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Sixteen main islands of shallow, clear water between Florida and the Caribbean: Nassau's resorts and Junkanoo, the Exuma Cays and their swimming pigs, Harbour Island's pink sand and the quiet Family Islands.
The FCDO has no advisory against travel to Bahamas.
Source: UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office — the definitive source. Check it close to your travel dates.
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Sixteen main islands of shallow, clear water between Florida and the Caribbean: Nassau's resorts and Junkanoo, the Exuma Cays and their swimming pigs, Harbour Island's pink sand and the quiet Family Islands.
The Bahamas begin just off the coast of Florida and run south-east as a long scatter of low islands, cays and shallow banks. The Ministry of Tourism counts 16 main islands, and they differ more than the brochures suggest: Nassau is a busy capital with cruise ships and big resorts, while the Out Islands, which Bahamians also call the Family Islands, are small, quiet and organised around the sea. We plan a first trip by choosing one or two island groups rather than trying to see the whole country.
Nassau and Paradise Island: the capital on New Providence, where most international flights land: Bay Street and the Junkanoo parades, the fish fry at Arawak Cay, the big resorts of Paradise Island and Cable Beach. The easiest base for a short trip and the hub for flights to everywhere else.
Grand Bahama: Freeport and Lucaya in the north, with Lucayan National Park, which protects one of the world's longest charted underwater cave systems and Gold Rock Beach.
The Exumas: a chain of 365 islands and cays: George Town on Great Exuma, the swimming pigs of Big Major Cay, Thunderball Grotto and the Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park, protected since 1958.
Eleuthera and Harbour Island: a long, thin island of beaches and farming settlements, with Harbour Island's pink-sand beach and pastel Dunmore Town off its northern tip.
The Abacos: sailing country in the north, with Hope Town's striped lighthouse and sheltered water between the cays.
Andros: the largest island, mostly wild, known for blue holes, bonefishing flats and diving.
Bimini for fishing, a short hop from Florida, Long Island for Dean's Blue Hole, Cat Island for the Hermitage on Mount Alvernia, Great Inagua for the national park's flamingo colony, San Salvador and the Berry Islands.
The single reason many travellers come back — the food culture worth reshaping a trip around, and the dishes to seek out region by region.
Conch every possible way, washed down with an ice-cold Kalik at the Fish Fry.
In the Bahamas, the day revolves around conch — pronounced 'konk', and something close to a national obsession. Watch it cleaned straight from the shell at a roadside stand, then eaten a dozen ways: scorched conch scored raw and dressed with lime and bird pepper, cracked conch battered and fried gold, or diced ceviche-style into conch salad with tomato and sweet pepper. Across 700 low-lying islands the sea sets the menu — grouper, snapper and spiny lobster over any meat.
The spiritual home of it all is the Fish Fry at Arawak Cay in Nassau, a strip of open-air shacks where locals gather over fried fish, peas 'n' rice and cold Kalik, 'the beer of the Bahamas'. Order a sky juice — gin, coconut water and sweet milk, said to have been improvised here during Prohibition — and let a slow, salt-air lunch stretch out.
12 destinations in Bahamas — pick a base or link them into a route.
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The largest, wildest and least developed of the Bahamian islands — a low ribbon of pine forest and mangrove edged by the world's third-largest barrier reef and riddled with blue holes.
4–6 days
The Bahamas' closest island to Florida — a low-slung sport-fishing and shark-diving outpost steeped in Hemingway lore, an easy weekend hop from Miami.
2–4 days
A quiet, undeveloped Out Island crowned by the highest hill in the Bahamas, with empty pink-sand beaches, deep folk-music roots and almost no resorts.
4–6 days
A long, thin sliver of the out-island Bahamas paired with tiny, celebrity-loved Harbour Island and its three miles of famous pink sand.
5–7 days
The Bahamas' quieter northern gateway — pine forests and one of the world's longest underwater cave systems, movie-star beaches, open-ocean dolphin swims and world-class shark diving offshore.
3–5 days
The remote southern tip of the Bahamas, where a national park holds the world's largest breeding colony of West Indian flamingos beside one of the planet's biggest solar-salt works.
3–4 days
A quiet 80-mile sliver of the southern Bahamas where the world's deepest blue hole meets powder-white beaches, calm banks on one coast and Atlantic cliffs on the other.
5–7 days
The Bahamas' capital and cruise-ship gateway on New Providence, where colonial forts and the Fish Fry sit beside Atlantis and the resort strip of Cable Beach.
