The Mediterranean is having a rough decade. Athens hit 44°C in the summer of 2024. Santorini's villages have been running dry. The queue for a sun lounger in Mallorca starts at six in the morning, and the locals have started spraying tourists with water pistols. If your idea of a holiday involves shuffling through a crowd in 38-degree heat to take a photo of a church you cannot get within ten metres of, by all means, book Naxos again.
For everyone else, summer 2026 is shaping up to be the year of the mountain holiday.
Skyscanner's 2026 trends report puts it in numbers: 71% of UK travellers are considering or planning a mountain escape for summer or autumn next year, and bookings for hotel rooms with a mountain view are up 103% on the year before. The reasons are obvious once you stop to think. Mountains are cooler. They are quieter. They are usually cheaper. And the walking, food and scenery hold up against anything a coastal resort can offer.
If you have only ever thought of the mountains as a winter destination, the summer version is a different proposition entirely. Wildflowers everywhere. Long, golden evenings. Lakes warm enough to swim in. Mountain refuges serving plates of pasta and litres of cold beer at 2,000 metres. Below are five European ranges worth the flight or the drive in 2026, from properly affordable to properly indulgent.
1. The Julian Alps, Slovenia
Slovenia is the answer to a question UK travellers have been asking for years: where can you get Austrian scenery and Italian food without paying Austrian or Italian prices? Lake Bled is the postcard, and yes, it is as good as the photos. But the real prize is further west, in the Soča Valley.
Bovec and Kobarid sit in a stretch of country where the river runs a colour you will struggle to believe is real. There is white-water rafting, kayaking, canyoning and zip-lining for the active end of the family, and gentle riverside walks and trout lunches for everyone else. The drive over the Vršič Pass, with its fifty hairpin bends and views into the Triglav National Park, is one of the great European road trips.
A double room in a Bovec guesthouse runs around £70 to £100 a night in peak summer. A three-course dinner with wine sits comfortably under £25 a head. Fly into Ljubljana, hire a car, give it a week.
2. The Pindus Mountains, Greece
Most British holidaymakers picture Greece as islands, ferries and white cube hotels above blue sea. The Pindus range, running down the country's spine in the north-west, is a different Greece entirely. Forested. Cool. Quiet. Home to brown bears, wolves and a tradition of slow-cooked food that has nothing to do with souvlaki on a beach.
Metsovo is the obvious base, a stone-built village in the mountains where the locals still wear traditional dress on feast days and the local tsipouro is poured with serious intent. From here you can hike into the Vikos Gorge, which depending on who you ask is either the deepest or the second-deepest gorge in the world. The Zagori villages, a cluster of 46 stone hamlets connected by old packhorse trails and humpback bridges, sit just to the north and are worth several days on their own.
Mid-range guesthouses in Metsovo or one of the Zagori villages cost around £80 to £130 a night. The Grand Forest Metsovo, a five-star with proper views, will set you back more. Fly into Ioannina via Athens, or into Thessaloniki and drive west.
3. The Dolomites, Italy
The Dolomites are the showpiece. There is no point pretending otherwise. The pale limestone towers of the Tre Cime, the long green valleys of Alta Badia and Val Gardena, the sheer vertical drama of the Sella massif: this is mountain scenery turned up to eleven, and the Italians have spent a century perfecting the infrastructure that lets you enjoy it without suffering for it.
The defining experience is rifugio walking. You set off in the morning with a small pack, walk between four and seven hours along well-marked paths, and end the day at a mountain refuge where someone hands you a bowl of canederli and a glass of Lagrein and shows you to a bed. The next morning you do it again. You can string together a week of this without ever returning to a town.
For something gentler, base yourself in Cortina d'Ampezzo or Ortisei and use the cable cars. The walking is easier, the towns are pretty, and the food is some of the best mountain cooking in Europe. Speck, polenta, mushrooms, dumplings, all washed down with crisp white wines from the valley floor.
The Dolomites are not cheap. Expect £150 to £300 a night for a comfortable hotel, more in Cortina. Fly into Venice or Verona and drive up.
4. The French Pyrenees
The Alps get the attention. The Pyrenees get on with the job. The French side of the range, in particular, offers walking and scenery that comfortably matches the Alps at maybe two-thirds of the price.
The Cirque de Gavarnie is the headline act, a vast natural amphitheatre of cliffs with a 422-metre waterfall, listed by UNESCO and reachable by an easy walk from the village of Gavarnie itself. Cauterets, just up the valley, is a Belle Époque spa town with thermal baths and a network of trails leading into the Pyrenees National Park. Further east, the Pic du Midi observatory at 2,877 metres can be reached by cable car, and you can stay overnight if you want to see one of the great dark skies in Europe.
A double room in Cauterets runs about £80 to £140 in summer. Meals are reasonable. Fly into Toulouse, Lourdes or Pau and hire a car.
5. Picos de Europa, Spain
The budget pick, and possibly the most underrated mountain range in Europe. The Picos de Europa sit in northern Spain, a short drive from the Cantabrian coast, and they hit you in the face the moment you see them. Sheer limestone walls, deep gorges, green pastures full of cows whose milk goes into Cabrales, the blue cheese the rest of Spain finds frankly intimidating.
Cangas de Onís makes a good base, with its medieval bridge that everyone insists on calling Roman, and its endless choice of sidrerías, where the cider is poured from above the head into a glass held below the waist. From here you can drive up to the Lakes of Covadonga, take the cable car to Fuente Dé, or set off on the Cares Gorge walk, twelve kilometres of path cut into the rock above a turquoise river.
This is the cheapest mountain holiday on the list. A comfortable double in Cangas de Onís or one of the surrounding villages costs £60 to £100. Dinner is rarely more than £20 a head and usually involves a heroic quantity of cheese. Fly into Asturias, Santander or Bilbao.
A few practical things
When to go. July and August are the warmest and busiest. Late June and the first half of September are the sweet spot: long days, manageable crowds, refuges and cable cars still running. Avoid Italian school holidays in the Dolomites unless you book early.
What to pack. A proper waterproof, even in August. A warm layer for evenings and altitude. Walking boots if you intend to use them, trainers if you do not. The mountain weather changes fast and the locals dress accordingly.
Getting there. Most of these destinations work better with a hire car. The Dolomites and the Julian Alps in particular reward having your own wheels. If you would rather not drive, the Dolomites and the French Pyrenees both have decent local bus networks once you are in.
Booking. Mountain accommodation is a smaller market than coastal resorts, and the good places fill up early. If you are reading this in spring, you have time. If you are reading it in late June, the Dolomites are already mostly gone.
The mountains are not a compromise. They are not the second-best option you settle for because the Med is full. For a growing number of UK travellers, they are the holiday. Cooler air, better food, smaller crowds, lower bills, scenery that genuinely makes you stop walking. Summer 2026 looks like the year a lot more people work that out.