Awards & accolades

Cape Town

Cape Town ranks 6th in Time Out’s 2026 Best Cities in the World — the highest-placed African city — after topping the same ranking outright in 2025. The list is built from a survey of tens of thousands of city residents worldwide.

Awarded by Time Out

Cape Town

In the 2024 Condé Nast Traveller Readers’ Choice Awards, Cape Town was voted the world’s best city for food, ahead of Milan and Valencia.

Awarded by Condé Nast Traveller — Readers’ Choice Awards

Cape Town

Cape Town was named Africa’s Leading City Destination at the 2025 World Travel Awards — its fifth consecutive win in the category, from 2021 through 2025.

Awarded by World Travel Awards

South Africa

South Africa holds 12 UNESCO World Heritage Sites — seven cultural, four natural and one mixed — with two new sites inscribed in 2024.

Awarded by UNESCO World Heritage Committee

Table Mountain

Table Mountain was confirmed as one of the seven official New7Wonders of Nature after a global public vote, inaugurated by SANParks in 2012.

Awarded by New7Wonders Foundation

South Africa’s coastline

For the 2025/26 season South Africa was awarded 50 full-status Blue Flag beaches — plus pilot sites, marinas and tourism boats — the international mark of clean, safe, well-managed coast.

Awarded by WESSA / Foundation for Environmental Education

Klein Constantia, Cape Town

Klein Constantia was named Best Vineyard in Africa and ranked No. 6 in the world in the 2025 World’s 50 Best Vineyards, also taking the Highest Climber award.

Awarded by World’s 50 Best Vineyards

Creation Wines, Hemel-en-Aarde

Creation Wines ranked No. 7 in the world in the 2025 World’s 50 Best Vineyards — one of two South African estates in the global top ten.

Awarded by World’s 50 Best Vineyards

Leopard Creek Country Club

Golf Digest ranked Leopard Creek — a Gary Player design on the edge of the Kruger — No. 65 among the world’s greatest courses outside the United States.

Awarded by Golf Digest

The Comrades Marathon, KwaZulu-Natal

Guinness World Records recognises the Comrades Marathon, first run in 1921 between Durban and Pietermaritzburg, as the world’s oldest ultramarathon.

Awarded by Guinness World Records

Cape Town Cycle Tour

The Cape Town Cycle Tour, a roughly 109 km ride around the Cape Peninsula first held in 1978 and staged almost every year since, is described by the UCI Gran Fondo World Series as the world’s biggest timed cycling event.

Awarded by UCI Gran Fondo World Series