These Are the Best Overwater Bungalows in Maldives to Book in 2026

Why We Like It: The 5-star, adults-only Anantara Veli Resort has 67 chic overwaters in a sublime setting just half an hour by speedboat from Mali’s International Airport. The location is more private and secluded than many other overwater bungalows in The Maldives and is very much designed for romantic getaways. It is still just a two-minute speedboat shuttle to the busier (& family-friendly) Anantara Dhigu Resort across the lagoon. There, you’ll find a broad range of facilities and entertainment; restaurants, bars, shops, water sports, etc. Antara Veli also has facilities of its own though with tennis courts, a fitness center, an outdoor spa, and three very fine restaurants serving Japanese, Thai, and international food. The service here is consistently impeccable, and you are allowed as much, or as little, interaction with staff and other guests as you would like. Water Villas & Other Accommodation: You can choose between a classic water villa/overwater bungalow on the lagoon or an ocean bungalow set on a secluded cliff edge overlooking the ocean. All the accommodation choices are doubles and all come with a suitably grand king-size bed. Your choices among the water villas are: ‘standard’ 62 m² units with an outdoor sun deck and direct access to the lagoon. Deluxe units have about 30 m² of extra space plus some very special open-air bathrooms with terrazzo bathtubs overlooking the lagoon. The ‘superior’ water villas go a step further with a plunge pool overlooking the lagoon and a full 125 m² of space over two floors. Finally, there are the ‘Ocean Bungalows’, not overwater bungalows per se but their position on the edge of a small, secluded cliff directly over the ocean grants them a similar feel. They are broadly similar, too, in layout in size, to the superior overwater bungalows, also having that lovely plunge pool, but this time overlooking the Indian Ocean. All the accommodation choices are B&B and have a pleasing array of modern facilities; air-con, WiFi, cable TV, music system, refrigerator, coffee maker, mini-bar (with private wine collection), bathtub, rainfall shower, walk-in closets, yoga mats, etc. plus plenty of lounging and dining furniture both inside and out. There is 24-hour room service too, and the service levels in general, including the concierge, are excellent. Prices & Availability: Check out all the details at Booking.com here or at the Resort’s Own Website (Anantara) here. Food & Drink: At the resort itself, you have a choice of three dining options; international food at 73 Degrees, Thai food at Baan Huraa, and some theatrical Teppanyaki cooking as well as hand-crafted sushi at Origami. For something a little more special and private you can also consult with the chef to organize a unique evening Deep Dive: Read the Review…

Why We Like It: Lily Beach Resort is a 5-star all-inclusive with overwater bungalows on a stunning private island in Ari Atoll, Maldives. Their all-inclusive plan offers a generous array of quality services, with a range of free water sports activities and excursions and lots and lots of premium food and drink. It is a well-known resort and consistently popular; people return here year after year, so we’d recommend you book well in advance.   Overwater Bungalows & Other Accommodation: We have a choice of water villas, beach villas, and lagoon villas at Lily Beach. The typically Maldives romantic overwater bungalows come in two categories: their ‘Deluxe Water Villas’ have 1356 ft² of space including a private outdoor deck with a jacuzzi plunge pool. Their ‘Sunset Water Villas’ are a step ahead with 1960 ft² to play with, a proportionally larger deck and a larger pool, as well as a 24-hour personal butler service. All the overwater choices have our favorite feature – a section of glass floor panels to gaze at the sea life below your feet. The Lagoon Villas are at the edge of the lagoon and cover just short of 1000 ft², are secluded and private, and come with an outdoor bath on the terrace. The Beach Villas have a nice location right on the beach with a private deck and about 730 ft² of space for the ‘standard’ villas and 1463 ft² for the two-bedroom ‘family’ villas, which are effectively two interconnected standard villas. The style is modernist and fairly minimalist we feel, with the emphasis being more on comfort than fancy decor. All the accommodation choices include luxury hotel standard facilities and features as standard: air-conditioning, WiFi, flat-screen TV & home theatre system, tea/coffee making facilities, minibar and safe, etc. The bathrooms are all suitably plush too and come with powerful rainfall showers and luxury spa bathtubs.   Prices & Availability: Check out all the details at Booking.com here or at Expedia here.   Food & Drink: We have four restaurants and three bars to choose from here, and the quality of the food and drink is excellent. Many 5-star all-inclusives let themselves down a little when it comes to food and drink, both in quality and quantity offered, but not here. Choices include the main centerpiece restaurant; the buffet-style Lily Maa, which is partly open air, has sand floors, and two open cook stations. It offers a great variety of international food and has a selection of around 70 premium wines. The á la carte Tamarind Restaurant serves a fusion of Indian and Chinese cuisine while the Spirit Bar offers a range of premium, complimentary alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks, is open until 1 am, and Deep Dive: Read the Review…

