Best Beaches in India – Top Beach Destinations 2026

The Andamans' favourite island for white-sand beaches, fringing coral reefs and serious scuba diving.

Jagannath Temple anchors the town. The Bay of Bengal does the rest — wide grey sand, pilgrim crowds, and one of the four Char Dham sites all in one stretch.

Red laterite cliffs drop straight into the Arabian Sea, opening up one of north Goa's broadest sea views.

On India's south-west coast, this is the one stretch where red laterite cliffs plunge straight into the Arabian Sea. A 2,000-year-old Vishnu temple anchors the town. Yoga retreats line the cliff-top in a crescent. On the mineral-spring beaches below, families immerse ashes in the papanasam (sin-washing) waters.

A 7.6-square-kilometre coral atoll in the Arabian Sea. One airstrip. Around 8,000 residents, almost entirely Muslim. Turquoise lagoons and some of the Indian Ocean's finest dive sites.

Sadhus and surfers share the same shoreline along this five-beach horseshoe on the north Karnataka coast. A thousand-year-old Shiva pilgrimage town. Its crescent coves — Gokarna, Kudle, Om, Half-Moon, Paradise — became the subcontinent's quiet answer to Goa, made for travellers who wanted sand without dance-floors.

Cannons on the 16th-century Portuguese fort still aim at the Arabian Sea. Sunday Mass continues in the churches. Nagoa and Ghoghla beaches form the quietest stretch of Indian coast south of Goa.