Best Beaches in Georgia 2026: Batumi, Kobuleti, Ureki

Coastline

310 km

Sea in August

27°C

Sea in Sept

25°C

Bus to Sarpi

under 1 GEL

Nobody flies to Georgia for the beach, and if you are expecting Sardinia you will be disappointed. What the coast offers is different: a green wall of hills dropping straight to the sea, water that is half as salty as the Mediterranean and clear over pebbles, tea and tangerine country ten minutes inland, and prices that make a beach day almost free. We use it the way Georgians do, as a decompression stop after the mountains or Kakheti. Everything below was checked on 11 September 2026: sea temperatures against seatemperature.info's monthly averages for Batumi, tickets against the Batumi Botanical Garden's own price list and the Adjara tourism office's Gonio page, city bus and marshrutka fares against wander-lush.org's Batumi guides updated February and March 2026, trains against our own trains guide (tkt.ge, September 2026), car hire against localrent.com and guesthouse prices against Booking.com for a mid-September night. USD figures use the National Bank of Georgia rate on 11 September 2026 (1 USD = 2.61 GEL).

Pebbles or sand: the one decision

Georgia's 310 km of coast runs from the Turkish border at Sarpi to the Enguri mouth at Anaklia, and it splits cleanly in two. South of Kobuleti, from Sarpi through Kvariati, Gonio, Batumi and Chakvi, the beaches are smooth grey pebbles: hard on bare feet, beautiful to look at, and the water is clear because there is no sand to stir up. It gets deep within a few steps, which is what swimmers want and parents of small children do not. From Ureki north through Shekvetili, Grigoleti and Anaklia the beach turns to fine dark sand, much of it magnetic, with a shallow shelf you can wade out on for a long way. Pick your half first, then the town.

South of Batumi: Gonio, Kvariati, Sarpi

Batumi's own beach is the pebble strip along the 7 km Boulevard, laid out in 1884 and still the city's living room in the evening. It is fine for a swim between the cafes and the outdoor showers, but in July and August it is the most crowded water on the coast and not the cleanest. The city is worth your time; the beach is not, when the good ones are a bus ride away. Our Batumi guide covers the town.

Gonio, 12 km south, is a wider pebble beach with restaurants, sunbed hire and parking, and the Roman fortress of Gonio-Apsaros just inland: built in the first century AD, held by the Byzantines and then the Ottomans, and now an open-air museum with a symbolic tomb of the Apostle Matthias. Entry is 15 GEL (about $6) for foreign visitors, 10 GEL for Georgian citizens and 2 GEL for children aged 6 to 16, open daily until 18:00, audio guide 15 GEL. A morning at the fort and an afternoon in the water is the easy day trip from the city.

Kvariati, the next village along, is the best pebble beach on the coast and where Batumi people go to swim: a curve of clean stones under steep green hills, water you can see the bottom of, a strip of guesthouses and a few restaurants on the shore, and water that gets deep within a few steps. It is not secluded, but it is quiet compared with the city, and it is the one beach we would pick for a whole day. Walk south along the rocks from the main beach and you find pebble coves under the cliffs with nobody in them; wear water shoes.

Sarpi, 17 km from Batumi, is where Georgia ends: a few hundred metres of clean pebbles under a cliff, with the wave-shaped border terminal at one end and the fence running down into the sea. The water is as clear as Kvariati's, the beach is smaller, the village is Laz and has a small museum about the community, and you get lorry noise from the crossing. Turkey is a 15-minute walk away if your passport allows it; our border guide explains the crossing.

Green Cape, Chakvi and Tsikhisdziri

Mtsvane Kontskhi, the Green Cape, is 9 km north of Batumi and is really about the Batumi Botanical Garden: 108.7 hectares of subtropical collections on a headland above the sea, founded in 1912, open 09:00 to 19:00, 25 GEL (about $10) for foreign visitors and 10 GEL for Georgian citizens and residents. Walk the trails and viewpoints for two or three hours, then follow the path down to the small pebble beach under the cliffs, where there is a restaurant and rarely a crowd. Buses 10 and 10a run along Gogebashvili Street from the city to the garden's lower entrance for the standard fare.