Why We Like It: All-inclusive resorts, be they with overwater bungalows or not, can tend to fall short when it comes to real luxury but Ozen Maadhoo is the Maldives’ finest example of how to get it right. We think it’s a really fabulous place: the setting is stunning, as is the accommodation, there is a generous supply of top quality food and drink and, if staying more than 4 nights, complimentary activities to enjoy too – spa treatments, scuba diving, and a meal at the resort’s very special underwater restaurant, just to give you an idea. All that plus very high levels of service make Ozen All Inclusive, for us, excellent value compared to other similar resorts in the Maldives. Overwater Bungalows & Other Accommodation: We have a choice between classic Maldives overwater bungalows and beach villas here, ranging in size from 85 m² to 285 m². They are all doubles, with king-size bed and a sofa bed in the lounge area if needed, with the exception of the large ‘Beach Pool Pavillion‘, which has two bedrooms – a master bedroom and one twin bedroom. The water villas are a classically romantic choice with direct access to the water and uninterrupted views as far as the eye can see. They also all have, amongst other luxury features, glass floor panels in the living room and standalone ellipse-shaped bathtubs that open up to the outside via sliding doors. The standard villas will not disappoint but the ‘Water Villas with Private Pool‘ are the pick of the bunch, having 1205 sq ft/112 sq meters of space and a nice infinity-style plunge pool on the outside deck. The beachside villas may not have that but they all have a private pool as standard and across the accommodation choices the interior design and decor is crisp and smart with sleek furniture, bright fabrics, and tasteful art pieces. Modern luxury hotel facilities are standard too with AC, WiFi, flat-screen cable TV, Segafredo coffee machines, and free minibars that are generously restocked twice a day. We think you’ll find the service top quality at this resort and you will have room service, a private butler, and concierge services throughout your stay. Prices: Check out prices & availability at Booking.com here or at Expedia here. Food & Drink: We find food can be an issue at all-inclusive resorts, in terms of quality anyway. But the Ozen deserves plaudits for it being consistently good. You have a choice of buffet and à la carte international food at The Palms Restaurant, a range of traditional South Asian at IndoCeylon, Chinese at The Peking, and sushi at Raw. We cannot fail to mention the M6m, the resort’s signature (adults Deep Dive: Read the Review…

  Soneva Jani is one of The Maldives’ most exclusive private islands and for us its overwater bungalows are uniquely spacious, stylish, and luxurious. We find the very largest of them, the two and four-bedroom ‘water reserves’ around the end of the walkway, really quite extraordinary creations. These opulent wooden palaces come with private pools, water slides, and retractable roofs that allow stargazing direct from the master bedroom. All-inclusive packages have been available here since 2021. Check below for details as to what is included. We like that most of the island is left natural and wild so, anytime the feeling takes you, you can have a wander through mangrove forests and deserted beaches, and feel yourself enticingly detached from civilization.   Overwater Bungalows & Other Accommodation: The first stand-out feature of Soneva Jani’s overwater bungalows is their sheer size – all of them are spread over two floors and their very smallest one-bedroom units still cover 4477 square feet/416 square meters while their largest, the four-bedroom water reserve, covers a whopping 15295 square feet/1421 square meters. There are five other categories between those two extremes none of which will disappoint, we feel. All come with water slides from the upper floor if you’re ever in a hurry to get downstairs. Other standard features include large private pools, various glass floor viewing panels, study rooms, huge walk-in wardrobes, kitchenettes, and stunning bathrooms. The largest five sit at the very end of the pier by themselves with the largest of all – the aforementioned 15295 square feet ‘Water Reserve’ – being also the most isolated and private. Outside of the water villas you can also choose to stay in their two-bedroom beach bungalow hidden away in the mangrove forests. It is titled the Robinson Crusoe Residence and comes with lots of very private space. Or you can also choose to stay in their very indulgent, 23-meter private yacht. It has two en-suite bedrooms and a glass-bottomed spa tub amongst other things. Your crew includes a captain, sous chef, butler, and a wellness therapist as standard, and a dive master and an expert astronomer can be added on request. You can organize bespoke tours and voyages with the guidance of your captain.   Overwater Bungalow Prices: Check prices and availability at Booking.com here or at Expedia here   Food & Drink:  All-inclusive packages are available at Soneva Jani, where we have four main restaurant options and one laid-back bar. The main restaurant is called So Fresh and is a relaxed place with sunken tables, couches, hammocks, and even a giant waterslide. They serve daily buffets (different each day) here as well as à la carte, the food is excellent and their menu Deep Dive: Read the Review…

