The Most Beautiful Beaches in Greece
9 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful beaches in Greece are Navagio, Voidokilia Beach and Myrtos Beach. The list covers 9 beaches. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Greece has one of the longest coastlines in Europe, spread across thousands of islands and deeply indented peninsulas. Most of it is limestone, which the sea wears into white cliffs, pebbles and coves, while on islands like Milos volcanic rock adds other colours and shapes. The Ionian west, with its steeper cliffs and green slopes, and the drier Aegean east give the country two quite different kinds of shore.
On Zakynthos, Navagio is a cove enclosed by high cliffs, where a shipwreck has rested on the sand since 1980. Voidokilia near Pylos forms an almost perfect semicircle beside a lagoon. On Kefalonia, Myrtos lies at the base of steep slopes and is known for its bright white pebbles, and on Lefkada, Porto Katsiki sits below pale cliffs. Sarakiniko on Milos is a cove of smooth white volcanic rock, sculpted by wind and waves into rounded shapes.
In the north of Corfu, Porto Timoni is a double bay, two small beaches on either side of a narrow strip of land. Crete brings two more: Seitan Limania, a narrow inlet between steep rock walls on the Akrotiri peninsula, and Elafonisi in the southwest, where the sand is tinted pink and a shallow lagoon separates the shore from a small island.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Navagio | Beach | |
| 2 | Voidokilia Beach | Beach | |
| 3 | Myrtos Beach | Beach | |
| 4 | Porto Katsiki | Beach | |
| 5 | Sarakiniko, Milos | Beach | |
| 6 | Porto Timoni | Beach | |
| 7 | Seitan Limania | Beach | |
| 8 | Voutoumi Beach | Beach | |
| 9 | Elafonisi Beach | Beach |
01 Navagio
Ναυάγιο
Greece37.860° N 20.625° E
dronepicr · CC BY 2.0 What's not disputed is that the wreck is disappearing. Decades of salt water have eaten through the hull, a section of the bow visibly collapsed years ago, and the remaining rusted metal is expected to keep breaking down. The landmark that put this beach on every list of the world's most photographed coves is, in real time, dissolving back into the sea it crashed out of.
Did you know? The wreck is a small vessel by modern standards, roughly 48 metres long with a gross tonnage of about 450.
02 Voidokilia Beach
Βοϊδοκοιλιά
Greece36.964° N 21.663° E
Grzontan · CC BY-SA 3.0 The lagoon behind the dunes is a world of its own. Over two hundred and fifty bird species have been recorded there, many of them listed as threatened, and in spring and autumn flamingos, herons and waders stop over on their way between Africa and Europe. The pleasure of Voidokilia is to combine the two: to swim in the calm water of the omega, then climb the path to the castle and look down on the curve of sand, the reed beds and the open sea at once. The castle path is steep and rough, so sturdy shoes help.
Did you know? Nestor's Cave below the old castle measures about 20 by 16 metres and rises around 30 metres high, with finds spanning the Final Neolithic to early Hellenistic times.
03 Myrtos Beach
Greece38.344° N 20.536° E
- Blue Flag
Image by shogun from Pixabay Myrtos has regularly been voted one of the finest beaches in Greece. It was one of the settings of the film Captain Corelli's Mandolin, used for the scene of the mine explosion. The steep drop-off means the water becomes deep quickly, and the swell can be strong, so this is a beach to respect as well as admire.
Did you know? The cliffs above the beach are Cretaceous to Miocene limestones resting on softer marls, cut by faults that make the slopes notably unstable.
04 Porto Katsiki
Greece38.602° N 20.549° E
- Blue Flag
Image by ioana_radu from Pixabay Farther south lies Cape Lefkada, whose white cliffs may have given the island its name. Ancient writers placed a sanctuary of Apollo on the cape, and legend held that the poet Sappho leapt to her death from its cliffs. An earthquake in 2015 badly damaged the beach, a reminder that this coast is still being shaped.
