Michelin Keys 2026 Bordeaux to Biarritz: 22 hotels, from Sauternes to Cognac

Les Sources de Caudalie, on the Smith Haut-Lafitte vineyard outside Bordeaux, is the region’s only Three-Key hotel. It heads MICHELIN’s 2026 list for Nouvelle-Aquitaine, which runs from the Médoc and Saint-Émilion to Biarritz, Cognac and the Périgord: 22 hotels, with four at Two Keys and 17 at One. The one new name is La Nauve, in Cognac, at One Key. The other 21 keep the tiers they held in 2025, so the regional list grows from 21 to 22. Together they have 684 rooms, by our count, from six at Château du Palanquey to 142 at the Hôtel du Palais. The tiers come from MICHELIN’s complete list of the French Keys, published in French on 18 September, where the One-Key hotels appear under the Nouvelle-Aquitaine heading. Its English page for France still shows the 2025 selection.

22 hotels from the Médoc to the Basque Coast: the list, tier by tier

Tiers and towns are as MICHELIN prints them, and room counts are those in the header of each hotel’s MICHELIN page.

The Gironde has eight of the 22, six of them among the vines. Saint-Émilion alone has three. Biarritz, Cognac and Pyla-sur-Mer have two each.

Three Keys and Two: Caudalie, Sauternes, Biarritz and the Charente

“It’s a new twist on the traditional notion of the spa hotel”, MICHELIN writes of Les Sources de Caudalie, where a natural thermal spring runs beneath the organic vineyard. The Vinothérapie spa has indoor and seasonal outdoor pools, there are “fifteen thousand bottles in the wine cellar for those who prefer their vinothérapie in glasses”. La Grand’Vigne holds two MICHELIN Stars. At Bommes, in the Sauternes, Château Lafaurie-Peyraguey is a premier cru estate about 400 years old. It has 13 suites, a cellar of more than a third of a million bottles and Restaurant Lalique, with two Stars. “This is, after all, the first premier cru winery to open its doors to overnight guests”, the inspectors write.

“Biarritz’s grande dame is the Hotel du Palais, the summer residence of Napoleon and Eugenie”, in MICHELIN’s words. It stands at 1 avenue de l’Impératrice, facing the Bay of Biscay, and with 142 rooms it is the largest hotel on the list. It has an outdoor pool and La Rotonde, with sea views. “The surfing here on France’s southwestern coast is among the best in Europe”, MICHELIN adds. Inland, in the spa town of Eugénie-les-Bains, Les Prés d’Eugénie is “a 19th-century palace in a somewhat unlikely location”, “surrounded by magnolias and herb gardens”, with 45 rooms and a three-Star restaurant, and the inspectors add that “no corners are cut in the hospitality or the cuisine”.

Domaine des Étangs, at Massignac in the Charente, is a stone château with fortified towers, lakes with “rowboats just left laying about, waiting for you”, an organic garden, a spa in the former mill and Dyades, with one MICHELIN Star. Its page carries a date to note. The hotel closes from 1 November 2026 for renovation and aims to reopen between the end of April and the beginning of May 2027.

Saint-Émilion, the Médoc and the Arcachon Bay

Saint-Émilion has three One-Key hotels, and its “vineyards were the first to be officially recognized by UNESCO for their historic significance”, as MICHELIN notes on the page of the Hôtel de Pavie. The Pavie has 21 rooms, some with terraces over the rooftops, and La Table de Pavie, with two Stars. Logis de la Cadène is an inn dating from 1848, on place du Marché au Bois, with a restaurant holding one MICHELIN Star. Château du Palanquey is the smallest hotel on the list. It has six rooms, a spa and indoor and outdoor pools in “a stately house surrounded by vineyards in Saint-Émilion”.