3–5 days
A remote Bahamian Out Island where Columbus probably first stepped ashore in 1492, ringed by a coral wall that plunges into the deep only metres from the beach.
5–7 days (a dive week)
The Bahamas' boating capital — a 120-mile chain of Loyalist cays around the sheltered Sea of Abaco, with candy-striped Hope Town lighthouse, pastel clapboard villages and some of the finest sailing water in the Atlantic.
5–7 days
A thin, sparsely populated chain of cays between Nassau and Grand Bahama, built around big-game fishing, bonefish flats and empty white-sand beaches reached mostly by boat.
3–5 days
A chain of 365 islands and cays with shallow, clear water, the original swimming pigs, the Thunderball Grotto snorkel cave and the Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park, protected since 1958.
4–6 days
Three miles of shell-tinted rose sand fringing warm Atlantic shallows, with reef offshore breaking the surf.
A mile-long curve of powder-soft sand on Little Exuma, marked by the painted Tropic of Cancer line and backed by some of the Exumas' clearest, calmest water.
Two-mile white-sand curve behind Atlantis, busy with jet-skis, vendors and thumping beach bars.
Nassau's handy resort strand of pale sand and calm water, its west end glowing at dusk.
Remote park beach where low tide bares a vast rippled sand flat you can walk far out onto.
Uninhabited cay where feral pigs paddle out to meet arriving boats, a novelty kids adore.
Rose-tinted sand, a ruined stone lighthouse and cliff-framed coves at Eleuthera's wild southern tip — reached by a rough track and worth every jolt.
More than three miles of powder-white sand and shallow turquoise water on Great Abaco, regularly ranked among the Bahamas' — and the world's — finest beaches.
A mile of soft pink sand on Eleuthera's Atlantic shore at Governor's Harbour — rarely crowded, ringed by casuarinas, and an easy walk from town.
Boat- or bike-only sandbar at Elbow Cay's tip with warm, shin-deep turquoise flats.
A crescent of powder-white sand curled around one of the world's deepest saltwater blue holes (202m) on Long Island — a global freediving mecca with easy shore access.
Nassau's most accessible beach — a lively downtown strip of white sand and colourful beach bars, an easy stroll from the cruise port and Bay Street.
The famous barefoot beach bar on Stocking Island, a short water-taxi hop across Elizabeth Harbour from George Town — home of the Sunday pig roast, fresh conch salad and Volleyball Beach.
A private northern-Exuma marina where habituated, harmless nurse sharks gather at the dock, and you can wade and swim among them in clear, shallow water.
A 176-square-mile no-take marine reserve — the Caribbean's first, founded in 1958 — of pristine cays, coral and sea life, run by the Bahamas National Trust.
Eleuthera's narrowest point, where a slim road bridge divides the deep navy Atlantic from the pale turquoise Bight of Eleuthera side by side.
The candy-striped Elbow Reef Lighthouse at Hope Town — one of the last hand-wound, kerosene-burning manual lighthouses still working anywhere in the world.
A Grand Bahama park protecting part of one of the world's longest charted underwater cave systems, plus mangrove creeks and the show-stopping Gold Rock Beach.
The highest point in the Bahamas (206 ft), topped by a miniature hand-built stone monastery — Father Jerome's Hermitage — with an all-round island view.
The cathedral-like cave in north Eleuthera where the shipwrecked Eleutheran Adventurers sheltered and worshipped in 1648 — the birthplace of the settlement.
A 65-step passage carved by hand out of solid limestone in the late 18th century, climbing from downtown Nassau to Fort Fincastle.
A hollow limestone islet off Staniel Cay whose sunlit interior cavern — a James Bond film set — you snorkel into through a low opening.
10 Nights A ten-night dive expedition through the three islands that make the Bahamas a bucket-list destination underwater — Bimini for winter great hammerheads and wrecks, Andros for the world's third-largest barrier reef and its blue holes, and Long Island for the legendary Dean's Blue Hole — linked by short inter-island flights via Nassau.
Price on enquiry
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7 Nights A seven-night family week built around two easy-to-reach islands — four nights on Nassau and Paradise Island for Atlantis, the forts and the Fish Fry, then three on Grand Bahama for national-park caves, Gold Rock Beach and a dolphin day — with a short flight between and an open-jaw home leg from Freeport.
Price on enquiry
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6 Nights A tightly curated six-night luxury escape for two — a night in Nassau to arrive, three on Harbour Island for the pink-sand beach and Dunmore Town's colour, and two in the Exumas for a private boat day among the sandbars — with a premium stay leading every stop.
