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Five Hotels Worth Planning Your Year Around

The Most Anticipated New Luxury Openings of 2026 — Selected by CTS

Every year produces its share of noteworthy openings. A renovated grand dame returns to form. A new-build arrives in an established market and immediately raises the bar. And then there are the rarer occasions — perhaps four or five times in any given year — when something genuinely new enters the world. A hotel so considered in its conception, so precise in its execution, that it shifts what the industry believes is possible.

2026 is one of those years.

From a Kengo Kuma–designed ryokan in the ancient backstreets of Kyoto to a French operator making its most ambitious international statement yet on a garden island in Venice, the openings below represent the best of what travel can offer when vision, craft, and location converge without compromise. CTS has tracked each of these properties through development. These are the five we believe are worth planning your year around.

Properties featured are among the most anticipated hotel openings of 2026, selected by the CTS editorial team.

01 — Opening April 2026

Airelles Venezia, Palladio | Venice, Italy

Venice has more luxury hotels than almost anywhere in Europe, and yet it has always been strangely underserved at the very top of the market. The Cipriani has held court for decades. The Gritti carries its own legend. What the city has lacked is a true arrival — a hotel that feels like an event in itself.

Airelles Venezia, Palladio is that arrival.

The French operator has chosen a site of extraordinary rarity: the former home of the beloved Bauer Palladio, three buildings on the Giudecca with a two-and-a-half-acre garden at their centre. In a city built on water, where every inch of ground is centuries old and fiercely contested, this is not a detail. It is the entire argument.

The Garden, the Suites, the Church

Forty-five rooms have been configured across the three buildings, each positioned to draw the garden — and the views of St. Mark’s Square across the water — into the stay as deliberately as any interior detail. Three pools. A kids’ club that never compromises the atmosphere for those without children. And for couples with something to celebrate: the onsite church of Santa Maria della Presentazione, which will be available for weddings both planned and, if the occasion demands it, impromptu.

The four-bedroom Presidential Suite occupies its own standalone structure. Its views across to St. Mark’s are among the finest of any hotel room in Europe. These are not views you look at briefly before turning back to the room. They are the reason the room exists.

“In a city built on water, where every inch of ground is centuries old and fiercely contested, a two-and-a-half-acre garden is not a detail. It is the entire argument.”

Airelles Venezia, Palladio opens April 2026. Enquire through CTS for availability and preferred rates.

Photos courtesy of @airellesvenice
 on Instagram.

02 — Opening March 2026

Capella Kyoto | Kyoto, Japan

Singapore-headquartered Capella has spent years quietly earning its place among the world’s most serious luxury hotel operators. Its Bangkok property led the 2024 World’s 50 Best Hotels list. Neil Jacobs, co-founder of Six Senses, has taken an advisory role with the brand. These are not accidents. They are the results of a company that operates with uncommon restraint and precision.

Its arrival in Kyoto is the most considered Japanese luxury hotel opening in years.

Kengo Kuma, Miyagawa-cho, and the Onsen Suite

The 89-room property sits in Miyagawa-cho, one of Kyoto’s most historically intact districts — steps from the Kaburenjo theatre, where geiko and maiko have performed for centuries, and from Kenninji, the city’s oldest Zen temple. Kengo Kuma, the Japanese architect who redesigned the National Stadium for the Tokyo Olympics and whose work consistently finds a way to honour place without replicating it, has designed the building. Rooms begin at 538 square feet, which is unusual generosity for Kyoto, where space is expensive and rooms are often intimate to a fault.

The six Onsen suites are the heart of the property. Each has its own private indoor hot spring — a bathing experience that draws on centuries of Japanese ritual and delivers it with the precision that defines Capella’s approach to every detail. These are not amenities. They are the reason this hotel will be difficult to leave.

Capella Kyoto opens March 2026. Contact CTS for early reservations and exclusive access.

Photos courtesy of @capellakyoto
 on Instagram.

03 — Opening Q3 2026

Palazzo Sozzini Malavolti | Siena, Italy

Siena is one of Italy’s most visited cities and, paradoxically, one of its least well-served for high-end overnight stays. The city has long been a day trip from Florence — a function of geography but also of the absence of accommodation worthy of a longer visit. That changes with Palazzo Sozzini Malavolti.

