Watching a total solar eclipse over the Valley of the Kings or seeing up to 40 Viking-style ships sail along the Normandy coast might sound like a fever dream, but both are happening in 2027. They’re just two of the highlights on National Geographic’s Best of the World list for next year, and it’s shaping up to be a big one.
Every year, Nat Geo asks its global network of writers, photographers and explorers to pick the places most worth travelling to in the year ahead. This time around there are 25 of them, spread across six continents, and each one has made the cut because something new is happening there in 2027, whether that’s a big opening, a cultural revival or a major anniversary.
It’s a big year for history buffs. Luxor will be plunged into more than six minutes of daytime twilight during a total solar eclipse on August 2. And if that’s not enough, the Winter Palace hotel where Howard Carter announced he’d found Tutankhamun’s tomb reopens in July. Plus, Egypt’s first luxury sleeper train starts rolling between Cairo and Aswan.
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Normandy is celebrating 1,000 years since William the Conqueror was born with more than a thousand events, and you can even pay your respects at his tomb in Caen, or at least what’s left of him, which is just a thigh bone.
In Chengdu, it’s 100 years since a farmer fixing a ditch struck jade and uncovered the Shu, a Bronze Age kingdom that left no written records behind, and its gold masks and a towering bronze figure now fill two of the city’s museums. And in Peru’s cloud forests, a new trail at the ancient citadel of Kuélap lets you watch archaeologists at work.
Adventurers, meanwhile, should look south. When Charles Darwin sailed past Cape Froward in 1834, he called it a ‘scene of desolation’, but by the end of 2027, the southernmost tip of mainland South America should be Chile’s newest national park. In Malawi, conservation work means you can now spot lions, leopards, elephants, rhinos and buffalo (safari’s so-called big five) without the crowds you’d find elsewhere in Africa.
Armenia is opening up its wild mountains to hikers, with old shepherds’ paths being restored as part of the Transcaucasian Trail, which will eventually stretch around 1,900 miles across the region. The Ozarks in the US have Arkansas’ first mountain bike park with a chairlift to take you up the hill. Fancy something a bit gentler? Dumfries and Galloway in Scotland is opening the Scottish Dark Sky Observatory in midsummer, complete with a 360-degree planetarium.
As for the Readers’ Choice winner, it goes to Catalina Island. Just an hour’s ferry ride from Long Beach in California, it has wild hiking trails, tiny native foxes and a herd of bison descended from animals brought over for a 1920s Hollywood film.
The 25 must-visit destinations for 2027
- Vestland, Norway
- Penang, Malaysia
- Luxor, Egypt
- Madison, Wisconsin, USA
- Puerto Rico
- Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland
- Niigata, Japan
- Chengdu, China
- Pacific Coast Highway, California, USA
- Jaipur, India
- Grenada
- Salvador, Brazil
- Cape Froward, Chile
- Santander, Spain
- Normandy, France
- Southern Ozarks, USA
- Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
- Transcaucasian Trail, Armenia
- Melbourne, Australia
- Leipzig, Germany
- Baltimore, Maryland, USA
- Malawi
- Maya Ka’an, Mexico
- Gdańsk, Gdynia and Sopot, Poland
- Kuélap, Peru
- Readers’ Choice winner: Catalina Island, California, USA
Did you see that Finland is offering single people an all-expenses-paid trip next year?
Plus: Airbnb hosts can no longer ask guests to do chores.
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