Price on enquiry
View tripBritish Airways flies direct from London to Nassau (NAS) in about 9 hours 30 minutes. For the Out Islands, Bahamasair connects Nassau with the Family Islands, including a 45-minute hop to George Town in the Exumas; the other route is through a US hub such as Miami, which needs a US ESTA. Search fares on our Nassau flights page or Exuma flights page.
Islands are linked by domestic flights from Nassau and by sea. Bahamas Ferries runs a high-speed passenger service from Nassau to Spanish Wells and Harbour Island three days a week, taking a little over three hours to Harbour Island; some of its other routes carry freight only, so check before planning around a ferry. On the islands themselves a hire car or taxi is usual. Traffic drives on the left, but most hire cars are left-hand drive, and a UK photocard licence is valid for up to three months.
Nassau and Paradise Island have the big resorts and the widest choice; Grand Bahama has resort hotels around Lucaya. In the Out Islands, stays are smaller: guesthouses, rental houses, marinas and a few upmarket inns, such as Coral Sands on Harbour Island. In the Exumas, George Town is the practical base and Staniel Cay the one for the cays.
Best Jan–Mar · Shoulder May, Nov
Units
Forecast · Met Office · updated 13 Nov · Powered by Met Office data
Typical · climate data
December – April (hurricane season: 1 June – 30 November)
Units
What to expect — Daytime highs average about 27°C with overnight lows near 23°C.
What's best — Warm & dry, then Warm. Mar, Apr and May are among the best months here (warm & dry, sunny).
What to expect — Daytime highs average about 30°C with overnight lows near 27°C, with plenty of rain.
What's best — Shoulder season, then Warm.
What to expect — Daytime highs average about 29°C with overnight lows near 26°C — the wettest stretch of the year.
What's best — Warm, then Shoulder season. Nov is among the best months here (warm, sun and cloud).
What to expect — Daytime highs average about 25°C with overnight lows near 22°C.
What's best — Warm & dry. Dec, Jan and Feb are among the best months here (warm & dry, sunny).
December to April is the season we recommend. On our climate data, average highs run from about 25°C in January to 27°C in April and monthly rain stays under about 50 mm. From May it turns wetter and more humid, and from June to September highs reach about 29 to 31°C. The hurricane season runs from 1 June to 30 November; most Atlantic activity falls between mid-August and mid-October, and October is the wettest month at about 104 mm. The Bahamas Department of Meteorology issues the official warnings, and the government sends alerts to mobile phones. Late spring and early summer bring the Out Island festivals, and Boxing Day and New Year's Day the Junkanoo parades.
| Area | J | F | M | A | M | J | J | A | S | O | N | D |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nassau | 25 | 26 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 31 | 31 | 31 | 29 | 27 | 26 |
Colours as on the month tiles above. Bold: hot, 32°C or more (go early or late in the day). Outlined: very hot, 35°C or more. Wet: 150 mm of rain or more.
To read what you're looking at — the empires and eras that shaped Bahamas's food, art and streets.
Junkanoo is the big one: goatskin drums, cowbells, brass and towering costumes on Bay Street in Nassau from the early hours of Boxing Day and New Year's Day, with smaller parades on the Family Islands. In late April the National Family Island Regatta races hand-built sloops in Elizabeth Harbour, George Town, and the Long Island Regatta follows. Early summer brings the Eleuthera Pineapple Festival, the Cat Island Rake & Scrape Festival and the All Andros Crab Fest. Sunday is still observed in much of the country, and modest dress away from the beach is the norm.
26 DEC 
20 APR 
2 JUN 
3 JUN 
4 JUN 
12 JUN British citizens can usually stay up to 30 days without a visa, with extensions possible up to 8 months; the passport must be valid for at least 6 months after the date you leave. The Bahamian dollar has been fixed at par with the US dollar since 1973. The UK Foreign Office reports violent crime in parts of New Providence and Grand Bahama away from the main tourist areas, lower crime in the Out Islands, a poorly regulated water-sports industry, and limited emergency medical care on the Family Islands, where serious cases are flown to Nassau, Freeport or Miami. Read the latest FCDO travel advice before you book.
Read the FCDO's travel advice for Bahamas Travel Guide before booking and again before you go; it changes, and it is the official word on safety and entry.
We write this guide from official sources only: GOV.UK, national immigration portals, tourism boards, airports and operators, central banks and met services. Rules change, so check the linked pages before you book.
The practical back-matter — safety, drones and the essentials, in one place.
Official UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office guidance is the definitive source — check it close to your travel dates.
National parks, protected sites and religious/heritage venues often have their own rules and permits — always check the specific site before you fly.
