Where to go: Easter holidays 2027

Gambia

Mainland Africa's smallest country is a thin strip either side of the River Gambia, around six hours' flight from London and on GMT. Most visitors come for Atlantic beaches and birding, with more than 500 species recorded, but the river leads inland to Kunta Kinteh Island's slave-trade history, chimpanzee islands and ancient stone circles.

Cape Verde

Ten volcanic islands some 600km off Senegal, each with its own personality: flat, windy Sal and Boa Vista for beaches and kitesurfing, vertiginous green Santo Antão for some of the Atlantic's finest hiking, Fogo's active volcano, and Mindelo's music bars, home town of the singer Cesária Évora.

Red Sea coast

Egypt's Red Sea resorts are the nearest winter sun to the UK with a sea above 20°C all year: about five hours to Sharm el-Sheikh or Hurghada for coral reefs a short swim from the beach.

Jordan

Watching Petra's Treasury emerge from the narrow Siq is one of travel's genuine goosebump moments, and camping in Wadi Rum's red desert under a clear sky follows close behind.

Israel

Israel squeezes Mediterranean beaches, desert canyons and some of the world's most significant religious sites into a country roughly the size of Wales.

Cyprus

Look beyond the resort strips and Cyprus offers Roman mosaics at Paphos, frescoed Byzantine chapels in the Troodos pine forests and a capital divided by a UN buffer zone since 1974.

Malta

Malta squeezes 7,000 years of history into an archipelago smaller than the Isle of Wight: megalithic temples older than the pyramids, the honey-stoned fortress capital of the Knights of St John, and Caravaggio's largest painting.

Madeira

Portugal's Atlantic island is a year-round walking and sunshine destination: Funchal rarely drops below 19°C by day in winter and seldom tops 27°C in summer.

Portugal

Portugal fits a great deal into a narrow strip of Atlantic coast.

Tunisia

Tunisia fits Roman ruins, Saharan dunes and Mediterranean beaches into one compact, affordable country.

Greece

Athens' Acropolis has watched over the city for nearly 2,500 years, Santorini's caldera is one of the Mediterranean's great views, and Meteora's monasteries perch on pillars of rock in Thessaly.

Canary Islands

Spain's Atlantic archipelago, off north-west Africa, is Britain's favourite winter-sun escape: around 21–22°C by day in January, roughly four and a half hours from London and on the same clock as the UK. Tenerife and Gran Canaria pair big resorts with volcanic peaks; Lanzarote and Fuerteventura are flatter, windier and built around beaches.

Vietnam

Vietnam stretches some 1,650 km from the karst mountains of the Chinese border to the Mekong Delta, and a north–south journey is one of Asia's great trips.

Dominican Republic

The Dominican Republic is best known for Punta Cana's all-inclusive beaches, but it has far more depth: Santo Domingo's Ciudad Colonial is the oldest continuously inhabited European city in the Americas, humpback whales gather in Samaná Bay each winter, and Pico Duarte rises above 3,000 metres.

Costa Rica

Around a quarter of Costa Rica is protected, and its wildlife is unusually easy to see: sloths and capuchins in Manuel Antonio, nesting turtles at Tortuguero, quetzals in Monteverde's cloud forest.

Trinidad and Tobago

Trinidad is the multicultural engine of this twin-island nation, home of Carnival, calypso, the steelpan and street food such as doubles; little Tobago is the place for quiet beaches, coral reefs and rainforest.

Jamaica

Jamaica is more than its all-inclusive north coast: Kingston's reggae history and food scene, the cool coffee country of the Blue Mountains, Portland's rainforest rivers and the slow south coast around Treasure Beach.

Antigua and Barbuda

Antigua's tourist board counts 365 beaches, and the coastline makes the claim feel plausible, but the island also holds the Caribbean's best-preserved Georgian naval dockyard at English Harbour.

Saint Lucia

Saint Lucia's twin Pitons rise straight from the sea above Soufrière in one of the Caribbean's defining views.

Barbados

Calm Caribbean bays, a wild Atlantic coast and a deep vein of history share an island just 34 km long.

Florida

Florida is the UK's classic long-haul family holiday: Orlando's Disney and Universal parks, NASA's launch site on the Space Coast, soft white Gulf coast beaches and the drive down the Keys.

Bahamas

Some 700 islands and thousands of cays are strewn across the shallow Bahama Banks, whose water is about as clear as the Atlantic gets: swimming pigs and rock iguanas in the Exumas, pink sand on Harbour Island, blue holes off Andros.

Maldives

Some 1,190 coral islands strung across 26 atolls make the Maldives the world's lowest-lying country and one of its best for snorkelling and diving.

Philippines

The Philippines has more than 7,600 islands, and the best trips string a few of them together: Palawan's limestone lagoons, Bohol's Chocolate Hills, Siargao's surf and the rice terraces of the northern Cordillera.

Morocco

A short flight from the UK, Morocco offers astonishing variety: the labyrinthine medinas of Marrakech and Fez, the blue lanes of Chefchaouen, High Atlas trekking and a night among the Erg Chebbi dunes near Merzouga.

Algeria

Africa's largest country runs from a Mediterranean coast of Roman ruins and French-era boulevards to Saharan sandstone plateaus, where Tassili n'Ajjer's rock paintings record a greener past.

Spain

Barcelona's Sagrada Família has been under construction since 1882 and is astonishing regardless, while Granada's Alhambra is among the finest surviving Moorish palaces anywhere.

Italy

Italy's draw is the sheer density of it all: the Colosseum and the Vatican in Rome, Renaissance Florence, the canals of Venice, the Amalfi Coast's cliff-hung villages and a different food culture in every region.

Netherlands

The Netherlands crams Golden Age canal cities, world-class art and a landscape engineered from the sea into a compact, flat country laced with railways and cycle paths.

Turkey

Turkey spans Europe and Asia, with Byzantine and Ottoman Istanbul, the balloon-filled valleys of Cappadocia, the marble streets of Ephesus and Pamukkale's white travertine terraces.

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Ottoman bazaars, Austro-Hungarian boulevards and raw recent history sit side by side in a mountainous country still lightly touched by mass tourism.

Serbia

Serbia is the Balkans at full volume: Belgrade's riverside clubs and kafanas, Novi Sad's Austro-Hungarian streets, medieval monasteries painted with Byzantine-style frescoes and the forested gorges of the Drina and Danube.