Switzerland Michelin Keys 2026: 9 Gained, 9 Lost
Switzerland gained 9 Michelin Keys in the 2026 selection and lost 9. Every hotel that lost a Key was verified against its own MICHELIN Guide page.
Switzerland gained 9 Michelin Keys in the 2026 selection and lost 9, finishing the year exactly where it started: 88 Key hotels, the same as in 2025.
Two hotels reached the top tier: Beau-Rivage Palace and Kulm Hotel St. Moritz. One hotel lost Three-Key rank: Beau-Rivage Geneva. One property has left the Guide altogether: Tschuggen Grand Hotel.
Chart: hotels in Switzerland whose MICHELIN Key standing changed between the 2025 and 2026 selections. Source: MICHELIN Guide 2026 Key selection, released 18 September 2026. Every loss shown was re-checked on that hotel's own MICHELIN Guide page.
The scoreboard
| Movement | Hotels |
|---|---|
| New Keys awarded | 7 |
| Upgraded a tier | 2 |
| Dropped a tier | 2 |
| Key removed | 7 |
| Key hotels, 2025 → 2026 | 88 → 88 (+0) |
What Switzerland gained
| Hotel | Where | 2025 | 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Six Senses Crans-Montana | Crans-Montana | no Key | Two Keys | New Key |
| AMERON Davos Swiss Mountain Resort | Davos | no Key | One Key | New Key |
| Grace La Margna St. Moritz | St. Moritz | no Key | One Key | New Key |
| Hotel Welschen | Zermatt | no Key | One Key | New Key |
| Huus Quell by Appenzeller Huus | Gonten | no Key | One Key | New Key |
| Miiro The Mansard | Gstaad | no Key | One Key | New Key |
| Waldhotel by Bürgenstock | Burgenstock | no Key | One Key | New Key |
| Beau-Rivage Palace | Lausanne | Two Keys | Three Keys | Upgraded |
| Kulm Hotel St. Moritz | St. Moritz | Two Keys | Three Keys | Upgraded |
What Switzerland lost
| Hotel | Where | 2025 | 2026 | What happened |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beau-Rivage Geneva | Geneva | Three Keys | Two Keys | Dropped a tier |
| Hotel Villa Honegg | Burgenstock | Two Keys | One Key | Dropped a tier |
| Boutique & Design Hotel Volkshaus Basel | Basel | One Key | no Key | Key removed |
| Giardino Mountain | St. Moritz | One Key | no Key | Key removed |
| Hotel Vitznauer Hof - Lifestyle Hideway | Vitznau | One Key | no Key | Key removed |
| Mandarin Oriental Geneva | Geneva | One Key | no Key | Key removed |
| Monte Rosa Boutique Hotel | Zermatt | One Key | no Key | Key removed |
| Schweizerhof Zermatt | Zermatt | One Key | no Key | Key removed |
| Tschuggen Grand Hotel | Arosa | Two Keys | no Key | Left the Guide |
Notable results
The single most significant result is Beau-Rivage Palace in Lausanne, which now holds Three Keys — a tier MICHELIN added only twelve hotels to, net, across the entire world this year. Promotions are the scarcer currency — worldwide only 86 already-listed hotels moved up a tier — and Beau-Rivage Palace and Kulm Hotel St. Moritz managed it in Switzerland. The heaviest fall was Beau-Rivage Geneva in Geneva, from Three Keys to Two Keys. Of the hotels that lost standing here, Tschuggen Grand Hotel has had its MICHELIN page removed altogether, which means leaving the selection rather than being demoted within it.
What the gains looked like
The nine hotels that gained ground break down as 2 at Three Keys, 1 at Two Keys, 6 at One Key. One entered the list directly at Two Keys or better rather than climbing to it, led by Six Senses Crans-Montana. The gains clustered in St. Moritz (2).
The shape of the country's Key list
| Tier | Hotels 2026 |
|---|---|
| Three Keys | 10 |
| Two Keys | 30 |
| One Key | 48 |
| All Key hotels | 88 |
That places Switzerland 9th of the 123 countries and territories holding at least one Key hotel. Adjusted for population it works out at 9.89 Key hotels per million residents, against a Swiss rate of 10.00, an Italian rate of 3.80 and an American rate of 1.06. Three-Key hotels make up 11.4 percent of its list, against 5.47 percent worldwide.
Where the country's Key hotels are
| City or area | Key hotels 2026 |
|---|---|
| Zermatt | 9 |
| Geneva | 7 |
| St. Moritz | 6 |
| Zurich | 6 |
| Crans-Montana | 5 |
| Gstaad | 5 |
How this compares with the rest of the world
Worldwide, MICHELIN's second Key selection named 2,832 hotels on 18 September 2026 against 2,457
a year earlier — growth of 15.3 percent. The tiers did not move together: One-Key hotels rose 16.0
percent and Two-Key hotels 14.9 percent, while Three-Key hotels rose only 8.4 percent, from 143 to
155, cutting the top tier's share of the list from 5.82 percent to 5.47 percent.
Across the full selection, 482 hotels gained a Key they did not hold in 2025 and 86 moved up a
tier. In the same announcement 88 lost their Key and 26 dropped a tier. The additions were
publicised; the 114 downward moves were not.
| Worldwide | Switzerland | |
|---|---|---|
| Hotels that gained or improved a Key | 568 | 9 |
| Hotels that lost a Key or dropped a tier | 114 | 9 |
| Key hotels, 2025 | 2,457 | 88 |
| Key hotels, 2026 | 2,832 | 88 |
Switzerland holds about 3.1 percent of the world's Key hotels.
How these numbers were checked
The 2026 and 2025 selections were read hotel by hotel from the MICHELIN Guide's own country
listings, where every property carries an explicit One-, Two- or Three-Key marking. Country totals
reconcile to the figures the Guide published on 18 September 2026.
Every downward move in the full worldwide selection — all 114 of them — was then checked a second
time against that hotel's own page on the Guide. That second pass is not optional: a hotel missing
from a country listing has not necessarily lost anything, because several properties that plainly
still hold Keys never appear in those listings at all. Only a hotel the Guide still lists, now
without a Key, has actually lost one.
Ten hotels turned out to be a third case: their Guide page has been taken down altogether. Those
have left the selection rather than been demoted, and they are marked as such in the table above
rather than counted as downgrades.
What a MICHELIN Key is
MICHELIN introduced the Key in 2024 as the hotel counterpart to its restaurant Star. Inspectors
assess architecture, interior design, service, character, consistency and value across a selection
of more than 9,000 hotels in over 100 countries, and award One, Two or Three Keys — a very special
stay, an exceptional one, an extraordinary one. Nightly rate is not a criterion, which is why a
four-room guesthouse and a 500-room resort can hold the same distinction.
The criteria are set out in the Guide's explainer on the Key; the full country-by-country
2026 list is published here.
Author
2026/09/19
