The best tours and activities, 2026.

A directory of tour and activity companies worldwide. Compare booking platforms, city passes and attraction tickets with the operators themselves, from walking and food tours to day trips, multi-day small-group tours, boat trips, balloon and helicopter flights, safaris and hikes, with notes on who each one suits.

One entry per company, not per tour

Activities Ranked lists the companies behind tours and activities, one entry each. A booking platform with thousands of tours is one listing, and so is a family business that runs a single boat out of one harbour. The Colosseum underground tour or the sunset cruise you are looking at is a product inside a listing, not a listing of its own. A company appears in every category its own range covers, so an operator that runs food walks and cooking classes in the same city shows up under both, with the same write-up behind it.

There are 27 categories. Some describe how you book, most describe what you do, and a few describe who the trip is for.

Booking platforms or the people who run the trip

The first choice is where to buy. Booking platforms such as Civitatis, Headout, Tiqets, TourRadar, Withlocals and ToursByLocals sell tours that other companies run, so what you are really choosing is a catalog, a refund policy and a support desk. City and attraction passes, from Go City and Turbopass to official city cards, bundle entry to many sights for one price. Skip-the-line and attraction tickets are single entries, and the question there is whether the seller is the official partner or a reseller. Private guides and custom tours covers the guide marketplaces as well as companies that only run private trips.

Most listings are operators rather than platforms: the walking-tour company with its own guides, the balloon pilot, the safari outfitter. Booking one directly often means clearer terms and a person to ask, and each write-up says which kind of business it is. Where a platform also runs some of its own tours, or an operator also resells other people's, the listing says that too.

What you want to do

In town there are guided walking tours, free and tip-based walking tours (GuruWalk and the local guide collectives where you pay what you think the walk was worth), history, art and culture tours, food tours and market walks, cooking classes, and wine, beer and spirits tours. Getting around has its own categories: hop-on hop-off buses such as Big Bus Tours and Gray Line, bike and e-bike tours, and tuk-tuk, Vespa and Segway tours. Out of town there are day trips from the city and multi-day and small-group tours, from Intrepid-style group departures to cycling holidays with Backroads.

On the water, in the air and outdoors, the categories are boat tours and day cruises, snorkelling, diving and paddle tours, hot air balloon rides, helicopter and scenic flights, wildlife watching and safaris, guided hiking and trekking, and adventure activities. The boat category is for trips that are back by evening, not for multi-day cruise lines.

Who the trip is for

Family-friendly tours lists companies that specialise in families or run family editions of their standard tours. Accessible and wheelchair-friendly tours covers specialists and operators that say on their own pages what they adapt, such as step-free routes or vehicles with ramps and lifts. Shore excursions is for cruise passengers with a fixed time in port, where the promise that matters is getting back to the ship. Night, ghost and dark history tours and photography tours and workshops cover two interests that shape a whole trip.

Where these companies work

The catalog is global. A large share of the operators work in Europe, Italy, Spain, France and Portugal above all, but there are listings across the United States and Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean, South America, Iceland, Morocco and Egypt, East and Southern Africa, Turkey, India, Nepal, Southeast Asia, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. Each write-up states where the company says it operates, because a tour company based in one country often runs trips in several others.

What the listings will and will not tell you

Each write-up reports what the company publishes: what it runs and where, group sizes, what the price includes, meeting points, cancellation terms and who leads the tours. Where a company is vague or silent on something that matters, such as the refund rule or the maximum group size, the write-up points that out rather than filling the gap. We have not taken these tours ourselves, and the listings do not pretend otherwise. Prices, schedules and terms change, so check the company's own page before you book.

The best tours and activities of 2026, from booking platforms to local guides.

The best tours and activities, 2026.

Tour and Activity Booking Platforms

Guided Walking Tours

Food Tours and Market Walks

Day Trips from the City

Multi-Day and Small-Group Tours

Boat Tours and Day Cruises

City and Attraction Passes

Skip-the-Line and Attraction Tickets

Private Guides and Custom Tours

Free and Tip-Based Walking Tours

History, Art and Culture Tours

Bike and E-Bike Tours

Hop-On Hop-Off Bus Tours

Cooking Classes

Wine, Beer and Spirits Tours

Adventure Activities

Guided Hiking and Trekking

Snorkelling, Diving and Paddle Tours

Wildlife Watching and Safaris

Helicopter and Scenic Flights

Hot Air Balloon Rides

Night, Ghost and Dark History Tours

Family-Friendly Tours

Accessible and Wheelchair-Friendly Tours

Shore Excursions for Cruise Passengers

Photography Tours and Workshops

Tuk-Tuk, Vespa and Segway Tours