Euro Summer 2027:
Where We're Looking
The new places, new hotels and cooler corners of Europe we're already thinking about for next summer.
Europe in summer is no secret. But the way we travel through it is beginning to shift.
The Mediterranean isn't going anywhere, and nor would we want it to. But as summers grow hotter and the most familiar stretches of coast grow busier, we find ourselves looking further north and inland: towards places where days can be spent outdoors without quite so much heat, where cities empty into lakes and mountains, and where a new generation of hotels is giving travellers fresh reasons to go.
Here are the places on our radar for summer 2027.
Published October 7th, 2027
Stockholm and Gotland
When much of southern Europe is at its hottest, Stockholm offers long, luminous days, water at every turn and an easy shift between city and archipelago.
Take a private boat out past Vaxholm and the city gives way to granite islands, red-painted summer houses and smooth rocks to swim from. Lunch might be shrimp and whatever came off the boats that morning; dinner can run late, because the light barely seems to fade. Time a visit for Midsummer Eve, which falls on Friday 25 June in 2027, and you'll find the country at its most festive: maypoles, flower crowns, pickled herring and the first strawberries of the season.
Then continue to Gotland, Sweden's largest island and a 40-minute flight from the capital, where the landscape turns rural. At its southern tip, Sibbjäns is a 19th-century farmstead that opened as a 22-room hotel in 2025. Its own regenerative farm supplies much of the kitchen, the rooms are furnished with vintage Scandinavian design [designers to confirm], and the pool looks out over open fields.
This is Swedish summer at its most appealing: understated, outdoorsy and unhurried.
Burgundy
Burgundy has never lacked great wine. What it lacked was anywhere to stay that matched it. COMO Le Montrachet arrived first, in 2023. It has 30 rooms on the village square of Puligny-Montrachet, a short walk from one of the most famous vineyards in the world.
In 2026, three more hotels followed. Château la Commaraine in Pommard is a working wine estate with roots in 1112, and it opened in April with 37 rooms. In Meursault, Fontenille's Château de Cîteaux sits above Cistercian cellars dating to the 12th century. In the Côte de Nuits, Les Sources de Vougeot occupies a former priory near the Clos de Vougeot, with a Caudalie spa in the old vaulted cellars.
For the first time, a serious oenophile can travel through France's great wine regions without compromising on where they sleep. Two of these hotels have sisters elsewhere. Commaraine shares its owners with Royal Champagne, near Épernay. Les Sources de Vougeot shares its family with Les Sources de Caudalie, outside Bordeaux. Begin in Champagne, drive south to the Côte d'Or, then continue to Bordeaux. That's three regions and two hotel families in one summer.
Germany
Germany makes a strong case for summer holiday. The days are long and warm which suits a trip built on walking, eating outdoors and staying up late.
Start in the cities. Berlin wears its history openly, from the Reichstag to what remains of the Wall, and on summer evenings life spills out along the Spree. Munich is beer gardens and swimming in the Isar. Hamburg is a city on the water, and The Fontenay looks out over the Alster.
Then head into the landscape. The Black Forest is dense, dark and made for walking, with Baden-Baden and Brenners Park-Hotel at its edge. Along the Rhine Gorge, a UNESCO World Heritage site, castles stand above the vineyards at almost every bend. In the Bavarian Alps, Neuschwanstein, King Ludwig II's 19th-century fantasy, is the castle everyone pictures.
Also in the Bavarian Alps is our favourite reason to go. Schloss Elmau sits in a secluded valley. For more than a century, the house has run its own programme of concerts and talks, and admission is included for hotel guests. Plan a stay around one of its festivals.
Austria, onto Budapest
Summer here is for music, wine and water. In Salzburg, the festival fills the city with opera, theatre and concerts from late July to the end of August. On Lake Constance, the Bregenz Festival performs opera on a stage floating on the water. In Vienna, summer evenings belong to the Heurigen, the wine taverns among the vineyards on the city's edge.
The wine continues west along the Danube into the Wachau, a UNESCO-listed valley of terraced vineyards known for Grüner Veltliner and Riesling. Beyond it lie the lakes and mountains. The Salzkammergut has clear Alpine lakes to swim in and villages like Hallstatt on their shores. Further west, Tyrol is for high meadows and long days on foot.
Then follow the Danube to Budapest, by rail or by river. The city is grand, lively and best taken slowly, between its thermal baths and evenings by the water. Hungary has its own great wine, too. Tokaj in the north-east makes the sweet wines once poured at royal tables. Lake Balaton, the largest lake in Central Europe, is lined with vineyards along its northern shore.
Greece
There is more to a Greek summer than the two islands everyone names. Paros is the place to start. Naoussa's harbour comes alive after dark, and the island has energy without excess. It also sits at the heart of the Cyclades ferry network, which makes it an easy base for island hopping. Antiparos is minutes away by boat, Naxos is a short crossing, and in summer the boats run on to Sifnos and beyond.
Naxos is the island to eat on. It is the great farming island of the Cyclades. Its graviera cheese carries protected status. Its potatoes are famous across Greece and celebrated each September with a festival in Agia Anna. Its citrus liqueur, kitron, is distilled on the island.
Sifnos is quieter still. This is the home island of Nikolaos Tselementes, the chef whose cookbook shaped Greek home cooking, and its kitchens still bake chickpea stew slowly in clay pots. Each September, the village of Artemonas hosts the Cycladic Gastronomy Festival in his name, with cooks from across the islands.
For more on each island, see our full Greek Island guide.
The European summer is broadening.
Some of the places we're most excited about for 2027 aren't new destinations. They're places that are being re-seen: Burgundy with hotels worthy of its vineyards; Germany as a serious summer destination in its own right; Austria and Hungary connected by culture, wine and the Danube; Stockholm and Gotland for long northern days; and the Greek islands beyond the usual suspects.
The Mediterranean will always have a place in our summer but perhaps the most interesting journeys next year will be the ones that don't follow the obvious map.
If one of these has caught your eye, we'd love to help you build the journey around it.