THE TRAVEL TRENDS SHAPING 2026 by Yves de Contades
Every January, the travel industry publishes its predictions with the solemn confidence of a sommelier announcing a vintage. Bold claims are made. Infographics proliferate. Someone always discovers “slow travel” as though it were a radical new philosophy rather than what the rest of us have been doing since we missed a connecting flight in Zurich and decided to make the best of it.
But 2026 is genuinely interesting. Something has shifted in the way people of discernment are choosing to move through the world, and for once, the trends are worth a second glass.
Le Grand Retour: Europe’s Secondary Cities
For years, the cognoscenti have been telling each other that Venice is finished, that Paris is exhausting, that Barcelona has eaten itself alive with tourism. Quelle surprise, then, to find that the traveller with real taste has quietly relocated the goalposts. The conversation is no longer about avoiding the obvious; it is about rediscovering the overlooked.
Bologna has become the new Florence. Not because Florence is ruined (it isn’t, if you know where to go), but because Bologna rewards properly: better food, fewer queues, the same terracotta light on stone that makes you feel like you are living inside a Caravaggio.
Lyon is having a similar moment. Trieste, that melancholy Habsburg ghost town on the Adriatic, has been quietly reinventing itself as the thinking traveller’s retreat. It has Aperol-hour light, James Joyce associations, and a decent number of hotels that haven’t yet discovered the word “boutique.”
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