The Most Beautiful Lakes in New Zealand
5 places ยท updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful lakes in New Zealand are Lake Tekapo, Lake Wakatipu and Lake Pukaki. The list covers 5 lakes. Last updated 13 October 2026.
New Zealand's lakes were largely made by ice and fire. In the South Island, glaciers flowing off the Southern Alps gouged long basins that filled when the ice withdrew, and the glaciers that remain still grind rock into a fine flour that turns the water an opaque turquoise. Rainforest, high mountains and very clean air add reflections and colours that few lake regions can match.
Lake Tekapo is milky blue with glacial flour, its shore marked by the small stone Church of the Good Shepherd, and its night sky protected within a dark-sky reserve. Lake Wakatipu, long and shaped like a lightning bolt, curves past Queenstown beneath the Remarkables; Mฤori tradition says it lies in the hollow left by a burning giant. Lake Pukaki, fed by the Tasman and Hooker glaciers, looks straight up the valley to Aoraki / Mount Cook. Rotomairewhenua, the Blue Lake in Nelson Lakes National Park, has the clearest natural fresh water ever measured. Lake Matheson, darkened by tannins from the forest, mirrors Aoraki and Mount Tasman on still mornings.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lake Tekapo | Lake | |
| 2 | Lake Wakatipu | Lake | |
| 3 | Lake Pukaki | Lake | |
| 4 | Rotomairewhenua / Blue Lake | Lake | |
| 5 | Lake Matheson | Lake |
01 Lake Tekapo
New Zealand43.900ยฐ S 170.525ยฐ E
Image by Holgi from Pixabay Tekapo is at its most remarkable after dark. The surrounding high plateau has dry air, little cloud and almost no artificial light, and in 2012 it became the core of the Aoraki Mackenzie International Dark Sky Reserve, at over 4,300 square kilometres the largest in the southern hemisphere. Mount John, rising above the township, carries the Mount John University Observatory, and on a clear night the Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds stand out over the water with startling sharpness. In late spring and early summer, from mid-November into December, the shores flare with purple, pink and blue lupins, an introduced plant that has become the lake's most photographed foreground.
Did you know? The English name Tekapo began as a misspelling of the Mฤori Takapล.
02 Lake Wakatipu
New Zealand ยท 14.7 km from Queenstown45.085ยฐ S 168.561ยฐ E
Jamie Wang ยท CC BY-SA 2.0 For more than a century the lake has had its own resident vessel. The TSS Earnslaw, a twin-screw coal-fired steamer built in Dunedin and launched in 1912, still crosses from Queenstown to Walter Peak on the far shore. It is the largest steamship ever built in New Zealand and the last commercial coal-fired passenger steamer in the Southern Hemisphere, and watching the stokers at work below deck while the Remarkables slide past is part of the experience.
Did you know? The first European to see the lake, in 1853, was guided there by Reko, a chief of Tuturau; Europeans first reached its shore only in 1856.
03 Lake Pukaki
New Zealand44.117ยฐ S 170.167ยฐ E
Image by Makalu from Pixabay A visitor centre on the southern shore, marked by a bronze statue of a Himalayan tahr, is the classic place to stop and look up the lake. On a clear day the whole length of the water leads the eye straight to the mountain.
Did you know? Pukaki can store about 1,595 gigawatt-hours of energy; together with Lake Tekapo it holds over half of New Zealand's hydroelectric storage.
04 Rotomairewhenua / Blue Lake
New Zealand42.059ยฐ S 172.657ยฐ E
Mergy at English Wikipedia ยท CC BY-SA 2.5 For the local iwi, Ngฤti Apa ki te Rฤ Tล, the lake is tapu, sacred. It was traditionally used in rites to cleanse the bones of the dead and release their spirits for the journey to Hawaiki, with Blue Lake used for men and Lake Constance for women. The Mฤori name means "the lake of peaceful lands". Under the iwi's Treaty of Waitangi settlement of 2010 the lake was vested in the tribe and then returned to the Crown as a gift, and in 2014 its official name became the dual Rotomairewhenua / Blue Lake.
Did you know? Scientists measured the clarity horizontally, sighting a black disc one metre across through the water rather than looking down from the surface.
05 Lake Matheson
New Zealand43.438ยฐ S 169.963ยฐ E
Image by kiwibu from Pixabay An easy track of about 2.6 km circles the lake through the forest in around an hour and a half. Along the way, platforms open the view at different angles: the Jetty Viewpoint, reached in about twenty minutes, Reflection Island on a pontoon jetty, and the "View of Views" lookout at the far end, where the mountains line up most perfectly with their reflection.
Did you know? No real river runs in or out: the lake is fed only by small forest streams and seepage, which helps keep its surface so still.
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 โ 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 lakes in New Zealand?
- On our list, Lake Tekapo ranks first, followed by Lake Wakatipu and Lake Pukaki.
- Why is Lake Tekapo so blue?
- Glaciers at the head of the valley grind rock into very fine particles, known as glacial flour, which stay suspended in the water and scatter sunlight to give its milky turquoise colour.
- What is the clearest lake in the world?
- Rotomairewhenua, the Blue Lake in Nelson Lakes National Park, where scientists measured underwater visibility of up to about 80 metres, the clearest natural fresh water recorded.
- How many lakes are on this list in New Zealand?
- The list covers 5 lakes.