Golf Holidays in Europe: Where to Go in 2026/27

Europe is the most rewarding continent in the world for a golf holiday, and not simply for the quality of the courses. Within a short flight of the UK you can move from the pine-and-lake fairways of the Algarve to the cliff-top drama of the Portuguese Atlantic, the championship links-land of the Costa del Sol, or the eternal spring of Madeira and Gran Canaria. The question for 2026/27 is rarely whether to go, but where, and how to build a trip that plays to your group’s tastes.

This guide draws on more than four decades of arranging golf travel to set out the destinations worth your time, the courses worth your green fees, and the resorts worth waking up in. Every itinerary we create is tailor-made and ground-only, so the golf, the stay and the transfers are shaped entirely around you, with flights added as an ATOL-protected option.

If you are choosing a single destination for a first or a fiftieth golf holiday, the Algarve makes the strongest case in Europe. Its golf is unusually concentrated and unusually varied, from the storied championship turf of the Penina Golf Course at Portimao, Henry Cotton’s enduring masterpiece, to the resort-town buzz of Vilamoura, where Vila Gale Ampalius places you within easy reach of several celebrated layouts. For something quieter, Tivoli Carvoeiro commands one of the prettiest stretches of the western Algarve coast, while the AP Cabanas Beach & Nature Hotel near Tavira opens up the unhurried, lagoon-fringed eastern golf that many regulars consider the region’s best-kept secret. A week here can comfortably blend three or four contrasting courses without ever feeling like a march.

The stretch of Andalucian coast around Alcaidesa and Sotogrande is where serious golf meets serious hospitality. Fairmont La Hacienda Costa del Sol gives you two highly regarded courses on the doorstep and the kind of effortless service that turns a golf trip into a proper holiday, while SO/ Sotogrande Spa & Golf Resort is one of the most stylish bases in southern Europe, set among rolling cork-oak country a short drive from the region’s most famous fairways. This is the part of the Mediterranean to choose when the group wants its golf taken seriously and its evenings taken slowly, with the spa, the dining and the Andalucian light doing as much work as the courses themselves.

Just west of Lisbon, Cascais offers two of Europe’s most photogenic rounds. Oitavos Dunes Golf Club is a windswept, cliff-and-pine links routinely ranked among the continent’s finest, and Quinta da Marinha sits handsomely beside it, with Vila Gale Cascais a refined and well-placed base for both alongside the city’s restaurants and beaches. When the mainland cools, the Atlantic islands come into their own: Pestana Casino Park in Funchal pairs Madeira’s mild, evergreen climate and Oscar Niemeyer architecture with the island’s dramatic mountain golf, while Kumara Serenoa at Maspalomas delivers reliable Gran Canaria warmth and easy fairways through the depths of the European winter. For a northern French alternative, the belle-epoque elegance of Hotel Barriere Le Westminster at Le Touquet is a summer pleasure all its own.

The difference between a packaged golf holiday and a tailor-made one is the difference between fitting yourself to an itinerary and having one built around you. Rather than a fixed bundle of nights and tee times, we shape the whole trip to your group: the courses you most want to play, the room category that suits each traveller, the pace of golf against leisure, and the transfers between hotel and first tee handled so you never think about them. It means the foursome who want championship golf every morning and the partners who would rather have a spa afternoon are both looked after on the same trip. With more than forty years of relationships across these resorts, we secure the tee times and the rooms that genuinely matter, and price the holiday from £165 per person around what you actually want, not what a brochure decided in advance.