250 of the best hotels in the UK just got revealed and 26 London spots made the list

an image of the lively interiors at Broadwick Soho — (Image credit: Broadwick Soho)

The UK has plenty of spots to rest your head, whether you’re looking for a quaint village staycation, or blow the budget luxury, from Premier Inns to prestigious five-star Plazas, there are a whole host of lovely spots. And luckily for us, there are reams of experts doing the, erm, really tough? challenge of working out which is the best, wading through thread count, tiny toiletries, and the obligatory (and beloved) hotel breakfasts. The experts over at The Telegraph have listed 250 of the best hotels across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland – and 26 of them are only lovely local London spots.

To define the ‘best’ in the UK, every hotel was scored across six different categories – location, style and character, services and facilities, rooms, food and drink, and value for money. Each hotel that made the shortlist achieved an average of eight out of ten or higher, making it into the ‘excellent’ territory.

an image of Serra at The Chancery Rosewood

There were plenty of stunning spots across the wilder UK areas, including The Seaside Boarding House in Dorset, set above the iconic Chesil Beach, and the beloved bougie Newt in Somerset. When it came to London, there were plenty of big hitters and not-so-surprising entries like The Chancery Rosewood, which recently made the coveted It List for 2026.

The Telegraph’s best hotels in London 2026

The Chancery Rosewood
1 Hotel Mayfair
Batty Langley’s
Beaverbrook Town House
Broadwick Soho
Claridge’s
Corinthia London
Ham Yard Hotel
Henrietta Experimental
Hotel Café Royal
Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park
NoMad London
Shangri-La The Shard London
The Beaumont
The Bingham Riverhouse
The Bloomsbury
The Connaught
The Goring
The Hoxton, Southwark
The Lanesborough
The Ned
The Peninsula London
The Ritz
The Standard, London
The Twenty Two
Town Hall Hotel

You can check out the full list over at The Telegraph's website, even if it's just to snoop at what places in your postcode are deemed swanky enough to qualify as the best of the best.

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Hermione Blandford is the Content Editor for Shortlist’s social media which means you can usually find her scrolling through Instagram and calling it work, or stopping random people in the street and accosting them with a mini mic. She has previously worked in food and drink PR for brands including Johnnie Walker, Tanqueray, Gordon's, The Singleton, Lagavulin and Don Julio which means she is a self confessed expert in spicy margaritas and pints, regularly popping into the pub in the name of research.