Why We Like It: Sun Siyam Iru Fushi is an award-winning 5-star all-inclusive with overwater bungalows on a stunning private island in The Maldives’ Noonu Atoll. The resort has a great reputation for family vacations, winning the World Travel Awards’ category of Best Family Resort in the Indian Ocean for three years running from 2016 to 2019, while also being nominated multiple times for the world’s best family resort. We find it’s also a popular place for a romantic getaway too though – this being the Maldives adults/couples tend to dominate anyway. There are also dedicated adults-only zones and the resort is large enough to find plenty of space for rest, relaxation, and romance. It offers various options – b&b, half board, full board, and all-inclusive. For a multiple award-winning, 5-star resort in The Maldives, we find Sun Siyam Iru Fushi pleasantly very reasonably priced, with the all-inclusive being overall the best value package.   Overwater Bungalows & Other Accommodation: It has a nice choice of accommodation on offer, villa style, around the beach or overwater. All of them fit a maximum of two adults and two children up to the age of 12. They are all as plush and comfortable as you might expect from a 5-star private island paradise with sleek interiors and a nice sense of open space both inside and out. Though some may deem the water villas too close to each other careful design means that even on their outside terrace they are still very private. The pick of their Maldives overwater bungalows are very much the ‘Infinity Water Villa with Separate Living Room’, all 1668 square feet/155 square meters of it. It, as the name suggests, features a separate lounge area and an infinity pool on the terrace. The others are smaller, though we couldn’t accuse any of them of being too small – your most basic choice will still be over 900 square feet/85 square meters. And though won’t have a private pool it will still have either a semi-open bathroom with a photo-worthy spa bath overlooking the sea, or a jacuzzi on the terrace. All their water villas also come with those classic glass floor panels so you can stare down at the sea life below from the comfort of your living room. Though they are a little on the small side it has to be said. Their Beach Villas are all larger than the water villas except for the aforementioned ‘Infinity Water Villa with Separate Living Room’, with a minimum size of 1378 square feet/128 square meters. They are tucked neatly away just back from the beach so do have privacy, all will also have a private open-air courtyard with a pool Deep Dive: Read the Review…

  W Maldives is a sophisticated 5-star, private (heart-shaped!) island overwater bungalow resort with cutting-edge design and facilities. It receives its fair share of international celebs and is a glamorous and fun place to hang out. Facilities include high-quality restaurants and bars, a sublime sauna & fitness center, and a water sports & dive center. The resort sits by what we consider the best house reef in the Maldives and you can admire a vast amount of sea life directly from your overater bungalow: reef sharks, angel fish, stingrays, and glow-in-the-dark plankton and jellyfish.   Overwater Bungalows & Other Accommodation: Most of the accommodation units at W Maldives are overwater bungalows. Their entry-level overwater villas are listed as Fabulous Overwater Oasis and Spectacular Lagoon Oasis. Entry level or not these are incredible places to stay and we think they could be marketed as pretty much presidential suites in a lot of other resorts less extravagant than this. They are sleek and stylish and cover 1570 square feet/146 square meters of space which includes one double bedroom, a lounge with glass floor panels, a bathroom, and an outside terrace that has lounging space, a plunge pool, and direct access to the water below. The only difference as far as we could see between these two is that the ‘Spectacular Lagoon Oasis’ has an overwater hammock on the terrace and the ‘Fabulous Overwater Oasis’ doesn’t. For such a minor difference you’d expect them to be priced very similarly but for some reason, as we can see here at booking.com, the Spectacular Lagoon Oasis will cost you a couple of hundred dollars more per night. Nice feature but definitely not worth that much more, we feel. Then on to the Vice Presidential and Presidential Overwater Villas. These are jaw-dropping two-bedroom units that are enormously spacious, the former being 3476 square feet/323 square meters and the latter a full 5295 square feet/492 square meters. They share the same general facilities and features of the more er…’ basic’ villas, what you are mainly paying for here is their much greater space and a greater sense of privacy. On land, there are the Beach Villas which share the same touch of class and come as doubles with king-size beds or two twin beds. Their setting may even be preferred by some guests – nestling in the jungle just at the edge of the beach they are thoroughly secluded and romantic.   Prices & Availability: Check out all the details at Booking.com here and at the resort’s own website (Marriott-Bonvoy) here.   Resort Facilities & Things to Do: Their AWAY® Spa has a sublime setting and a range of massage, Ayurvedic, and facial treatments. Water sports are Deep Dive: Read the Review…

