The Most Anticipated International Hotel Openings of 2026

In 2026, the global hotel pipeline appears poised to shift its universal luxury approach and adopt a more local, proper, and obsessive one. Brands are mining their specific patch of earth for stories, pulling up traditions and landscapes that cannot be faked or franchised. Baltic islands where Soviet neglect became accidental preservation. Cycladic cliffs where serious artists finally outnumber the infinity pools. Hotels that understand luxury means being particular, not just offering more.

The map looks different now. Mediterranean properties stopped their Miami Beach impression and remembered—wait—they actually invented this whole hospitality thing. Asian hotels quit the apology dance, pouring kaiseki with one hand and Negronis with the other, both equally correct. Private islands began discussing endemic species more than champagne labels. Even wine country and the Alps—not exactly suffering an identity crisis—figured out how to weave guests into working landscapes, rather than just parking them nearby with binoculars.

Something shifted in how the sophisticated travel the globe. They want hotels that teach them things, introduce them to ceramicists and farmers who aren’t seasonal imports. Properties that grasp the difference between privacy and isolation, between anticipating needs and hovering. Buildings that emerge from their hillside or shoreline like they grew there, not like they were helicoptered in from brand headquarters.

From Burgundy châteaux where you will literally sleep between the vines to Estonian retreats tuned to five-season rhythms, from Maltese palazzos that make you forget cruise ships exist to Patagonian lodges that treat silence as an amenity, the most interesting openings of 2026 are not just places to stay. They translate a very specific corner of the earth into something you can temporarily inhabit. That is the next chapter. Not more stuff. Just more truth.

The Hotels We’re Most Excited for in 2026

• Ayan Zalaat
• The Lake Como Edition
• Wilderness Mara & Wilderness Mara Villas
• Luura Paros Cliff
• Four Seasons Hotel and Residences Cartagena
• Rosewood Blue Palace
• Amanvari
• Romègas Hotel
• Château de la Commaraine
• Eha Retreat
• Six Senses London at The Whiteley
• Explora El Calafate
• Rosewood Milan
• Airelles Venezia
• Hyde Perth
• Capella Kyoto

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Ayan Zalaat

• BZD – 11 Khoroo, Ulaanbaatar 13241, Mongolia | Opening January 2026

On the edge of Ulaanbaatar, Ayan Zalaat spreads across a 34-acre valley where the city lights stop and the “big sky” thing Mongolia is famous for actually kicks in. You arrive up an ornate double staircase into chandelier glow, then choose your corner of this self-contained world: a moody 007-grade cigar lounge with skyline views, 10 restaurants and bars, bowling, billiards, karaoke and a spa with hydromassage pools and techy facials. There’s even a Bath Butler who treats the tub like an omakase experience. The Mongolian Theater draws the country’s culture into the building, staging throat singing and Biyelgee dance in a space that resembles a palace more than a performance hall, while the Soma Temple introduces Tibetan Buddhist ritual with monk-led teachings and meditation. 

The Lake Como Edition

• Via Regina 41, 22011 Griante (Cadenabbia), Lake Como, Italy | Opening March 2026

Edition’s Como debut takes over the former Grand Hotel Britannia Excelsior on the Griante promenade, directly facing Bellagio across the water, and turns it into a low-lit foil to the lake’s chandeliered grandes dames. The 148 rooms and suites (including two penthouses) sit within a 19th-century shell reworked with Ian Schrager’s signature mélange of sharp lines, dark woods and a dose of drama. A Longevity-focused spa, private dock and a serious bar program position it as the place you arrive by boat, dive into a martini and simply forget which century you’re in. With to-be-announced restaurant partnerships and a scene-ready lobby, it’s set up to be the fashion crowd’s Como HQ.

Wilderness Mara & Wilderness Mara Villas

• Mara Triangle, Kenya | Opening February and June 2026

At the base of the Oloololo Escarpment, where hot-air balloons scrape the dawn mist and the Great Migration chews a path through the grass, Wilderness is reinventing two of the Mara’s legacy camps. Wilderness Mara takes over the old Little Governors’ site as a 12-suite, adults-only tented camp threaded along a seasonal marsh, all canvas, freestanding tubs, outdoor showers and wide decks where elephants are basically part of the morning commute. Downstream, Wilderness Mara Villas reimagines Governors’ Private Camp as a fully private, buy-out hideaway on a bend of the Mara River, designed for multi-generational families and friend groups who want their own vehicles, their own fire pit, and their own rules about when exactly sundowners begin.

