Where to go: October half-term 2026

Canary Islands

Spain's Atlantic archipelago, off north-west Africa, is Britain's favourite winter-sun escape: around 21–22°C by day in January, roughly four and a half hours from London and on the same clock as the UK. Tenerife and Gran Canaria pair big resorts with volcanic peaks; Lanzarote and Fuerteventura are flatter, windier and built around beaches.

Cyprus

Look beyond the resort strips and Cyprus offers Roman mosaics at Paphos, frescoed Byzantine chapels in the Troodos pine forests and a capital divided by a UN buffer zone since 1974.

Malta

Malta squeezes 7,000 years of history into an archipelago smaller than the Isle of Wight: megalithic temples older than the pyramids, the honey-stoned fortress capital of the Knights of St John, and Caravaggio's largest painting.

Red Sea coast

Egypt's Red Sea resorts are the nearest winter sun to the UK with a sea above 20°C all year: about five hours to Sharm el-Sheikh or Hurghada for coral reefs a short swim from the beach.

Jordan

Watching Petra's Treasury emerge from the narrow Siq is one of travel's genuine goosebump moments, and camping in Wadi Rum's red desert under a clear sky follows close behind.

Israel

Israel squeezes Mediterranean beaches, desert canyons and some of the world's most significant religious sites into a country roughly the size of Wales.

Spain

Barcelona's Sagrada Família has been under construction since 1882 and is astonishing regardless, while Granada's Alhambra is among the finest surviving Moorish palaces anywhere.

Greece

Athens' Acropolis has watched over the city for nearly 2,500 years, Santorini's caldera is one of the Mediterranean's great views, and Meteora's monasteries perch on pillars of rock in Thessaly.

Portugal

Portugal fits a great deal into a narrow strip of Atlantic coast.

Sicily

Greek temples, Arab-Norman Palermo, Baroque towns and an active volcano share one island, with beaches and a food culture quite distinct from mainland Italy's.

Crete

Greece's largest island packs Minoan palaces, Venetian harbour towns, the Samaria Gorge and some of the country's best beaches into one long, mountainous strip about four hours from London.

Costa del Sol & Andalucía coast

Málaga's coast is mainland Spain's easiest sun destination from the UK: frequent flights, a train linking the airport to the resorts and around 300 days of sunshine a year.

Mauritius

Mauritius pairs turquoise lagoons and coral-fringed beaches with a mountainous interior of gorges, waterfalls and tea estates, and a culture blending Indian, African, French and Chinese roots.

Kenya

Kenya is where the modern safari took shape: wildebeest plunge across the Mara River, elephants roam beneath Kilimanjaro's snows at Amboseli, and Nairobi has lions within sight of its skyline.

Brazil

Brazil works on a continental scale: Amazon rainforest, the Pantanal wetland and more than 7,000 km of Atlantic coast.

Oman

Oman is the Arabia of forts on rocky outcrops, date-palm oases, dunes and mountain canyons, with very little high-rise excess.

Seychelles

Seychelles scatters 115 islands across the western Indian Ocean, but most visits focus on three granite isles: Mahé, Praslin and La Digue.

Florida

Florida is the UK's classic long-haul family holiday: Orlando's Disney and Universal parks, NASA's launch site on the Space Coast, soft white Gulf coast beaches and the drive down the Keys.

Madagascar

Madagascar has been isolated for so long that most of its wildlife exists nowhere else: more than 100 kinds of lemur, chameleons small enough to sit on a fingertip, and baobabs lining red-earth roads.

Comoros

The Comoros, three volcanic islands between Mozambique and Madagascar, see only a trickle of tourists.

Malawi

Lake Malawi runs along much of the country's eastern edge, a freshwater inland sea whose clear water holds hundreds of colourful cichlid species found nowhere else.

Mozambique

The Bazaruto Archipelago has some of the clearest water in the Indian Ocean, Tofo's reefs draw whale sharks and manta rays, and the coral-stone streets of Ilha de Moçambique recall four centuries as a Portuguese trading hub.

Tanzania

Tanzania is classic safari country: the Serengeti's great migration, the wildlife-packed Ngorongoro Crater and Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest peak, all lie in the north.

Zanzibar

Zanzibar pairs Stone Town's Swahili, Arab and Indian history with white-sand beaches and a bath-warm Indian Ocean, often as the finale to a Tanzanian safari.

Morocco

A short flight from the UK, Morocco offers astonishing variety: the labyrinthine medinas of Marrakech and Fez, the blue lanes of Chefchaouen, High Atlas trekking and a night among the Erg Chebbi dunes near Merzouga.

Algeria

Africa's largest country runs from a Mediterranean coast of Roman ruins and French-era boulevards to Saharan sandstone plateaus, where Tassili n'Ajjer's rock paintings record a greener past.

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Ottoman bazaars, Austro-Hungarian boulevards and raw recent history sit side by side in a mountainous country still lightly touched by mass tourism.

Serbia

Serbia is the Balkans at full volume: Belgrade's riverside clubs and kafanas, Novi Sad's Austro-Hungarian streets, medieval monasteries painted with Byzantine-style frescoes and the forested gorges of the Drina and Danube.

Czech Republic

Prague's Gothic and Baroque old town is the draw, but it is worth going further: Český Krumlov's castle above a loop of the Vltava, Kutná Hora's bone chapel, the spa colonnades of Karlovy Vary and the sandstone towers of Bohemian Switzerland.

France

France rewards travellers who look beyond Paris: Renaissance châteaux along the Loire, Mont-Saint-Michel rising from its tidal bay, Alpine trails beneath Mont Blanc, lavender and hill villages in Provence, and vineyards from Champagne to Bordeaux.

Kosovo

Kosovo, which declared independence in 2008 and has Europe's youngest population, is one of the continent's cheapest places to travel.

North Macedonia

Lake Ohrid's Byzantine churches look out over some of Europe's clearest water, and Skopje sets an Ottoman bazaar beside a startling crowd of modern statues.