Housed in a restored 18th-century palazzo — the only luxury hotel in Siena’s historic centre — this is the flagship opening for Emblems, Accor’s quietly launched new ultra-luxury collection. The concept is deliberately independent-minded: each Emblems property is intended to feel entirely singular, rooted in its location, carrying no corporate imprint beyond the commitment to quality that the group provides.

The Caves, the Palio, the Piazza

The spa occupies the palazzo’s original caves, carved from the same tufa stone that runs beneath the medieval city’s streets. Above ground, the rooms sit within a building that has watched the Palio — Siena’s twice-yearly bareback horse race, staged in the Campo since the 13th century — from its upper floors for three hundred years.

For those who have always passed through Siena between trains, this is the hotel that removes the excuse to leave.

Palazzo Sozzini Malavolti opens Q3 2026. CTS can arrange Palio access and private city experiences.

Photos courtesy of @palazzosozzinimalavolti
 on Instagram.

04 — Opening Q3 2026

The Malkai | Oman

Oman has long been the Middle East’s most underestimated destination — a country of extraordinary geological drama, ancient trading culture, and a discretion that makes its neighbours look performative. What it has lacked is a hospitality offering equal to the landscape.

The Malkai arrives as three properties at once, each in a distinct setting across the country. This is not a hotel group making a cautious market entry. It is a declaration.

Barka, Hajar, Sharqiyah — and Your Own Private Guide

The three Malkai properties sit across Oman’s most geographically distinct regions: Barka on the coast, adjacent to date farms and the Arabian Sea; Hajar, deep in the rugged mountain interior; and Sharqiyah, within the desert itself. Each property holds fifteen Bedouin-inspired tented rooms — generous in proportion, considered in every detail, and designed to disappear into the landscape rather than impose upon it.

Every booking across the three properties includes a private driver, vehicle, and guide for the duration of the stay. This is not a concierge who books restaurants. This is someone who understands the terrain, the culture, and the conditions — and whose sole purpose is to ensure that the experience extends from the tent to the horizon and back.

“Oman is the Middle East’s most underestimated destination — a country of extraordinary geological drama, ancient trading culture, and a discretion that makes its neighbours look performative.”

The Malkai opens Q3 2026. CTS can coordinate multi-property Oman circuits across all three sites.

Photos courtesy of @themalkai

 on Instagram.

05 — Opening December 2026

Singita Elela | Okavango Delta, Botswana

Singita needs no introduction to anyone serious about African safari. The company has spent three decades defining what it means to operate at the highest level on the continent — building camps that hold their ground alongside the landscape rather than apologising for their presence in it, and delivering a quality of guiding and wildlife experience that other operators benchmark themselves against.

Singita Elela is its first property in Botswana. And it is the most ambitious thing the brand has ever built.

Eight Camps. One Concession. 420,000 Acres.

The lodge is configured as eight self-contained camps ranging from one to four bedrooms. Each operates as a standalone property — with its own kitchen, dining area, wellness site, pool, and firepit — set within a 420,000-acre private concession in the Okavango Delta. The design is circular and elevated on stilts, so that the surrounding landscape is present at every angle and at every hour.

The wildlife that moves through this concession includes black and white rhinoceros — populations that require this scale of protected terrain to survive. Black and white rhino, together, in the Okavango. There are very few places on earth where that sentence is possible.

Singita Elela opens in December. It will be fully booked before most people know it exists. CTS is already taking enquiries.

Singita Elela opens December 2026. Contact CTS now — early enquiries are strongly advised.

Photos courtesy of @osingita_

 on Instagram.

Experience These with CTS

Five Openings. One Call to Make.

CTS has tracked each of these properties through development and maintains direct relationships with their teams. From securing first-wave reservations at Capella Kyoto to coordinating multi-leg Oman circuits through The Malkai — or ensuring your stay at Singita Elela is confirmed before the property reaches public availability — our specialists handle the details that cannot be left to chance.

These are not hotels you book six weeks out. They are the kind of openings that reward the clients who move early.

Access extras with CTS the magic wand appears here often.

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