Club Med used its 75th anniversary year to open two new all-inclusive resorts in genuinely new markets for the brand, continuing the company’s longer-running shift toward fewer, larger and more upscale properties rather than its older midscale portfolio. Club Med was founded in France in 1950, and the two 2026 openings mark the brand’s first-ever entry into both South Africa and Borneo, rather than an expansion of markets it already operated in.

Club Med South Africa Beach and Safari

Club Med’s first all-inclusive resort in South Africa opened to its first guests on July 4, 2026, with an official global inauguration following on September 17, 2026. The resort sits on a 32-hectare oceanfront property at Tinley Manor on the Dolphin Coast in KwaZulu-Natal, north of Durban.

The property is built around four pools, including an adults-only infinity pool, and two restaurants, Oceana and Nguni. Family-facing amenities include a kids club run on age-based programming, along with a surf school, flying trapeze, yoga, sailing and stand-up paddleboarding among the included activities. A separate iLanga Exclusive Collection section of the resort adds a spa and more private accommodation for guests booking that tier.

What makes the resort distinctive within Club Med’s portfolio is its safari pairing. Guests can combine their beach stay with a separate booking at Vikela Safari Lodge, located within the Mpilo Game Reserve, giving the resort a genuine beach-and-safari structure rather than positioning the safari element as an optional day trip. The resort does not offer day passes, operating as an overnight-only destination for both the beach and safari components.

Club Med Borneo

Club Med’s second new 2026 opening sits on the opposite side of the world. Club Med Borneo is located along the coastline near Kuala Penyu in Malaysia, close to the Padas Damit forest reserve, and is scheduled to open in November 2026. The resort is built around access to the surrounding forest reserve, with guided jungle walks and traditional pottery workshops offered as part of the included activity programme, alongside a dedicated Exclusive Collection space offering more private suites and personalised service for guests booking that tier, similar in structure to the South Africa property’s iLanga section.

Part of a wider 75th anniversary expansion

Both openings sit within Club Med’s broader 75th anniversary positioning in 2026, a year the company used to emphasise global expansion alongside renovations at existing properties elsewhere in its portfolio. The South Africa and Borneo openings represent Club Med’s entry into two markets where the brand previously had no all-inclusive presence at all, rather than an expansion of its existing Caribbean or Southeast Asian footprint.

The two resorts also reflect a consistent pattern in Club Med’s recent development strategy: pairing a beach or resort component with a genuinely distinct secondary experience, whether that is the safari lodge partnership in South Africa or the forest reserve access in Borneo, rather than opening a straightforward beach resort in isolation. Both properties also include an upscale Exclusive Collection tier alongside their standard accommodation, a structure Club Med has applied consistently across its more recent openings rather than treating premium accommodation as a separate product line. That structure mirrors the trajectory Club Med has followed over several decades, moving away from its original identity as a network of simple, budget-oriented holiday villages toward a smaller number of larger, more upscale all-inclusive resorts aimed at a different segment of traveller entirely.

How this compares with other 2026 all-inclusive openings

Club Med’s South Africa and Borneo resorts join a broader wave of new all-inclusive openings across 2026 from multiple operators, including JW Marriott’s first all-inclusive resort in Costa Rica and Kimpton’s first all-inclusive resort in the Riviera Maya. Taken together, the pattern across several major hotel groups in 2026 is the same: established hospitality brands entering the all-inclusive category for the first time, rather than existing all-inclusive specialists simply adding more properties to an already established portfolio. For travellers tracking where the category is expanding geographically, Club Med’s move into South Africa in particular signals interest in destinations well outside the traditional Caribbean and Mexican all-inclusive corridor most operators still concentrate on, and the Borneo opening points toward a similar interest in Southeast Asian rainforest and coastal settings beyond the islands the all-inclusive category has traditionally favoured.