Cape Town has landed 19th place on Time Out's ranking of the world's 22 best Christmas destinations for 2026, and the reason is refreshingly simple: while most of the list is shovelling snow, the Mother City is hitting the beach.
The English publication singled out Cape Town's Southern Hemisphere summer as its main draw. December days are long and sunny, with temperatures in the mid-20s Celsius — the exact opposite of the frosty, fairy-lit winters that dominate the rest of the list. In Cape Town, Christmas is a braai on the lawn rather than mulled wine in gloves.
The city's festive calendar has a distinctly local flavour, too. There are open-air carol concerts at Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden, the annual Festive Lights Switch-On that draws big crowds, and the beloved Boxing Day braai tradition. For travellers tired of the same dark-afternoon European Christmas routine, it's a genuinely different take on the season.
Cape Town wasn't the only warm-weather entry. Sydney came in ninth — the only Southern Hemisphere city ahead of it — while Marrakech, Phuket and Guatemala City also made the lower half of the list. But the top spots went firmly to the classics: New York City took first place, praised for its Fifth Avenue window displays, the Rockefeller Center tree and its open-air holiday markets. London came second, followed by Lapland in Finland, Copenhagen and Edinburgh. Rounding out the top ten were Zagreb, Reykjavik, Bruges and Sydney.
Further down, the list gets more interesting for travellers after something less obvious: Vienna, Prague, Nuremberg and Colmar bring the old-world Christmas market energy; Funchal in Madeira offers a mild Atlantic take; Tokyo and Singapore represent Asia; and Nuuk in Greenland makes a wild-card appearance.
So who should care about Cape Town's ranking? Anyone planning a festive break who wants sunshine with their celebration. Booking a December trip means combining summer sightseeing — Table Mountain, Cape Point, the Winelands, beach days at Camps Bay or Boulders Beach — with festive events most northern-hemisphere visitors have never experienced. There are trade-offs: December is peak season, so flights and accommodation cost more and need booking well ahead, and you should expect crowds at the big attractions. But for anyone who has ever wished Christmas came with a long daylight evening and a swim, Cape Town makes a strong case that it can.
Whether 19th place is fair is up for debate — locals may well argue the city deserved higher — but it's a useful nudge for travellers weighing up a warm-weather festive alternative to the usual European circuit.
