven Winners and the 21 Finalists

The seven announced in Lisbon on 7 July 2007 were:

Chichen ItzaMexico

Christ the RedeemerBrazil

Great WallChina

Machu PicchuPeru

PetraJordan

The ColosseumItaly

Taj MahalIndia

The other fourteen finalists Chichén was voted against included the Acropolis, the Alhambra, Angkor Wat, the Eiffel Tower, Hagia Sophia, Kiyomizu-dera, the Kremlin and St Basil's, the Moai of Easter Island, Neuschwanstein, the Statue of Liberty, Stonehenge, the Sydney Opera House and Timbuktu. Mexico's place in the list is exactly one of seven, no more, and no less: the winners were published as a group, and any ordering of them you see elsewhere is presentation, not a result.

What Happened to the Great Pyramid of Giza?

The Great Pyramid was one of the 21 finalists, and then it was removed from the competitive vote after Egyptian objections, with officials calling a contest for the pyramids “absurd”, and granted honorary status instead, as AP and CBS reported. So all three versions you may have read are wrong: Giza did not lose, was not voted out, and did not finish in any ranked position below the seven. It was taken out of the competition and honoured separately.

There is a logic to it: the Great Pyramid is the only survivor of the ancient Seven Wonders. A public vote on whether it still counted as a wonder was, in the Egyptian view, a question that did not need asking.

Mexico's Campaign for Chichen Itza

Chichén's win was not passive. Contemporary reporting, the Washington Post in March 2007 and Mexican press coverage, records government and tourism promotion behind the bid, including SMS voting drives urging Mexicans to vote by text message. A later report noted Coca-Cola cans carrying the campaign in Mexico.

The morning after is part of the record too. A 2009 IPS report, headlined “Chichen Itza Win Falls Flat”, recorded local disappointment that the expected benefits of the title had not yet arrived. Both halves belong on this page: the campaign was real and organised, and the payoff locals had been led to expect was slower than the promotion implied.

Did UNESCO Choose the New Seven Wonders?

No, and UNESCO said so itself, in writing, two days after the announcement. Its statement of 9 July 2007 records that UNESCO was invited to support the project on several occasions and:

“…decided not to collaborate with Mr. Weber.”

The statement explains that World Heritage listing is decided by committee “according to rigorous scientific and technical criteria”, and describes the 2007 list as:

“…the result of a private undertaking, reflecting only the opinions of those with access to the Internet and not the entire world.”

It concludes that the initiative “cannot, in any significant and sustainable manner, contribute to the preservation of sites selected by this public.” These are UNESCO's own words, from its statement of 9 July 2007 (whc.unesco.org/en/news/352), not a paraphrase of them.

The confusion this statement was answering is still live in commercial copy: tour sites still print lines calling Chichén “one of the New 7 Wonders of the World, according to UNESCO.” That attribution is false. UNESCO awarded Chichén a different, earlier honour, the subject of the next section, and publicly declined any part in this one.

Chichen Itza's Other Honour: UNESCO World Heritage Since 1988

Chichén Itzá was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1988 as the “Pre-Hispanic City of Chichen-Itza” (dossier 483), under cultural criteria (i), (ii) and (iii). In the World Heritage Centre's terms:

Criterion (i): its monuments are a masterpiece of Maya-Toltec architecture; El Castillo, the Great Ball Court and the Temple of the Warriors are named.
Criterion (ii): they exerted a decisive influence across the Yucatán cultural zone from the 10th to the 15th century.
Criterion (iii): the site is exceptional testimony to the Maya-Toltec civilisation of the Terminal Classic and Early Postclassic.

That is the honour with institutional weight behind it, and it predates the vote by nineteen years. For what the inscription means for visiting the site itself, see the Chichen Itza Visitor Guide.

Not the Ancient Seven Wonders Either

One more list to keep separate. The original Seven Wonders were a Hellenistic-era traveller's list: the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, the Colossus of Rhodes and the Lighthouse of Alexandria. Of those seven, only Giza still stands. Chichén Itzá, founded many centuries after that list was written, is on neither the ancient list nor any UNESCO “wonders” list, because no such UNESCO list exists. Its “wonder” title is the 2007 one, and its UNESCO honour is World Heritage listing. Two true statements; no third one is needed.

What Changed After 2007 and What Didn't

The most careful contemporaneous account is the 2009 Global Issues / IPS report: the site averaged about 1.2 million visitors a year before the vote and drew about 1.5 million in 2008. Yucatán's state tourism programme credited the promotion around the selection with the rise, and that framing matters. Tourism officials attributing a rise to the campaign is a publishable fact; claiming the vote by itself caused the rise would go beyond what the sources show, so this page does not claim it.

Later totals, reported from INAH figures and dated to their years, give the longer arc: 2.28 million visitors in 2019, 2.63 million in 2022, 2.33 million in 2023 and 2.25 million in 2024, with 2,182,034 recorded in 2025 in INAH's monthly dataset, the year-by-year figures are tracked in the best month to visit Chichen Itza guide. What did not change in 2007 is just as definite: INAH's management of the site and its legal status under federal jurisdiction were exactly the same the day after the Lisbon ceremony as the day before.

