Luxury Ubud Guide 2026: Best Hotels & Restaurants in Bali

2026-02-27 · By Splendid

In: Bali

There are places that reward those who already know them, and places that seduce everyone on first encounter. Ubud, perversely, manages both. It has been written about endlessly and understood rarely, a town that wears its fame lightly because the jungle is always louder than the noise around it.

From the theatrical, tented wilderness of Capella Ubud, dreamed up by Bill Bensley from rainforest and settler mythology, to the hushed, architectural precision of Hoshinoya Bali, these are sanctuaries that treat luxury as an act of devotion.

At Capella, copper tubs, carved teak and canvas pavilions sit suspended above the valley floor, linked by bridges that slip through the canopy as if they had always been there. At Hoshinoya, villas trace ancient temple waterways and rice terraces, Balinese craft distilled through a distinctly Japanese restraint.

CAPELLA UBUD

In the hills above Keliki Village, nestled between nine acres of rainforest and rice paddy fields, Bill Bensley has built a camp conjured from a story: the tale of Dutch settlers shipwrecked on Bali's shores in the 1800s.

The project began as a hundred-room hotel. Bensley soon persuaded the owner to change course entirely. He called his philosophy Minimal Intervention: scale it down, keep every tree, let the forest speak. Not a single one was felled during construction.

Every material carries the same weight of craft and intention. Teak floors were handmade in Central Java, built to last generations. The hand-carved Balinese doors took local craftsmen a full year to complete. The hand-hammered copper bathtubs, each requiring a hundred hours of skilled labour, are perhaps the defining object of the Capella experience.

HOSHINOYA BALI

For its first international venture, the Japanese resort group Hoshinoya chose a quietly extraordinary setting. Framed by thousand-year-old temple canals and the Pakerisan River valley, the property occupies a place outside ordinary time.

Architect Rie Azuma has threaded thirty villas along a dense three-hectare stretch of rainforest, rice terraces and shrines with the kind of deliberate lightness that distinguishes great Japanese spatial thinking.

WHERE TO DINE

ROOM 4 DESSERT - Chef Will Goldfarb's outpost has long held a cultish renown among those who follow serious food. The menu moves from savoury snacks through to plated desserts, each course a study in control and surprise. Nearly everything on the table is drawn from local Balinese producers.

BEGAWAN BIJI - Twenty minutes from Ubud's centre, on the edge of a thriving permaculture garden. Its name means wise seed, and every plate reflects that philosophy. Contemporary Indonesian heritage dishes are cooked over fire using freshly harvested garden ingredients.

API JIWA - Designed by Bill Bensley as an imagining of a 19th-century laundry and mud room. At the centre is an open grill kitchen. The omakase format places complete trust in the chef. Every course is touched by fire.

Ubud does not reveal itself quickly. It asks something of you first: stillness, patience, a willingness to be surprised. Great food, like great design, is always a conversation with place.

PhotographyAll photography by Splendid Magazine, captured on the Leica M Series and Apple iPhone 17 Pro.