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NZ’s Best Beach 2026: Top 50 finalists revealed – here’s how to vote for the winners

Name: Beach trip memories | NZ Herald Best Beach 2026
Uploaded: 2026-01-03T05:00:00+13:00
Description: Go to nzherald.co.nz/bestbeach to nominate your favourites. Video / NZ Herald

Ewan McDonald

NZ Herald·

17 Jan, 2026 04:00 PM5 mins to read

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Go to nzherald.co.nz/bestbeach to nominate your favourites. Video / NZ Herald

For the ninth summer, readers of the Herald Travel section have the chance to decide which are the best beaches in the motu, and the voting starts now. Today, we’re cracking the can (something that’s world-famous in New Zealand, of course) to reveal your 10 finalists in each of five categories.

Scroll down to find the top 50 – and see how to vote for your favourite slice of Kiwi coastline, and how you can be in to win one of 10 Four Square $100 vouchers.

“Are we there yet? Are we nearly there yet?”

Calm down in the back seat, kids. We’re barely out of the garage on our annual summer roadie, tiki-touring around the motu to find the best beaches around Aotearoa.

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For the next fortnight, we’ll criss-cross the country, north and south, coast to coast, to whittle down the 50 candidates you’ve chosen in five categories: family, camping, surfing, city and hidden gems.

We’ve been rolling down state highways and negotiating coastal byways for almost a decade now, since we first asked readers to vote for their favourite beaches in 2018.

Back then, we decided against naming Numero Uno and instead asked readers to vote for the top 12, unranked. Spoiler alert: in 2018 and 2019, it was pretty clear your favourite spot was Whangamatā.

Whangamatā has been named one of New Zealand's best beach in previous years. Will it take out top spot this year? Photo / 123rf

Times and tides change. In 2022, we hung that towel out to dry on the nearest pōhutukawa branch and asked you to vote for the Best of Summer – fish and chip shops, ice cream stores, campgrounds and the like.

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The following year, we moved on again, to the format you’ve loved ever since: choosing five category winners and one supreme champion.

And if one place has felt the summer lovin’ from our readers, it’s been Ōhope: 14 clicks of Bay of Plenty sand, sea, surf that specialises in just about everything Kiwis like getting up to close to the water: swimming, surfing, fishing, sunbathing, dog walking, sandcastling and we’ve probably left out dozens more, your premier summer spot in 2021, 2023 and 2024.

The giant tottered last year, dethroned by the lovely, lazy Northland spot of Waipū Cove. Looking at the nominations for 2026, the two are likely to do battle again this summer.

Waipū Cove was crowned New Zealand's best beach in last year's competition. Photo / Daniel Szegota

One thing remains constant: the northern regions are your most popular playgrounds. Northland, Coromandel and Bay of Plenty account for 31 of the 50 nominations between them.

We’ll give you one result already: Bay of Plenty pips the others with 12 entries, Northland has 10, and Coromandel is a boogie-board behind with nine.

That was easy. The rest is over to you, the voters. To help you decide, we’ll be profiling all the finalists in more detail in our print and online editions over the next week, so stay tuned.

The Sweet-as Spot

Because it’s our game and we like to change it up every summer, this year we’re going to spotlight a Sweet-as Spot for each category in our top 10 profile stories over the coming week.It’ll be a place that has never made the short list – or even the long list – before, but we reckon has something special about it. You can’t vote for the Sweet-as Spot, but it might inspire you to check out somewhere new in the coming weeks, or next summer.Keep an eye out for the stories over the next five days.

How do I vote?

Below, you’ll find the full list of our finalists – the top 10 in each of five categories, with the current champion marked with an asterisk, and a previous winner marked with a plus sign (the number of plus signs denotes how many times that beach has won).

You have until 11.59pm on Sunday, January 25, to vote for your favourites in each category. You can vote at nzherald.co.nz/bestbeach or by using the form below.

You can be a winner too – submit your votes and you’ll go in the draw to win one of 10 $100 gift cards to spend at a Four Square near you, wherever you’re spending your summer.

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We’ll announce the winners in the Herald on Sunday and at nzherald.co.nz in February.