If you've been toying with the idea of spending Christmas and New Year in the Maldives, COMO Hotels and Resorts has just detailed exactly what that would look like — and it runs well beyond a turkey dinner on the sand.
The group's two Maldivian properties, COMO Cocoa Island in South Malé Atoll and COMO Maalifushi in Thaa Atoll, have both released festive programmes running from December 2026 into January 2027, each with its own personality.
Cocoa Island is going Italian for the holidays. Christmas Eve brings a five-course Italian dinner at Ufaa restaurant with live music, followed by a Christmas Day dinner under the stars and a steak and seafood barbecue on 29 December. There are pasta and risotto cooking classes, high tea at Faru Bar and an Indian thali night for contrast. A nice touch for anglers: sunrise fishing trips on 20 and 27 December, with chefs turning your catch into a four-course meal spanning sashimi, Maldivian-style soup and coconut curry. New Year's Eve is a White Soirée at Ufaa with live cooking stations and a band. Elsewhere on the schedule: sunset cruises, house reef snorkelling, nurse shark and turtle excursions, night snorkelling, treasure hunts for kids and outdoor cinema. On the wellness side, Japanese practitioner Yuki Nishikubo offers acupuncture and Shiatsu treatments from 16 November to 27 December, alongside yoga, Pilates, sound baths and breathwork through COMO Shambhala.
Maalifushi, meanwhile, is dressing up for a Tropical Gatsby gala on Madi Beach to ring in 2027 — cocktails and canapés first, then dinner, live music, a DJ and fireworks over the water. Its Christmas line-up includes a 'Christmas Around the World' five-course dinner, a Noble Vines wine dinner pairing French wines with four courses on 27 December, Japanese nights with sushi, sake pairings and yakiniku, and a Fisherman's Table experience where you visit a local fish market before the kitchen cooks your haul. Families get Play by COMO kids' activities, marine safaris led by a resident biologist and coral planting on 27 December. Visiting practitioner Kimberly Rose Kneier will offer acupuncture, Qi Gong and traditional Chinese medicine sessions from 1 December to 10 January, with a free yoga class on New Year's Day.
Both resorts are also running festive booking offers with savings of up to 25 per cent on room rates, subject to conditions — worth checking if a Maldivian Christmas has been on the long-list rather than the short-list.
Why it matters: festive island escapes sell out early, and these programmes give a genuine sense of what your days would actually look like — whether that's snorkelling with nurse sharks, a sake pairing dinner, or watching fireworks from a beach in Thaa Atoll. It suits couples after a wellness-leaning retreat as much as families wanting structured kids' activities, and the up-to-25-per-cent discount softens the usual peak-season price tag.