In the Médoc, La Maison d’Estournel occupies an 18th-century mansion at Saint-Estèphe, by the Gironde estuary, with 14 rooms and tastings in a vaulted cellar. “This is the real-deal wine country, with nothing but green as far as the eye can see”, MICHELIN writes. “Why shouldn’t every wine estate also be a luxury boutique hotel?”, the page asks. Bordeaux’s 2025 vintage has already reached the auction rooms, as in our report on a barrel of Haut-Brion. On the Arcachon Bay, Pyla-sur-Mer has two hotels near the Dune du Pilat. Ha(a)ïtza is a 1930s villa with interiors by Philippe Starck, a spa by Codage and Le Skiff Club, with two Stars, in “a fine location close to the Dune de Pilat, less than an hour’s drive from Bordeaux”. La Co(o)rniche, a Basque-style hunting lodge of the 1930s, is “at the foot of the highest sand dune in Europe”, with wooden cabins and 29 rooms.

The Basque Coast and the Landes

Brindos, Lac & Château, in Biarritz, is a 1930s mansion on a lake. “Electric boats ferry guests from the shore to a series of ten floating lodges”, MICHELIN writes. Les Frères Ibarboure is a 13-room hotel on five acres of parkland in the hills above Bidart, with a Starred restaurant. At Saint-Pée-sur-Nivelle, L’Auberge Basque is an “antique inn, more than three centuries old”, expanded with “an unapologetically modernist addition” and “furnished from top to bottom by the Belgian brand Flamant”, with 12 rooms, a pool and a Starred restaurant.

In the Landes, Relais de la Poste, at Magescq, a few minutes inland from the Atlantic, is “a unique century-old mansion” with 16 rooms, a spa, a Starred restaurant and “some 22 acres of park and a working vineyard”. Les Hortensias du Lac, an Art Deco resort on Lake Hossegor, is “less than a quarter-mile inland from the surfers and swimmers at the Plage de la Gravière”. “Twenty-five rooms is small by any measure”, MICHELIN writes.

Cognac, La Rochelle and the Périgord

Cognac has two former distilleries. Chais Monnet, on the Charente, is “a uniquely memorable hybrid of 19th-century atmosphere and contemporary luxury hospitality”, with 92 rooms, a spa, Bar 1838 in the old cooperage and “Les Foudres, the One-MICHELIN-Starred restaurant”, which “is lined with ancient barrels”. The newcomer, La Nauve, is “located on the grounds of a former cognac distillery”, with a Belle Époque mansion on the river, 12 rooms and suites, “a 150-year-old sequoia” in the garden and a Starred restaurant, Notes. “An 18th-century shipowner’s mansion in the old port of La Rochelle is the setting for La Villa Grand Voile”, MICHELIN writes. It has 11 rooms and a seasonal pool, and Christopher Coutanceau’s three-Star restaurant is a few blocks away, on the Plage de la Concurrence.

The Périgord has three. Le Moulin de l’Abbaye, at Brantôme on the Dronne, is “the region’s longest-serving luxury hotel”. Its 20 rooms are each named for a famous French wine, and it closes from mid-November to late March. La Chartreuse du Bignac, at Saint-Nexans, is “a beautiful 17th-century manor house once belonging to a Catholic order”, with 12 units on some 50 acres and a suite with “a glass floor looking down into a flowing stream”. “First a priory, later a private home”, Le Vieux Logis, at Trémolat, has been a hotel since the middle of the 20th century, with 25 rooms and a restaurant holding one MICHELIN Star.

The Luxury.it perspective

Nouvelle-Aquitaine’s list reads like a wine and spirits map. Bordeaux’s wine estates are well represented, from Caudalie at Three Keys to a Sauternes premier cru at Two and La Maison d’Estournel in the Médoc, and Cognac now has two converted distilleries. The Basque Coast adds the sea and the surf, and the Périgord adds old mills and priories. The table matters too. The region’s Key hotels include a three-Star restaurant at Eugénie-les-Bains and four restaurants with two Stars. For 2027, two dates matter. Le Moulin de l’Abbaye reopens in late March, and Domaine des Étangs plans to return from its renovation at the end of April or early May. The other French coast with Key hotels, from Saint-Tropez to Monaco, is in our list for the Côte d’Azur.

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