New Delhi, July 13 -- CHICAGO - The exterminator arrives, the hotel room goes dark for two days of heat treatment, and somewhere online a guest review lands that mentions bedbugs by name. For Chicago hoteliers, this sequence has become a recurring feature of summer. For the fifth consecutive year, pest control company Orkin has named Chicago the worst city in the United States for bedbugs - a title the Windy City has held so consistently it has begun to feel structural rather than statistical.

Orkin's 2026 Bed Bug Cities list, which ranks metropolitan areas by the volume of residential and commercial bedbug treatments recorded in company service data, covers the period from May 2025 through May 12, 2026. Chicago led all American cities b...