What the Title Is Worth on the Ground

Where does a visitor actually meet the New7Wonder title? In marketing: on tour pages like this one, in destination branding, in the first sentence of a thousand brochures. That is a real effect: the title is genuinely famous, and it genuinely shapes which sites travellers have heard of before they arrive.

Where does it never reach? The site's legal status, its protection, its management and its archaeology. None of those run through Zurich. Chichén Itzá is protected because it is a federal archaeological zone administered by INAH and a World Heritage site inscribed in 1988. The bottom line, with both facts standing: the ruins' significance is archaeological, recognised by UNESCO since 1988; the 2007 title is a popularity honour the world voted on. Neither cancels the other, and neither needs the other to be true.

The title attaches to the whole site, but one building carries it in every photograph, the pyramid that carries the title is El Castillo’s own guide.

The Tour: See Both Honours in One Day

Our shared Chichen Itza tour covers the ruins themselves, a swim at Cenote Ik Kil and a stop in Valladolid, with hotel pickup from your own pickup point: your exact time is confirmed on WhatsApp the night before. The price is $130 per adult and $115 per child up to age 12, and the 697 MXN Chichen Itza entrance fee is included. Reserve with a 30% advance; the balance is paid on the day of the tour, and cancellation is free up to 48 hours before the tour, with the advance refunded in full.

Pickup cities, in order: Cancun, Tulum, Playa del Carmen, Riviera Maya and Merida.

Pickup city

Adults: $130 each

Children (to age 12): $115 each

$260Total: 697 MXN entrance fee included

$7830% advance to reserve

$182Balance on the day of the tour

Free cancellation up to 48 hours before the tour: advance refunded in full. Inside 48 hours the advance is kept.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Chichen Itza one of the Seven Wonders of the World?

Yes, in the modern sense. On 7 July 2007 Chichén Itzá was announced in Lisbon as one of the New7Wonders of the World, chosen by a global public vote run by the private New7Wonders Foundation. It is not on the ancient Hellenistic list, and the 2007 title is separate from its UNESCO World Heritage inscription of 1988.

Did UNESCO choose the New Seven Wonders?

No. UNESCO did not run, sponsor or endorse the vote. In its statement of 9 July 2007 UNESCO said it had been invited to support the project and had decided not to collaborate with Mr. Weber, and that the list was the result of a private undertaking.

When did Chichen Itza become a New Wonder of the World?

On 7 July 2007, 07/07/07, when the seven winners were announced at a ceremony in Lisbon's Estádio da Luz.

Who organised the New7Wonders vote?

The New7Wonders Foundation, a private foundation founded in Zurich in 2001 by Swiss-born Canadian filmmaker Bernard Weber.

How many votes did Chichen Itza get?

It was never published. The Foundation announced the seven winners as an unranked group and never released per-site totals or rankings. Its claim of more than 100 million votes covers the whole campaign, was attributed to the organiser by AP, and was never independently audited.

What are the New Seven Wonders of the World?

Chichen Itza (Mexico), Christ the Redeemer (Brazil), the Great Wall (China), Machu Picchu (Peru), Petra (Jordan), the Colosseum (Italy) and the Taj Mahal (India), announced as an unranked group on 7 July 2007.

Why is the Great Pyramid of Giza not one of the New Seven Wonders?

The Great Pyramid was a finalist but was removed from the competitive vote after Egyptian objections and given honorary status instead. It did not lose and was not voted out, and it remains the only survivor of the ancient Seven Wonders.

When did Chichen Itza become a UNESCO World Heritage Site?

In 1988, when it was inscribed on the World Heritage List as the “Pre-Hispanic City of Chichen-Itza” (dossier 483), under cultural criteria (i), (ii) and (iii), nineteen years before the 2007 vote.

What is the difference between UNESCO World Heritage and a New7Wonder?

World Heritage listing is decided by an expert committee under rigorous scientific and technical criteria and sits inside an international protection framework. A New7Wonder title is a popularity honour from a private foundation's public vote; it confers no UNESCO status, funding, protection or obligations.

Did the New7Wonders title bring more visitors to Chichen Itza?

Tourism officials credited the promotion around the selection with a rise: IPS reported in 2009 that the site averaged about 1.2 million visitors a year before the vote and drew about 1.5 million in 2008. That is an attribution by officials, not proof that the vote alone caused the rise.

Is Chichen Itza the eighth wonder of the world?

No. Chichén Itzá is one of the seven announced New7Wonders of 2007, not an additional or runner-up entry, and no official extra place was ever announced: the seven winners were published as an unranked group.

¿Chichén Itzá es una maravilla del mundo o Patrimonio de la Humanidad?

Es ambas cosas, por dos vías distintas: es Patrimonio Mundial de la UNESCO desde 1988, con el nombre oficial “Pre-Hispanic City of Chichen-Itza”, y fue elegida una de las New7Wonders en la votación pública de 2007 organizada por una fundación privada. La UNESCO no organizó esa votación.

Chichen Itza, New7Wonder of the World: What the Title Actually Means