Tripadvisor's Travelers' Choice Awards have crowned Madeira, Portugal's subtropical Atlantic island, the world's top trending destination for 2026 — and that's both good news and a deadline. The list flags places rising fast in reviews and ratings, so the island's under-the-radar status may not last long. It welcomed roughly 2.5 million visitors in 2025; compare that to the 16 million-plus who flooded Bali, Tripadvisor's number one overall destination, the year before.
Madeira has long drawn comparisons to Hawaii and Bali thanks to its volcanic peaks, green valleys and dramatic coastline, but it's an easy reach from Europe: Funchal's international airport (FNC) takes nonstop flights from major European cities and even New York. Temperatures sit between the low 60s Fahrenheit in winter and high 70s in summer, so there's no bad month to go.
Start in Funchal, the centuries-old capital. Monte Palace, sitting in the hills above the city, earned a Best of the Best Award for 2026 — it's a 19th-century palace wrapped in botanical gardens planted in the 1980s, with bamboo groves, flamingo lagoons and a museum of modern and contemporary art. Back down in the Old Town, Zona Velha, the cobbled lanes lead to Blandy's Wine Lodge, where the Blandy family began exporting Madeira wine in the 1800s; tours come with tastings. For lunch, Peixaria no Mercado serves fresh seafood inside the island's circa-1940 market.
Nature is the real headline. Madeira's Laurisilva forest, a UNESCO World Heritage Site covering more than 37,000 acres, is one of the oldest surviving forests on Earth — a misty laurel woodland you can walk along the levadas, centuries-old irrigation channels that thread through it. Serious hikers should tackle the PR1 Vereda do Areeiro, a near-4-mile point-to-point route (it reopened in that format after a 2024 wildfire) linking Pico do Areeiro at almost 6,000 feet to Pico Ruivo, Portugal's third-highest summit at over 6,100 feet. Expect cloud-level views, endemic birds and the famous "Stairway to Heaven" staircase.
On the coast, Porto Moniz in the northwest has natural lava-rock swimming pools, sheltered from Atlantic surf and lifeguard-supervised. Fifteen minutes east, Praia do Porto do Seixal is a public black-sand beach backed by cliffs.
The takeaway: this is Hawaii-style scenery with European prices and a fraction of the crowds — for now. Once an island tops a global trending list, flights and hotels tend to follow. If Madeira is on your list for 2026, booking early is the move.