Canada Gains 7 Michelin Keys, Loses 3 in 2026

Canada gained seven Michelin Key hotels in the 2026 selection and had three removed, ending the year at 42 Key hotels against 38. The gains match MICHELIN's own summary exactly: six new One-Key hotels and one new Two-Key.

British Columbia's single piece of movement was a loss. Hyatt Vancouver Downtown Alberni held One Key in 2025 and holds none now.

Chart: hotels that gained or lost MICHELIN Key standing in the 2026 selection. Source: MICHELIN Guide 2026 Key selection, released 18 September 2026, compared against the 2025 selection. Every hotel counted here was read from the Guide's own listings; every loss was re-checked on the hotel's own Guide page.

The scoreboard

Movement	Hotels
New Keys awarded	7
Upgraded a tier	0
Dropped a tier	0
Key removed	3
Key hotels, 2025 → 2026	38 → 42

What gained

Hotel	Where	2025	2026	Change
Four Seasons Hotel Montreal	Montreal	no Key	Two Keys	New Key
Belvedere Hotel - Kingston	Kingston ON	no Key	One Key	New Key
Hôtel William Gray	Montreal	no Key	One Key	New Key
Merrill House	Picton	no Key	One Key	New Key
The Ritz-Carlton Montreal	Montreal	no Key	One Key	New Key
The Ritz-Carlton Toronto	Toronto	no Key	One Key	New Key
The Smith Hotel	Kingston ON	no Key	One Key	New Key

What lost ground

Hotel	Where	2025	2026	Change
Hotel Le Germain Montreal	Montreal	One Key	no Key	Key removed
Hyatt Vancouver Downtown Alberni	Vancouver	One Key	no Key	Key removed
Le Petit Hotel	Montreal	One Key	no Key	Key removed

British Columbia held the top

BC came through the year with ten Key hotels, down from eleven. The Vancouver removal was its only movement in either direction, and both of its highest-ranked properties held rank.

Clayoquot Wilderness Lodge at Tofino retained Three Keys for a second consecutive year, one of only two Three-Key hotels in the country and, as MICHELIN describes it, the rare glamping property anywhere in the world to hold the top distinction. That matters more than it sounds: worldwide, MICHELIN added only twelve hotels net to the Three-Key tier this year while adding 375 overall.

BC's three Two-Key hotels — Rosewood Hotel Georgia in Vancouver, and Fairmont Chateau Whistler and Four Seasons Resort Whistler — all held rank. Four of the province's ten Key hotels sit at Two Keys or better, a higher proportion than Ontario's two-in-thirteen.

Province	Key hotels	Two Keys or better
Ontario	13	2
Quebec	10	3
British Columbia	10	4
Alberta	6	0
Newfoundland & Labrador	1	1
Nova Scotia	1	0

Alberta holds six Key hotels and every one of them is a One Key, including Fairmont Banff Springs and Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise.

Where the gains went

Ontario took four of the seven additions and Quebec took three. Kingston was the Guide's stated surprise, entering two hotels in a single year: the Belvedere, a 19th-century chateau steps from Lake Ontario, and the Smith Hotel, a converted stone church. Merrill House in Picton and the Ritz-Carlton Toronto complete Ontario's set.

Quebec's three additions were all in Montreal, and one of them — Four Seasons Hotel Montreal — is the only new Two-Key hotel awarded anywhere in Canada this year.

And where they were taken away

Alongside Vancouver's removal, Hotel Le Germain Montreal and Le Petit Hotel both lost the One Key they held in 2025. All three remain in MICHELIN's hotel selection and can still be booked through the Guide; none is a Key hotel in 2026. None of the three removals was mentioned in the announcement.

The wider 2026 picture

Worldwide the Key list grew 15.3 percent in a year, from 2,457 hotels to 2,832. That growth was not evenly spread across the tiers: One-Key hotels rose 16.0 percent and Two-Key hotels 14.9 percent, while Three-Key hotels rose only 8.4 percent, from 143 to 155. The top tier's share of the list fell from 5.82 percent to 5.47 percent.

Tier	2025	2026	Change
Three Keys	143	155	+8.4%
Two Keys	572	657	+14.9%
One Key	1,742	2,020	+16.0%
All Key hotels	2,457	2,832	+15.3%

Growth on that scale means removals are easy to miss. Across our full reading of the 2026 selection, 482 hotels gained a Key they did not hold in 2025 and 86 moved up a tier, while 85 lost their Key outright and 28 dropped a tier. The Guide publicises the additions; the subtractions arrive without an announcement.

How these numbers were checked

Every hotel named above was read from the MICHELIN Guide's own country listings, where each property carries an explicit One-, Two- or Three-Key marking, and the totals reconcile to the counts the Guide published on 18 September 2026.

Losses were then checked a second time, one hotel at a time, against that property's own page on the Guide. That second pass matters: a hotel missing from a country listing has not necessarily lost anything, because several properties that plainly still hold Keys never appear in those listings at all. Only a hotel that the Guide still lists, without a Key, has actually lost one. Every removal and downgrade in this article cleared both checks.

One property in this round did something different again: where a hotel's Guide page has been taken down entirely, it has left the selection rather than merely lost its Key, and that is stated as such rather than counted as a downgrade.

What a MICHELIN Key is

MICHELIN introduced the Key in 2024 as the hotel counterpart to its restaurant Star. Inspectors assess architecture, interior design, service, character, consistency and value across a selection of more than 9,000 hotels in over 100 countries, and award One, Two or Three Keys: a very special stay, an exceptional one, an extraordinary one. Nightly rate is not a criterion, which is why a four-cottage property and a 500-room resort can hold the same distinction.

The 2026 selection, the second, named 2,832 Key hotels worldwide — 155 with Three Keys, 657 with Two and 2,020 with One — against 2,457 a year earlier. The criteria are set out in the Guide's explainer on the Key, and the full country-by-country list is published here.