Luura Paros Cliff

• Agia Eirini, 84400, Paros Greece | Opening April 2026

The Aegean nabs its design moment in 2026, when Luura Cliff brings Morgans Originals to Greece via Paros’s northeastern coast, where the meltemi wind keeps crowds thin. Elastic Architects scatter whitewashed volumes against the cliff, while Lambs and Lions layer in understated glamour—all suites, all with private pools, adults only. The Khoury family threads serious art throughout (Francesco Clemente, Claire Tabouret), while the boutique champions Parian ceramicists like Maria Economides over mass-market Cycladic clichés. Add marble-carving workshops in Marathi’s quarries, caper-picking on organic farms and boat access to Antiparos’s sea caves, and Luura delivers the anti-Mykonos.

Four Seasons Hotel and Residences Cartagena

• Media Luna 8B #8B-44, Getsemaní, Cartagena, Colombia | Opening Spring 2026

Cartagena finally got the big, grown-up luxury hotel everyone’s been manifesting. Four Seasons is stitching together a cluster of 16th-century landmarks on the edge of Getsemaní and the UNESCO-listed walled city, including the former San Francisco temple and the Beaux-Arts Club Cartagena, plus a row of old theaters that once hosted the city’s elite. The result is 131 rooms and 27 suites spread through cloisters, courtyards and salons, with two rooftop pools looking out over domes, fortifications and the Caribbean instead of yet another generic infinity edge. 

Rosewood Blue Palace

• Plaka, Schisma Elountas, 720 53 Elounda, Crete, Greece | Opening 2026

Blue Palace’s next chapter under the Rosewood flag is a full reset of what high-end Crete can be. Terraced stone bungalows and suites still spill down toward Insta-famous Spinalonga, many with private pools and uninterrupted sea views, but the hardware is being elevated with Rosewood’s residential finishes, layered textiles, and more considered lighting. For travelers who already know this part of Greece, it’s the grown-up version of a classic address; for everyone else, it’s the most compelling excuse in years to treat this corner of Crete as a stand-alone trip.

Amanvari

• Costa Palmas, La Ribera, 23570 Baja California Sur, Mexico | Opening Spring 2026

On Baja’s East Cape, Aman Hotels is designing this property as a low-slung counterpart to Cabo’s party frontage, with stilted pavilions and villas threaded through dunes and desert scrub, all facing the Sea of Cortez. The resort anchors a stretch of the Costa Palmas community that already includes a private marina, Robert Trent Jones Jr. golf course, and organic farms, but Aman’s footprint remains deliberately sparse, with freestanding casitas with long sightlines of water and mountains instead of neighbors. Architecture comprises glass, timber and stone in a sand-and-sage palette, so interiors feel more like residential beach houses than hotel rooms. 

Romègas Hotel

• 43 Old Bakery Street, Valletta VLT 1454, Malta | Opening Summer 2026

In Valletta’s grid of honeystone streets, Romègas occupies a 16th-century palazzo that feels more like borrowing a sophisticated Maltese friend’s townhouse than checking into 23 rooms. The restoration champions local craft—thick limestone walls, traditional patterned tiles and Maltese balconies—while contemporary furniture and art prevent any museum stiffness. Chef Marvin Gauci treats the restaurant as a manifesto for island cuisine, drawing inspiration from Marsaxlokk’s fish market and Gozo’s farms. A rooftop pool tips toward Grand Harbour views, but the real luxury is how the hotel slows Malta’s fortified capital to walking pace, never conquest.

Château de la Commaraine

• 5 Rue de la Commaraine, 21630 Pommard, France | Opening Summer 2026

Burgundy has plenty of pretty domaines, but Château de la Commaraine lets you sleep inside a working Premier Cru estate—12th-century bones, nine acres of vines, 37 rooms carved from the moated château and outbuildings. The old pressing barn now houses an active winery, where harvests occur in real time, while chef Christophe Raoux crafts menus around Charolais beef, Bresse chicken and vegetables from the garden. A four-bedroom villa comes with its own cellar, stocked by neighbors like Comte Armand and Marquis d’Angerville. Days stretch between the 60-foot pool, vineyard walks to Beaune (20 minutes) and hot-air balloon rides over Burgundy’s patchwork—the ultimate flex being you can taste what you’re floating over.

Eha Retreat

• Õngu, Hiiu County, Estonia | Opening Summer 2026

On Hiiumaa, the Baltic island designated as Estonia’s lone UNESCO Biosphere Reserve and accidentally preserved by decades of Soviet-era underdevelopment, Eha parses luxury down to 22 guests across eight suites and three cabins set in pine forest and meadow. Architect Tiit Trummal and Studio Argus work in pale birch, granite and linen, letting long windows pull your eye straight across the water toward Finland. In the kitchen, Green Michelin chef Peeter Pihel runs a rigorously low-waste operation built on the Baltic’s cleanest fisheries and nearby farms, while wellness director Kai Laus organizes stays around Estonia’s five seasons: birch-whisk sauna rituals, ice plunges, mushroom hunts and stretches of deliberate silence.