Why We Like It: Veligandu Private Island, just twenty minutes by seaplane from Male Airport is, for us, probably the best value all-inclusive overwater bungalow resort in the Maldives. Though it lacks the full 5 Star wow factor of Lily Beach Resort or Ozen Maadhoo, for what we are getting here we might expect the prices to be almost double what they are. As such it is extremely popular and sees return visitors year after year.   Overwater Bungalows & Other Accommodation: You have two main room categories at Veligandu – Beach Villas and Water Villas, all of which are doubles with king-size beds though you can order extra beds/cots for children. These are in turn sub-divided into standard and jacuzzi villas. We think none of these accommodation choices will disappoint though the jacuzzi villas, even disregarding the added jacuzzi on the terrace, are more spacious and open, and definitely worth the extra fee. All villas have that nice, traditional Pacific thatched roof look but inside they are modern and sleek. Amenities include satellite TV, Nespresso coffee machines, air con, generous minibars, and, if not a terrace jacuzzi outside then a spa bath in the bathroom inside. We always find that bathrooms are always a good marker of hotel room quality and here they impress, with the added bonus of an outdoor rain shower. Note: Though they are welcome in the other accommodation options children are not allowed in the overwater villas, therefore Veligandu is placed in the adults-only category.     Prices & Availability: Check out all the details  at Booking.com here or at Expedia here.   Food & Drink: The main resort restaurant is Dhonveli – a large, lively place with a fantastic selection of Asian and international cuisine. The food is buffet style and there are various sections with different categories of food for guests to investigate as well as two live cooking stations. It is located right along the beach and has tables inside, on the large terrace outside, and with some tables directly on the sand. Dhonveli has a laid-back, boho chic atmosphere but if you want something a bit more formal you can try Madivaru, an elegant, intimate fine dining venue. Here it is mainly seafood, all of it a la carte and as far as we can gather consistently excellent. Dining at Madivaru is not covered by the all-inclusive package but a 20% discount is offered. Staff will be happy also to arrange romantic, private dining on the beach or in the comfort of your own villa. The main resort bar, Thundi Bar, is a lively and friendly beach bar that stays open 24 hours. It has a great outdoor terrace with views over Deep Dive: Read the Review…

  There’s certainly no shortage of Maldives overwater bungalow resorts out there, but not many see the same number of positive reviews as Velassaru. It is an enormously popular resort and many of its guests happily return year after year. We think the convenience helps in fairness – we love the fact that this island paradise is just 25 minutes by speedboat from Male Airport. Its prices are a positive factor too – for a 5-star resort in the Maldives Velassaru offers very good value. It sees a mixture of guests: mostly couples on romantic sojourns but also families. A drawback may be that it can get pretty busy, by Maldives standards anyway. Some may call it lively or vibrant though, and much prefer it that way. It’s certainly not any kind of wild party resort though either and we find it’s easy to wander off around the island and quickly find yourself alone with the sea. You have three meal packages to choose from at Velassaru: Breakfast included, breakfast and dinner included, or breakfast, lunch and dinner included. Velassaru Maldives is a family-friendly resort but children are not allowed to stay in the water villas hence we have it placed in our adults-only water villas category.   Overwater Bungalows & Other Accommodation: You have many choices here, both on land and overwater, and all offer smooth, modern interior design and understated luxury. The water villas are for adults only and come in three classes: 861 square feet/80 square meter ‘Water Bungalows’ with infinity plunge pools on the deck, 1205 square feet/112 square meter ‘Water Villas’ some with pools, some without, and then their premium 2906 square feet/270 square meters ‘Water Suites.’ Naturally the latter are the pick of the bunch. The space can almost seem excessive though for an intimate couples’ getaway. Unless cost is not a factor, a step below – the Water Villas with pool – will offer a reasonably similar experience for a more reasonable price. We think all the villas at Velassaru Maldives are really quite beautiful, and though it may feel needless with the warm waters of the Indian Ocean directly beneath you, having an infinity pool on the deck adds greatly to the aesthetic and is worth the extra, we feel. All modern luxury hotel conveniences you can imagine are included here, including 24-hour room service. The Water Suite clients also get a personal butler for the duration of their stay. On land we like their beach villas; they have a rustic tropical feel with high ceilings and thatched roofs. They have an infinity plunge pool outside overlooking the beach and a nice and spacious half-indoor/half-outdoor bathroom with a bathtub.   Prices & Availability: Deep Dive: Read the Review…