Where to stay in France right now, from the most glamorous addresses in Paris to the chicest hideaways on the Côte d’Azur
France remains one of the world’s great hotel destinations, and in 2026 its finest properties are better than ever. Paris alone is home to some of the most celebrated palace hotels on the planet, freshly renovated and raising the bar on what luxury hospitality can mean. On the French Riviera, legendary grande dames sit alongside a new generation of design-forward properties that have redefined what a coastal stay looks like. Further afield, Bordeaux wine estates, Alpine retreats and sun-drenched Provençal hillsides offer some of the most distinctive accommodation in Europe.
Whether you are planning a honeymoon in Saint-Tropez, a long weekend in Paris, a skiing trip to Courchevel or a slow wine-country escape in the Gironde, France’s best hotels cover every kind of trip. The question is simply knowing where to look. Our editors have done the research so you don’t have to. These are the best hotels in France in 2026, ranked by category, region and occasion.
Editor’s picks:
Best hotels in France for families: Domaine Des Etangs, Auberge Resorts Collection, Massignac
Best hotels in France for a honeymoon: Airelles Château de la Messardière, Saint-Tropez
Best boutique hotels in France: Château Troplong Mondot, Saint-Laurent-des-Combes
Lily of the Valley, Saint-Tropez
Located not in a valley but on a sunbathed hilltop above Saint-Tropez, Philip Starck’s rustic-modernist vision feels like it was purpose-built for the glitzy French Riviera. Two bright blue pools, three excellent Provençal restaurants, a seriously high-tech spa and a beach club a short shuttle ride away make it one of the most complete wellness and lifestyle hotels on the Côte d’Azur. My city-weary self, drawn by the promise of good food, daily exercise and swish treatments, arrived for one of its four signature health retreats. I spent my days moving from reformer Pilates to TRX class and indulging in suspiciously tasty meals (here, caviar scrambled eggs is a diet dish). On the last day I began to cry, my stay proving as much an emotional tune-up as a physical one, a balm for my London-fried soul, with a healthy lashing of Côte d’Azur lasciviousness.
Rooms from around £490 per night.
La Réserve Paris
For the best boutique palace hotel in Paris, La Réserve is the answer most editors will give you quietly, off the record, when the big names have been ticked off the list. I was there when it opened in 2015 and have returned numerous times since. A decade later the spell remains unbroken. Its main restaurant, Le Gabriel, accumulated two Michelin stars in 2016, followed by a third in 2024. Le Gaspard, its exquisite bar (seats 18 people), has expanded slightly onto the streetside terrace. The foliage in the serene central courtyard has grown more dense, treatments in the bijou basement spa ever more sophisticated. With just 40 rooms, La Réserve is the smallest of the city’s palace-designated hotels, and it retains a discreet residential quality that you might describe as private club-like, particularly if you are accustomed to private clubs swathed in silk, velvet, taffeta and cordovan leather, with Versaillais parquet floors, gilded reliefs and views from Notre-Dame to the Eiffel Tower.
Rooms from around £1,510 per night.
Cheval Blanc Paris
The best new luxury hotel in Paris of the past decade, Cheval Blanc occupies the restored Art Deco shell of La Samaritaine on the Quai du Louvre, rising above the Seine with the kind of confident geometry the city does better than anywhere. Architect Peter Marino has layered the heritage bones with bold colour and serious art, including Vik Muniz’s twelve-foot photographic interpretation of the Eiffel Tower in the lobby. The 72 rooms and suites look out over the river, with Notre Dame to the left and the Eiffel Tower to the right from the winter garden suites. Each bathroom comes with a standalone tub and Maison Dior fragrances created exclusively for the property. The Dior Spa offers more than 40 treatments across six white onyx suites; the hotel pool is the longest of any in Paris.
The food is the real reason to book. Plénitude, Arnaud Donckele’s three-Michelin-star restaurant, ranks consistently among the world’s fifty best; his kitchen draws on sabayons, consommés and sauce work of extraordinary complexity. For something less ceremonious, Le Tout-Paris on the seventh floor serves steak frites and chicken burgers on a terrace above the Paris skyline. Langosteria, the Milan seafood institution’s first outpost outside Italy, occupies the ground floor alongside Hakuba, a seventeen-step omakase by sushi master Takuya Watanabe. Even for Paris, that dining programme is something to talk about.
Airelles Château de la Messardière, Saint-Tropez
One of the best hotels in Saint-Tropez, and one of the most cinematic arrivals in France: a sky-blue Mini-Moke beach shuttle, a hilltop entrance lined by flat-crowned umbrella pines, and a member of staff in pale blue-and-white seersucker waiting to lead you into the white-on-white Deco-inspired marble lobby. The best comes after check-in. The rooms, pools and restaurants on the far side of the estate all share the same reveal: a twelve-hectare sweep of manicured gardens and beyond them the shimmering curve of the Gulf of Saint-Tropez.
