The First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has announced the groundbreaking date for the Cuernavaca Mexico Temple and the location of the Otavalo Ecuador Temple.
Cuernavaca Mexico Temple
| Temple Square is always beautiful in the springtime. Gardeners work to prepare the ground for General Conference. © 2012 Intellectual Reserve, Inc. All rights reserved. | 1 / 2 |
The groundbreaking ceremony will be held on Saturday, November 14, 2026. Elder Moisés Villanueva, General Authority Seventy, will preside at the event.
Mexico is home to nearly 1.6 million members of the Church, who meet in approximately 1,900 congregations.
The Cuernavaca Mexico Temple was announced in 2022. Mexico has 27 temples in operation, under construction or announced.
Dedicated houses of the Lord in Mexico are the Ciudad Juárez, Colonia Juárez, Guadalajara, Hermosillo, Mérida, Mexico City, Monterrey, Oaxaca, Puebla, Tampico, Tijuana, Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Veracruz and Villahermosa Temples.
Other temples announced or under construction in the country are the Cancún, Chihuahua, Culiacán, Juchitán de Zaragoza, Mexico City Benemérito, Pachuca, Querétaro, Reynosa, Toluca, Torreón and Tula Temples.
The San Luis Potosí Temple recently opened for public tours.
Otavalo Ecuador Temple
Otavalo_Ecuador_Temple_Map-04.jpg
A map showing the location of the Otavalo Ecuador Temple.2026 by Intellectual Reserve, Inc. All rights reserved.The Otavalo Ecuador Temple will be built on a 6.05-acre site at the corner of Calle Bolívar and Calle Abya Yala in Otavalo, Imbabura Province, Ecuador. Plans call for a temple of approximately 18,850 square feet.
This will be the Church’s third temple in the country. The other two are in Guayaquil and Quito. The Otavalo Temple was announced in a devotional in 2026.
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Ecuador is home to 280,000 members of the Church, meeting in more than 330 congregations.
Latter-day Saints consider each temple a house of the Lord and the most sacred place of worship on earth. Temples differ from the Church’s meetinghouses (chapels). All are welcome to attend Sunday worship services and other weekday activities at local meetinghouses. The primary purpose of temples is for faithful members of the Church of Jesus Christ to participate in sacred ceremonies such as marriages, which allow families to be united forever, and proxy baptisms on behalf of deceased ancestors who did not have the opportunity to be baptized while living.
