The Sunbed Index 2026.

Nobody advertises the price of lying down. The rate hides on booking pages, tariff PDFs and laminated cards at reception, and the guides fill the silence with guesswork. So we went and read the cards. Seventy-seven famous beach clubs across ten Mediterranean coasts, every published day bed rate, minimum spend and charging model, filed into one register and converted to a price per head. The result runs from a €30 transat on the grandest beach in France to a €390 pontoon sunbed in Monaco, and past both to the real finding: 43 of the 77 clubs publish no price at all.

The rule is the same one our Ibiza Census runs on: count what is published, refuse to guess the rest. A price enters the charts only if the venue itself published it, on its own site or tariff PDF, or declared it to a booking or tourism platform that names the venue as the source. Figures that exist only in travel guides sit in the register labelled "reported" and never touch a chart, a record or a headline. Where a club publishes nothing anywhere, that fact is recorded as the finding it is.

The units stay honest too. Clubs sell a day per person, per bed for two, or per cabana for eight, so every comparison in the report uses a per-person equivalent: the price divided by the maximum headcount the club states. That flatters the group formats slightly and we say so. Prices that bundle a fee with a compulsory minimum are recorded at the full day-one commitment, because that is the number that leaves your account. Ranged prices are recorded at their published floor. High-season rates are used wherever the venue prints seasonal tiers.

What the index cannot see, it does not invent. Nobody was telephoned, no WhatsApp enquiries were made, and no "price on request" was requested, since a price that must be requested is a negotiation, not a rate. Every source link in the register returned a live page on 4 August 2026, and each line records whether it came from the venue, a platform, or a guide. The full method, definitions and corroboration log live in the data file and the report notes.

Download the Sunbed Index 2026 register (CSV). One row per published price, with the source link and check date on every line.

The register's loudest number is the one that is missing. Of 77 famous clubs, 43 publish no rate of their own: not on their sites, not on their booking pages, nowhere a customer can read before arriving. Mykonos is the world capital of the practice, with nine of its ten sampled clubs silent, Nammos included: the most famous beach club in Greece reveals its prices only inside the booking conversation. Saint-Tropez runs it close at nine of twelve, led by Club 55, which has spent sixty years declining to print a tariff and shows no sign of weakening.

The silence has an architecture. Nikki Beach Marbella's own reservation system lists sixteen bed categories and a price field reading null on every one. Principote offers a form. Bagatelle confirms a minimum spend exists while declining to say what it is. Cala Bassa answers by WhatsApp. The pattern is not shyness; unpublished prices move with demand, and a rate card is a promise. The index treats the refusal as data: where a club says nothing, the register says so, in the club's own absence of words.

Ten entries, every one traceable to a page the venue controls or declares to. No juries, no vibes committees: if a record is in this book, somebody published it.

The tier just outside the book deserves its footnotes. La Guérite prices its first line at €200 a head on an island you can only reach by boat, boat not included. The Carlton's pier runs €187 in August, €80 of which is a compulsory "additional service" of water, granita, a fruit skewer and a mist spray, which is the most Cannes sentence ever printed on a tariff. Blue Marlin's big bed is €600 all-in for four. La Sala by the Sea sells a €20 beach bed on a Monday and an €800 cabana on a Saturday with €350 back. And Scorpios, the only Mykonos club that publishes anything, asks a remarkably reasonable €200 to €240 per cabana for up to four, which on that island counts as radical transparency.

Monaco is the dearest water in Europe and also, confusingly, decent value: the principality holds the €390 record at Monte-Carlo Beach Club and a €35 public-concession lounger at La Note Bleue on Larvotto, the widest spread inside any single destination. Capri runs the admission-with-lunch model: €40 to €115 buys the day and part of it comes back as food, with the Faraglioni front row at €290 a head for the view. Ibiza posts the highest median of the big islands at €150 a head, because what Ibiza publishes is mostly its VIP tier; the ordinary lounger economy lives at Experimental Beach's €40 and Nassau's reported €25.

The Spanish mainland is the coast of published extremes: Marbella spans a €20 Monday chill-out bed at La Sala to Playa Padre's €325-a-head VIP day, and does it all in print, which is rather sporting. Mallorca is the gentlest famous coast on the register, median €70, with Balneario Illetas' €52 wooden hamaca the best-documented bargain in the index. Formentera publishes little but publishes it well: Gecko's €95 peak sunbed and Juan y Andrea's €120-to-€250 per-diner minimums, prepaid, on the sand at ses Illetes. Saint-Tropez keeps its legends off the record and its hotels on it: Byblos Beach at €100 to €120 a transat and the Hôtel de Paris' La Serena at €60 are the published face of Pampelonne. Sardinia's Costa Smeralda is the coast of the credit-back model, and of this summer's quietest big story: Phi Beach is trading as Nammos Baja Sardinia, and its official pages price the front terrace at €500 for a double bed. Mykonos, as established, prefers you to ask.

Decode the charging model before the price. A flat fee (36 of the 57 published prices) is what it says. A minimum spend is a promise: Fontelina's €200 is not money gone, it is lunch you are now committed to enjoying. A fee with credit back returns part of itself in food and drink, so Da Luigi's €115 is really €55 plus a €60 lunch you were having anyway. The expensive instrument is the fee plus spend, which takes both: Blue Marlin's lounger is €30 of fee and €70 of promise, €100 a head before the first ice bucket.

The calendar is a price lever. La Sala's single sunbed is €65 midweek and €120 Thursday to Sunday; Ocean Club's €1,000 minimum exists only on weekends and event days; Anima Beach adds €10 for a Friday; Gecko drops from €95 in August to €70 in September and €50 in May. The row is a lever too, though a gentler one than the mythology suggests: most published front-row premiums run 1.2 to 1.5 times the standard bed. The exceptions earn their reputations, with Playa Padre's front of beach at 2.7 times its own standard and the Carlton's pier at 2.3.

And the €100 median is the honest baseline: half the venue-published prices on this register land at or under €100 a head. If the club will not tell you the price before you arrive, assume you are the demand curve. This page keeps the rate cards; for the parties around them, continue to the Ibiza Census 2026, the dated Ibiza Closing Parties 2026 and the destinations of the Social Season. Those pages count the parties. This one prices the nap.