Reimagined by French designer Christophe Tollemer, the 103 rooms and suites are finished in soothing ochres, greys and creams, with pale stone floors and plump duvets. Three restaurants run along the long panoramic terrace, so you can shift ambience and cuisine without ever leaving the view. The cooking masterclass, which walks you through making the perfect tarte tropézienne from start to finish, is not to be skipped. Saint-Tropez village is a Rolls-Royce shuttle ride away.
Rooms from around £1,900 per night.
Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc, Antibes
Consistently ranked among the best hotels in the South of France, Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc is the kind of place that makes you feel your ordinary life is simply a gap between visits. The world’s most glamorous people have been descending on its manicured, pine-studded grounds every summer for 150 years, and the formula has not needed adjusting. The swimming pool cut into rocks above the Mediterranean is as close to a perfect setting as a hotel pool gets; the restaurants manage to feel casually chic by day and all dressed up at night; the rose garden, the tennis courts and the private cabanas account for the hours in between. This is a place where nostalgia is kept alive, where corridors are filled with photographs of famous guests, where golden sunshine infuses everyone and everything with an air of romance so that your time here feels lengthened, expanded, and etched in memory no matter how short your visit actually is.
Rooms from around £1,240 per night.
Grand-Hôtel du Cap-Ferrat, A Four Seasons Hotel
Between Nice and Monaco, on seven hectares of Mediterranean gardens at the tip of the Cap-Ferrat peninsula, the Grand-Hôtel du Cap-Ferrat is one of the best hotels on the French Riviera and has been since 1908. Palace-designated by the French government and awarded three Michelin Keys in 2024, it carries the calm authority of an institution that has never needed to try too hard. Elizabeth Taylor stayed. Winston Churchill stayed. The guestbook tells its own story.
The 74 rooms and suites include eight with private pools. The outdoor heated seawater pool, reached by a private funicular that descends through pine trees toward the sea, is one of the most celebrated on the Riviera. Michelin-starred Le Cap serves Mediterranean cuisine on a terrace framed by the gardens; Club Dauphin handles lunch at pool level with grilled fish and chilled rosé. For the best views, request a room in the main Heritage Building, which frames both Nice and Monaco from the same window.
Rooms from around £710 per night.
Domaine Des Etangs, Auberge Resorts Collection, Massignac
One of the best rural hotels in France, Domaine des Etangs occupies the turrets of a 13th-century château reflected in a glassy lake, surrounded by 2,500 acres of forest, ponds and meadows in the Charente countryside. Seven Isabelle Stanislas-designed suites unfold in the main building, with more in far-scattered cottages and a farmhouse. The bones of the building, stone walls, eaves and gargoyles, are left to sing. Art is taken seriously throughout: a peaceful minimalist gallery houses a Yves Klein, while the estate hosts Olafur Eliasson pieces and Hergé’s Tintin illustrations across its grounds. Restaurant Dyades’ locavore Michelin-noted menu elevates the herbs, flowers and vegetables of the kitchen garden into some of the most quietly impressive cooking in the region. Walking with groundsman Jean-François Magnan, who spent his boyhood wandering these same rain-green pastures, remains one of the most memorable experiences I have had at any French hotel.
Rooms from around £500 per night.
The Maybourne Riviera, Roquebrune-Cap-Martin
One of the most design-forward hotels on the French Riviera, the Maybourne Riviera in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin has redefined what a luxury coastal stay looks like in the South of France. The dizzying sea views from the 69 rooms and suites (some with private pools) are the headline, but the detail is equally strong. Rooftop restaurant Ceto, helmed by three-Michelin-star chef Mauro Colagreco, sits alongside a holistic spa featuring a FaceGym workout exclusive to France. The turquoise infinity pool juts out over the void. A shuttle runs to the newly refurbished beach club. It is the kind of hotel that photographs extremely well and delivers equally well in person, which is rarer than it should be.
From around £700 per night.
Hôtel Plaza Athénée, Dorchester Collection, Paris
One of the most famous hotels in Paris, the Plaza Athénée has anchored Avenue Montaigne with its signature red awnings since 1913. Its ties to the fashion world run deep: Christian Dior named collections after it; it appeared in Sex and the City and The Devil Wears Prada. Inside, classic chandelier-heavy public spaces give way to contemporary flourishes, including the blue velvet ceiling of Le Bar. The lobby at any given time contains a reliable cross-section of fashion editors, design house executives and well-dressed travellers who know exactly where they are and are pleased about it.
Rooms from around £1,300 per night.
The Ritz Paris
One of the best-known hotels in the world, and one that continues to evolve while keeping its mythology intact. César Ritz opened this limestone bastion of Parisian hospitality in 1898; it was the first hotel in Paris with telephones, the first to offer private baths, and the first to install electricity throughout the building. In 2026, the flagship restaurant Espadon has its first female head chef: Eugénie Béziat, born in Gabon to French parents, whose menu brings chicken yassa and barbecued lobster with cassava semolina alongside the French classics. Bar Hemingway, named for the novelist who once scrimped for a weekly cocktail here, now has a new lead in Anne-Sophie Prestail, protégée of longtime head bartender Colin Field, inventor of the Clean Dirty Martini. The Ritz Paris, it turns out, is still full of news.