Did you know? Legend also names Cephalus and Queen Artemisia of Caria among those who leapt from the cliffs of Cape Lefkada.
05 Sarakiniko, Milos
Σαρακήνικο Μήλου
Greece36.743° N 24.458° E
dronepicr · CC BY 2.0 The name recalls the Saracens, the raiders of the early medieval Mediterranean, and local tradition holds that pirates sheltered in the caves cut into these cliffs. A more recent visitor is still on view: the cargo ship Africa, which ran aground here in 2003, lies rusting off the eastern rocks. Milos itself is a volcanic island whose obsidian was traded around the Aegean long before farming, and whose ancient city yielded the Venus de Milo; Yorgos Lanthimos shot the closing scenes of Bugonia (2025) on this shore.
Did you know? Burrows and tubes 10 to 20 centimetres long, dug by creatures living on the ancient sea floor, survive in the rock as trace fossils.
06 Porto Timoni
Greece · 25.3 km from Corfu39.717° N 19.650° E
Przemek Pietrak · CC BY-SA 3.0 Getting there is part of the experience. The path down from Afionas begins among the old houses of the village, which sits high on a ridge above the sea, and then drops steeply over rocky, uneven ground. Two viewpoints on the way give the famous view from above, the best moment to understand the shape of the double bay.
Did you know? Archaeologists found a prehistoric settlement of the 2nd millennium BC on the Afionas promontory, and its finds are shown in the Archaeological Museum of Corfu.
07 Seitan Limania
Σεϊτάν Λιμάνια
Greece · 16.7 km from Chania35.552° N 24.194° E
Image by KatarzynaTyl from Pixabay Chania, the nearest city, is the capital of the regional unit of the same name in western Crete. Its old quarter wraps around a harbour fortified by the Venetians, with a lighthouse at the end of the breakwater that dates from the nineteenth century in its present form. The waterfront of the old harbour remains the heart of the town.
Did you know? Halfway down that 38-metre drop, a cave decorated with stalactites and stalagmites runs about 20 metres into the rock.
08 Voutoumi Beach
Greece39.150° N 20.233° E
Kakolyri Maria · CC BY-SA 4.0 Antipaxos is best treated as a day by the sea rather than a sight to tick off. Most visitors come over by boat for a few hours, and outside the busiest part of the day the beach regains the calm that gives it its character; the vineyards above, which cover so much of the island, are a reminder that this is still a farmed landscape rather than a resort.
Did you know? A low ridge with three summits runs along the island; the northernmost and highest, Agrilida, reaches only about 117 metres.
09 Elafonisi Beach
Greece35.271° N 23.540° E
- Blue Flag
dronepicr · CC BY 2.0 The quiet scenery hides a grim history. On Easter Sunday in 1824, during the Greek War of Independence, Ottoman soldiers reached the islet, where several hundred Cretans, most of them women and children, had taken refuge; hundreds were killed and the survivors were sold into slavery. A large wooden cross on the island marks a later disaster: the wreck of the passenger steamer Imperatrix on 22 February 1907, in which 38 people died. A lighthouse built after that wreck was destroyed during the German occupation in the Second World War.
Did you know? Between 640 and 850 people were caught on the islet on Easter Sunday, 18 April 1824; those who survived were sold as slaves in Egypt.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful beaches in Greece?
- On our list, Navagio ranks first, followed by Voidokilia Beach and Myrtos Beach.
- Why is the sand pink at Elafonisi?
- The pink tint comes from fragments of tiny marine organisms with reddish shells, mixed with the white sand. The colour is strongest at the water's edge.
- What is the shipwreck on Navagio beach?
- The ship is the MV Panagiotis, a cargo ship that ran aground in the cove in 1980. Its rusting hull still lies on the beach, which is why Navagio is also called Shipwreck Beach.
- Why does Sarakiniko look like the moon?
- Sarakiniko is made of white volcanic rock, mostly ash and pumice deposits, that wind and waves have smoothed into rounded, bare forms with almost no plants.
- How many beaches are on this list in Greece?
- The list covers 9 beaches.