Five destinations to have on your radar this year

Community and creativity are reshaping daily life in this edit of storied destinations, set to define the travel conversation for 2026. Each offers more than surface appeal – through architectural ambition, grassroots cultural energy, or a renewed sense of purpose – and rewards visitors willing to look a little deeper.

Where to travel in 2026

Hiroshima, Japan

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Eighty years on, Hiroshima is no longer defined by a single moment in time, but by what emerged from it: a city rebuilt through architecture. From the ruins of wartime devastation came a bold modernist vision, shaped by figures such as Kenzo Tange and Togo Murano, later extended by contemporary masters including Tadao Ando, Shigeru Ban and Jun Aoki, among others. That legacy feels newly energised today. The launch of the three-yearly Hiroshima Architecture Exhibition this year positions the city as a centre for architectural discourse, uniting Pritzker Prize winners, experimental practices and emerging voices. When the festival is not on, highlights remain plentiful: from Shigeru Ban’s Simose Art Garden Villa to Kisho Kurokawa’s restored Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art. Beyond the city, the wider prefecture unfolds as a constellation of design destinations in its own right.

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Hong Kong

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Few skylines are as instantly recognisable as Hong Kong’s, but to understand the city is to look beyond its serrated outline of glass towers and jade-green peaks. Long defined as a global financial hub and gateway between East and West, Hong Kong today reveals itself as something more layered: a place where heritage, nature and creativity reshape its identity. Icons such as I.M. Pei’s Bank of China Tower and Norman Foster’s HSBC Building anchor the skyline, while adaptive-reuse projects signal a shift in mindset. Tai Kwun, PMQ and The Mills transform former police quarters and factories into cultural engines. Beyond Central, districts such as Sham Shui Po pulse with everyday life and creative reinvention, where design studios, tofu shops and neon-lit markets coexist. Add to this more than 40 per cent protected green space, and Hong Kong emerges as a city of rare duality – resilient, evolving and deeply alive.

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San Miguel de Allende, Mexico

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Along the cobbled streets of San Miguel de Allende, colour seeps from every corner. Painted façades, marigold-framed doorways and sunlit courtyards set the rhythm of daily life, anchored by the city’s distinctive pink parish church rising above the rooftops. Long admired for its historic character, the highland town today is experiencing a renewed creative energy, drawing designers, artists and makers in search of light, pace and a deeper connection to craft. Once a magnet for 20th-century painters, writers and intellectuals, San Miguel is again evolving. Studios, galleries and small design-led businesses sit alongside long-established workshops specialising in textiles, ceramics and copper, encouraging close collaboration and a slower, more considered way of working.

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Tashkent, Uzbekistan

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Set midway between Europe and China, Tashkent rises from the Central Asian steppe as one of the Silk Road’s most layered cities. Shaped by Arab, Persian, Mongol and Russian rule, it became the capital of an independent Uzbekistan in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Few places reveal history so vividly. Ancient Islamic quarters sit beside Imperial Russian boulevards, Stalinist monuments and the boldly imaginative Soviet modernism of the 1960s and 70s. While parts of that legacy are being reshaped by new marble-clad developments, many landmarks endure: the Hotel Uzbekistan, the sculptural Chorsu Bazaar and a metro system whose chandeliers and marble halls feel closer to a palace than public transport. Emerging from decades of isolation, Tashkent remains refreshingly untouched by mass tourism, with leafy parks, open-air markets and a café culture that feels unhurried and genuine. It is a city rediscovering itself.

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Tbilisi, Georgia

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The Georgian capital is defined by a fiercely independent cultural spirit forged over millennia and sharpened by adversity. While the country’s political climate is fraught, its creative life remains defiantly alive. Artists, designers, musicians and chefs continue to build, make and gather, sustaining a city where culture functions as both refuge and resistance. Today, Georgian wine, food and hospitality are legendary. New spaces reflect this momentum, including the recently opened Telegraph Hotel, which has quickly become a social anchor for the city’s creative community. From neighbourhood hotels, restaurants and nightclubs that double as communal living rooms, to studios where fashion, art and craft evolve hand-in-hand with tradition, Tbilisi is a city that has learned how to endure.

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