Rooms from around £1,718 per night.
Four Seasons Hotel George V, Paris
Opened in 1928 on the avenue that bears its name, the George V is the benchmark against which every other luxury hotel in Paris is measured. In 2025 it completed a full renovation of all 243 rooms and suites by architect Pierre-Yves Rochon, the first since his 1999 redesign, carried out without the hotel ever closing. The new rooms read as Parisian residences: lighter, more open, with new bay windows in some suites framing the Eiffel Tower and Haussmann rooftops, and planted balconies bringing greenery into the Art Deco bones of the building. Jeff Leatham’s weekly floral installation of 11,000 flowers remains the most photographed detail in any Paris hotel lobby.
Six Michelin stars across three restaurants keeps the George V ahead of almost every other hotel on earth for sheer dining ambition. Le Cinq, Christian Le Squer’s three-starred room with soaring ceilings and delicate plasterwork, remains one of the defining expressions of French haute cuisine. A ten-course tasting menu might take in smoked eel with dark bread and red wine sauce, or quail with tonic water and olive tapenade. Book Le Cinq early. It is not the kind of table that waits.
Rooms from around £1,350 per night.
Hotel du Couvent, Nice
The best boutique hotel in Nice, and one of the most thoughtfully conceived conversions in France. This former nunnery in Nice’s Old Town was deconsecrated in the 1980s and transformed from 2014 onward by Studio Mumbai, Studio Méditerranée and Festen Architecture into something genuinely moving. The 88 bedrooms include carefully conjoined nuns’ cells, airy conversions of chapter rooms and a sensitively added new wing, all lime plaster, muted linens and antique finds. A subterranean circuit of thermal pools takes its cues from nearby Roman bath ruins. A herbalist dispenses custom-blended teas from an apothecary along one of the cloisters. Three restaurants source much of their produce from an organic farm in the Var valley. As an antidote to the glitz of the Côte d’Azur, it is close to unbeatable.
Rooms from around £290 per night.
Château Troplong Mondot, Saint-Laurent-des-Combes
The best wine hotel in Bordeaux, and one of the best boutique hotels in France. Troplong Mondot has been the region’s highest wine estate since 1745, and the ancient practices of this place are omnipresent: you will sleep and wake surrounded by vineyards, but you will never hear a tractor, as the château uses draft horses for its sustainable farming. Guests can stay in the vine-wrapped Vineyard House, a two-bedroom cottage that looks like a French film set, or in the main Château or the wisteria-draped limestone guesthouse known as the Keys. The picket-fenced pool is a summer lounger’s dream, and the medieval alleyways of Saint-Émilion are a bike ride away through the vines. Les Belles Perdrix, the on-site Michelin-starred restaurant, uses almost exclusively seasonal local ingredients and is, by the admission of a neighbouring château owner on our visit, the best dining spot in Bordeaux.
Rooms from around £520 per night.
Airelles Château de Versailles, Le Grand Contrôle, Versailles
The most extraordinary hotel experience in France, and quite possibly in Europe. Set within the gates of the Palace of Versailles, Le Grand Contrôle offers 14 rooms and suites styled after the court of Louis XVI, with gilded chandeliers, marble fireplaces and antique armoires at every turn. Dinner is a five-course theatrical event, with waitstaff in period costume serving the Sun King’s favourite dishes under Alain Ducasse’s direction. After dark, when the imperial doors close to the public, guests embark on private guided tours of the palace: the off-limits royal dressing rooms, the Hall of Mirrors with no one else in it. That last experience, alone in one of the grandest rooms in Western history, is worth the room rate on its own.
Rooms from around £2,500 per night.
The Carlton Cannes, A Regent Hotel, Cannes
The best hotel in Cannes, restored and rebranded after a six-year renovation that closed it entirely for two and a half years. The century-old Boulevard de la Croisette grande dame reopened in spring 2023 with a peristyle garden courtyard, an infinity pool that becomes a skating rink in winter, Le C-Club Spa with Dr Barbara Sturm treatments, a fitness centre with a boxing ring and a private beach that still carries echoes of To Catch a Thief glamour. Upstairs, the reimagined sea-view rooms have a clean, unfussy beach-house feel. Come sundown, Bar °58 serves a tequila old-fashioned spiked with agave and bitter chocolate; Rüya handles dinner with sharing plates of Anatolian cuisine. The Carlton Cannes is back, and then some.
From around £480 per night.
L’Apogée Courchevel
The best ski hotel in Courchevel 1850, and one of the finest Alpine properties in France. Since opening in 2013, this Oetker Hotels address has attracted a loyal following of discerning skiers who return season after season. Entry-level deluxe rooms are well-proportioned for couples focused on the slopes; the four-bedroom penthouse occupies the entire top floor with a sauna, steam room, whirlpool bath and outdoor hot tub. The food is proudly Francophile: plump Burgundy snails, dauphiné ravioli and gratinated onion soup topped with comté are fixtures on a menu built for long post-ski evenings. The bar terrace, with fur blankets and cushioned chairs angled toward the mountains, is where the afternoon tends to go.
From around £2,700 per night.
