Koh Samui just topped a much bigger list — World's Best Island 2026

We covered Samui's Asia-Pacific award last month — turns out that wasn't the ceiling. This is the bigger one. 🏝️

The actual result

Travel + Leisure's reader-voted World's Best Awards named Koh Samui the World's Best Island for 2026, with a reader score of 95.64 — narrowly ahead of the Maldives (95.38), and above the Galápagos Islands, Bali and Phuket, which rounded out the global top five. It's Samui's first time winning this particular award, taking the crown from Páros, Greece, which topped the 2025 list.

This is separate from (and a step up from) the Asia-Pacific regional award we covered last month — that one was Travel + Leisure's editors' Luxury Awards for the Asia-Pacific region specifically. This is the global, reader-voted ranking, over 207,000 votes, against every island in the world.

What Thai officials are saying

The response so far has been about more than just celebrating — reporting suggests the focus is shifting to managing growth well rather than just chasing bigger visitor numbers: stronger visitor safety measures, public infrastructure improvements, and tighter action against unlicensed businesses are all being floated as priorities alongside the win.

What this actually means if you're on Phangan

More global attention on Samui tends to mean more attention on the whole island group — Samui is most people's gateway in, whether they're headed here, to Koh Tao, or island-hopping between all three. Expect ferry traffic and general visitor numbers across the Gulf islands to keep climbing rather than level off.