Chakvi, a small resort in tea country on the way north, and Tsikhisdziri, 8 km short of Kobuleti, are the last pebble beaches. Tsikhisdziri has the ruins of the sixth-century fortress of Petra on the headland, a black-rock beach with a sea arch and a swimming platform below it, and a couple of resort hotels. It is a local favourite for a morning swim and a good stop on the way to Kobuleti.

Kobuleti: the family resort

Kobuleti, about 25 km north of Batumi, is where the pebbles give way to coarse dark sand and the coast changes character. It was the Soviet Union's sanatorium town and still feels like it in the best way: a long grey beach with a gradual entry, a tree-lined promenade with cafes and Adjarian restaurants behind it, Georgian families grilling mtsvadi until midnight in August, and a few abandoned Brutalist hotels on the waterfront that photographers come for. It is not glamorous and it runs out of things to do after two days, but for a cheap, unpretentious few days on sand it is hard to beat. The Kobuleti Nature Reserve behind the town, a peat bog with a boardwalk and a lookout tower, is part of the UNESCO-listed Colchic rainforests and wetlands if you want a half day off the beach.

Marshrutkas to Kobuleti leave Batumi throughout the day from the car park beside the Church of the Holy Spirit, 3 GEL (about $1.15) and about an hour; ask the driver to drop you at Tsikhisdziri on the way if you want the fortress first. The fast trains from Tbilisi also stop at Kobuleti, 36 GEL in second class, before turning down the coast to Batumi.

Ureki and Shekvetili: the magnetic sand

Ureki is the oddest beach in Georgia. This small Guria town 60 km north of Batumi has fine black sand with a high magnetite content, so a magnet held over it comes up furry with grains, and since Soviet times Georgians have come here for the sand's supposed effect on joints, hearts and nerves. The evidence is thin; the tradition is not. Families bury their children to the neck in the warm sand for 15 or 20 minutes in the morning, and the resort has run on that for seventy years. Health claims aside, it has the most child-friendly water on the coast: a shelf so shallow you can wade out 30 or 40 metres and still stand, and soft sand underfoot.

The downsides are real. Ureki has guesthouses and cafes and not much else, cafe prices run high in summer, and in July and August it is packed with Georgian and Russian families. September is the month to come. Shekvetili, just south of Ureki, has the same sand backed by pine forest and fewer people, plus the Miniature Park of scale-model Georgian landmarks, the Black Sea Arena concert venue and a dendrological park; it is the nicer of the two beaches, with the Paragraph resort hotel if you want comfort. Poti-bound vans from Batumi bus station drop you at Shekvetili; Ureki is another 20 minutes up the road by van or taxi. From Tbilisi, the Batumi trains stop at Ureki after 3 hours 23 minutes for the same 36 GEL fare as Batumi.

The quiet end: Grigoleti and Anaklia

Grigoleti, between Ureki and Poti, is the same dark sand with almost nothing behind it but pine forest and a few seasonal cafes: calm, shallow and as close to a wild beach as this coast gets. Bring water and food. Skip the stretch around Poti itself, Georgia's main commercial port, and swim north or south of it instead; the Kolkheti wetlands behind the town are the reason to stop, not the sea.

Anaklia, at the mouth of the Enguri and the last beach before the line with Abkhazia, is a wide sandy beach with a modern promenade, a footbridge and a half-built resort skyline from a development that stalled a decade ago. It is changing again: construction of Georgia's deep-sea port started here in 2026, with dredging vessels working offshore through the summer and the first phase targeted for 2029, so expect works next to the promenade for years. The beach itself is still broad and mostly empty. Abkhazia beyond it is not accessible from Georgian-controlled territory; do not attempt it.

