Hydra Is Europe's Best Island for 2026. It Also Has No Cars and Very Few Beds

Condé Nast Traveller's readers have voted Hydra the best island in Europe for 2026, scoring it 98.12 and putting it narrowly ahead of Sardinia on 98.01. Six other Greek islands made the top twenty.

What makes the result worth more than a press release is the specific island that won.

The table#

Naxos held first place last year and has slipped to third - still an extraordinary showing for an island most international visitors cannot place on a map.

Why this particular winner matters#

Hydra is an hour and a half from Piraeus and allows no cars. Not restricted cars - none. Goods move by donkey and handcart, and the island has stayed architecturally intact because of it: grey stone and faded ochre captains' mansions from the eighteenth century, terracotta roofs, no concrete sprawl and no whitewashed Cycladic pastiche.

That is precisely what the vote rewarded. And it is also why the award will be felt more sharply here than it would on Crete.

An island that cannot build roads cannot easily build hotels. Hydra's bed stock is small, protected and essentially fixed. A top-of-Europe listing arriving in late October, just as people plan the following summer, lands on a supply that cannot respond.

The quieter story in the table#

Sifnos at sixth and Naxos at third say something that the Santorini and Mykonos placings do not. The two famous islands finished sixteenth and eighteenth - respectable, but behind islands with a fraction of their marketing.

Readers who travel a lot are voting for the places that still function as places. That is a trend worth watching if you are deciding where to spend a week, or where to buy.

Reported by Protothema. The commentary below is ours.

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