Six Senses London at The Whiteley

• The Whiteley, 151 Queensway, London W2 4YN, United Kingdom | Opening Summer 2026

Six Senses takes on Bayswater’s revived department store with 100 rooms and London’s most ambitious wellness club masquerading as a hotel spa—biohacking labs, hyperbaric chambers, the works. The location is the revelation: five minutes to Notting Hill’s restaurants, Hyde Park on your doorstep, but removed from Mayfair’s tourist crush and Shoreditch’s trying-too-hard energy. Mornings mean rooftop yoga and cold plunges before the Tube; evenings end in a members’ club-style bar where biotech founders decompress next to gallery directors. It’s where you stay when you need to be “on” in London all day but want somewhere that actively switches you off without the green-juice evangelism.

Explora El Calafate

• El Calafate, Patagonia, Argentina | Opening December 2026

On an estancia (ranch) outside the town of El Calafate, Explora’s new lodge faces the Patagonian steppe with long views toward Lake Argentino and the distant shimmer of Perito Moreno. Chilean architect José Cruz Ovalle keeps the architecture low and sinuous, using natural materials and wide panes of glass. Just 20 rooms keep the volume down; each one is set between steppe and native forest, with a work table for maps and notes, proper heat and beds that reward a full day out in the elements. Guides lead explorations through Los Glaciares National Park’s lesser-traveled valleys, the wind-raked pampas where condors patrol and ice caves that even your favorite influencer hasn’t discovered yet. 

Rosewood Milan

• Via San Primo 4, 20121 Milano MI, Italy | Opening 2026

Rosewood is transforming a one-time bank building situated between La Scala and the Quadrilatero, aiming to become the go-to destination for everyone during Milan Fashion Week. You’re a five-minute walk from Via Montenapoleone, a few more from Brera’s galleries, so the lobby may as well be an extra backstage. Inside, the bones stay grand—soaring ceilings, traces of fresco—but the mood skews more creative director’s Milan pied-à-terre than boardroom hotel, with real parquet underfoot, cashmere-grade upholstery and lighting designed for late fittings and later drinks. The courtyard bar will be engineered to attract the people that other properties try to curate, so you get the Milan that runs the city, not the one posing for it during Salone.

Airelles Venezia

• Fondamenta Zitelle, 33, 30133 Venezia VE, Italy | Opening April 2026

Airelles’ first hotel outside the Alps crosses to Giudecca, claiming the former Bauer Palladio complex and its miraculous gardens—the kind of green space Venice never grants. Behind Palladian façades, gravel paths wind under citrus trees, three pools reset expectations (including one for children, making this suddenly family-friendly) and enough lawn to remind you what grass feels like. The French brand’s precision contrasts with lagoon textures: weathered brick, Istrian stone and washed linen, with boats shuttling to San Marco in five minutes for after-hours basilica visits and dinner at palazzi that Google can’t find. 

Hyde Perth

• 37 Pier Street, Perth, Australia | Opening March 2026

Perth finally gets a hotel that admits half the point of a business trip is pretending you’re on holiday. Hyde Perth drops a beach-club mood into the CBD, with 121 rooms and 18 suites wrapped around a Mediterranean-style pool deck that feels a lot closer to Mykonos than the mining town Perth once was. Days are filled with meetings near Elizabeth Quay, followed by mezze and fire-led dishes at Farra, the Grecian-spirited restaurant and terrace that leans heavily into West Australian produce. Nights run long on the poolside bar’s cocktails and curated DJ sets, with just enough bass to feel alive without sabotaging tomorrow’s 9 a.m. It’s the spot you book when you want a city base that dresses like a resort.

Capella Kyoto

• 146 Komatsuchō, Higashiyama Ward, Kyoto 605-0811, Japan | Opening Winter 2026

Capella Kyoto solves the ryokan paradox: delivering temple-district immersion with functional wifi and a proper Negroni when you need one. Under 100 rooms fold around inner gardens in Higashiyama, waking you with Chion-in’s bells instead of traffic, positioning you within walking distance from Kiyomizu-dera without the tour-bus chaos. The onsen leads to kaiseki dinners that actually explain what you’re eating, while the vinyl-only bar proves Kyoto nightlife exists beyond karaoke. It’s controlled, adult cultural experiences, such as morning walks to Philosopher’s Path and afternoon tea ceremonies, minus the curfew energy of traditional Japanese inns.