The water: temperature, salt, jellyfish

The Black Sea's surface water is about 17 practical salinity units against 38 for the Mediterranean, so it tastes and feels less salty, floats you less and is gentler on the eyes. Currents are mild at the main beaches and there is no surf to speak of; storms bring a day or two of waves and then it settles. Harmless moon jellyfish drift in during warm spells in late summer; locals swim through them. There are no lifeguards outside central Batumi, the pebble beaches drop off fast, and the combination of chacha and the sea is what causes most of the coast's summer accidents.

Monthly averages from seatemperature.info, read on 11 September 2026, when the water at Batumi was 25.4°C. Air temperatures follow the same curve, and the coast gets more rain than inland Georgia, mostly as short thunderstorms that clear within the hour.

When to go

Late June and the first three weeks of September are the answer. June has warm-enough water, empty weekday beaches and lower room rates. July and August are peak: the warmest sea, the whole of the South Caucasus on the same pebbles at weekends, and hotel prices at their highest. Go to Kvariati, Grigoleti or Shekvetili rather than Batumi or Ureki if you must come then, and avoid Saturdays. September is what Georgians call the velvet season: the sea is still 25°C, the crowds leave after the first week, the light turns gold, and it lines up with the grape harvest in Kakheti for the best two-week trip the country offers. October is a gamble that pays off in warm years and rains out in others.

What a beach day costs

Sunbeds and umbrellas are a few lari at the developed beaches and free where nobody is renting them; agree the price before you sit down in Batumi. Lunch at a beach cafe is 15 to 25 GEL a head in the villages and more on Batumi's Boulevard, where walking one block inland halves the bill and improves the food. Imported sunscreen in Batumi pharmacies is expensive; bring it.

Getting around the coast

One main road and one railway line connect the whole coast, and Batumi is the hub. From Tbilisi, take the train: four double-deckers a day, 4 hours 1 minute to Batumi for 36 GEL (about $14) in second class or 76 in first, stopping at Ureki and Kobuleti on the way; the Tbilisi to Batumi road trip is the alternative if you have a car. Within Adjara, city buses (card only) cover Gonio, Kvariati, Sarpi and the Botanical Garden, marshrutkas cover Kobuleti and Poti, and a GoTrip driver does the southern beaches as a loop from about 60 GEL per car, Kobuleti from about 65 and Shekvetili with Ureki from about 100, all round trips with waiting time, per wander-lush's March 2026 prices.

A rental car is the only way to see both halves of the coast in a day, and the coast road is good the whole way. Localrent, which we have used for years in Georgia, lists cars for pickup in Batumi with the deposit terms shown before you book; see our car rental guide for how it works.

Where to stay

Batumi if you want restaurants, bars and the Boulevard, and the beaches as day trips; the old town and the streets behind the Boulevard are the best base, and the city has everything from hostels to the Radisson. Kvariati if the swimming is the point: family guesthouses and small hotels on the slope above the beach, a handful of restaurants on the shore, and nothing to do in the evening but eat and look at the sea. Kobuleti for families on a budget, with guesthouses a few streets back from the sand for less than a Batumi dinner. Shekvetili or Ureki for the sand and the children, booked early for July and August because the same Georgian families return every summer. For apartments in Batumi, Airbnb has the widest choice; the guesthouses along the coast are on Booking.com.

Practical points

• Water shoes. The pebbles are smooth and still hurt after the third trip in and out. A cheap pair changes the day.
• Cash outside Batumi. The city takes cards everywhere; guesthouses in Kvariati, Ureki and Grigoleti often prefer lari. Use a TBC or Bank of Georgia ATM in Batumi before you head out.
• Buses take no cash. Batumi's municipal transport is card only: a contactless bank card works, a Batumi card is cheaper.
• Eat Adjarian. Adjarian khachapuri is the boat-shaped one, borano is cheese in butter, sinori is dough ribbons in curd, and the fish is local. The good places are a block behind the Boulevard, not on it.
• Watch the children on pebbles. No lifeguards, a fast drop-off, and cold spots when the wind turns. The sandy beaches are the safer choice for small ones.
• Rain passes. A morning thunderstorm on the coast is usually over in an hour; do not cancel the beach for it.

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