Twelve of the Indian Ocean's Twenty Best Resorts Are Maldivian

The results of Condé Nast Traveler's 2026 Readers' Choice Awards are out, and the Maldives has rarely had a better morning. When the Indian Ocean resort list was counted, twelve of its twenty places belonged to Maldivian islands. The country also took the No. 1 island in the Africa and Indian Ocean region, the world's No. 1 beach outside the United States, and a top-ten spot on the global destination-spa list — a set of results that no other country in the region came close to matching.

The Readers' Choice Awards are not an editors' ranking, which is precisely why the industry watches them. Winners are decided entirely by the magazine's readership — the industry's longest-running readers' poll — which votes each year between April and June on the places its members have actually stayed. The 2026 edition drew responses from more than 750,000 travellers, and the results were published on October 6, online first and then in the November issue. The list measures not marketing budgets but the verdict of guests who paid, flew, and came home with an opinion.

The Indian Ocean resort list

The region's top honour went just west: Cheval Blanc, in the Seychelles, was voted the Indian Ocean's best resort. From there the list turns emphatically Maldivian. The St. Regis Maldives Vommuli Resort, in Dhaalu Atoll, placed second; Fushifaru, a small Lhaviyani island better known for its house reef than its headcount, took fourth; and The Ritz-Carlton Maldives, Fari Islands closed out the top five.

The depth of the field is the real story. Niyama Private Islands placed seventh, Velaa Private Island ninth, Milaidhoo tenth and Patina Maldives, Fari Islands eleventh — before COMO Cocoa Island (twelfth), JOALI (fifteenth), Anantara Kihavah (sixteenth) and LUX* South Ari Atoll (nineteenth) filled in the back half. Set against the Seychellois and Mauritian entries that complete the twenty, the arithmetic is blunt: twelve of twenty, and nobody else in double figures. The full list, with the essentials on each Maldivian winner:

No editors, no jury — three-quarters of a million readers, and twelve of the Indian Ocean's twenty best resorts came back Maldivian.

A beach, a spa and a debutant

Two results outside the resort list deserve their own line. Veligandu Island Beach — the ring of sand around one small island near Rasdhoo — was voted the world's No. 1 beach outside the United States, ahead of marquee names like Grace Bay and Bora Bora. And on the global destination-spa list, JOALI BEING, the wellbeing island in Raa Atoll, placed eighth in the world — the only Maldivian property on a list led by Europe's great thermal and alpine retreats.

The resort list's most striking line, though, belongs to its youngest name. .Here — two natural islands in Baa Atoll joined by a sweeping sandbank, styled with a full stop at the front — welcomed its first guests only in December 2025, meaning it had been open for barely six months when voting closed. It debuted at No. 6 in the Indian Ocean, ahead of resorts with decades of reputation behind them.

What the map says

Plot the twelve and the spread becomes the point. Baa Atoll — the UNESCO Biosphere Reserve — placed three of them, with the .Here debut joining Milaidhoo and Anantara Kihavah; Dhaalu and North Malé took two apiece; and the rest scatter from Noonu to Lhaviyani to South Ari. The vote reads like a tour of the whole archipelago rather than a cluster around the capital's seaplane routes — which may be the most Maldivian result of all. The excellence is not an address here. It is the country.

The full category lists are on Condé Nast Traveler's site, and the Maldivian winners are all bookable islands rather than trophies in a cabinet — our guide to the best Maldives resorts sets the twelve against the rest of the field.