SUNBED INDEX 2026: THE FINDINGS
Two sunbeds and a minimum spend at a Costa del Sol beach club average €79 a day this summer, up 7.8% on last summer. That is 6 paid venues, every price read in person, last confirmed 24 July 2026.
Published 28 July 2026 · last modified 28 July 2026
What the figure measures
€79 is the average of 6 paid venues for one unit, and the unit is the whole story: two sunbeds plus minimum spend, weekday, high season. It is not the price of a single lounger, and it should not be compared with one.
Our own venue pages quote a different number for some of these clubs, and both numbers are right. Those pages carry a field for one sunbed at list price, and it does not always hold one. Trocadero Arena has a genuine single-lounger rate there, at €40; so does La Cabane (Los Monteros), at €35. Nikki Beach's €100 is a booking agent's floor for a club that publishes no prices of its own. Ocean Club's €300 is not a sunbed price at all — its entry policy reads “no plain sunbed: cheapest bed package (up to 3, bottle included) is the entry ticket”. One field, four different products. Every figure below says which one it is.
Five findings
- Dearest, and rising fastest
Nikki Beach, Elviria — €120 a day for two beds and a minimum spend, up 18% on last summer. It is both the highest price in the index and the steepest rise in it.
- Cheapest paid, and the only one falling
Trocadero, Playa Arena — €45 a day for two beds and a minimum spend, and the only price in the index that fell: -4% year on year. On our beach-club page the same venue shows €40 for one lounger in July and August — a real single-sunbed rate, and the plainest measure of the distance between the two units.
- The one price that held
La Cabane, Los Monteros — €75 a day for two beds and a minimum spend, unchanged at 0%. Every other paid venue in the index moved.
- Where the two units diverge hardest
Ocean Club, Puerto Banús sits at €95 a day here for two beds and a minimum spend. Our beach-club page shows €300 for the same club, and its entry policy there explains why: “no plain sunbed: cheapest bed package (up to 3, bottle included) is the entry ticket”. That figure buys a bed for a group with a bottle included; ours buys two sunbeds and a minimum spend. Neither number corrects the other.
- The free option is still free
Public beach, All of them — €0, and no minimum spend to clear. Towel not included. It is listed in the index and excluded from the average, which is why the average describes what people pay rather than what a stretch of sand costs.
The line, ready to quote
The average Costa del Sol sunbed costs €79 a day in summer 2026 — that is two sunbeds plus a minimum spend, on a weekday, in high season — up 7.8% year on year, according to the Marbella Gone Mad Sunbed Index.
The card
The same figure as a graphic, free to republish with credit. The SVG scales to any width; the PNG is 1200 by 630, sized for a social card or an article lead.
The data
Reuse terms · Free to use with credit to the Marbella Gone Mad Sunbed Index and a link to https://marbellagonemad.com/sunbed-index/
Method, exclusions and limits
Prices observed in person at each venue. Every price was last confirmed 24 July 2026, and the index covers summer 2026.
The average is the 6 paid venues only. The free public beach is listed but kept out of it, and so are weekends and the low season — these are weekday, high-season rates and will not match an August Saturday.
The headline year-on-year figure is the index's own, not the mean of the 6 per-venue changes; those two are different numbers and we do not publish one as the other.
The index is 6 venues wide, which is not a census of the coast. It tracks the clubs people name, so a sunbed priced somewhere it does not list is not evidence the index is wrong — only that the index is narrower than the coast.
Prices for a venue that publishes no tariff of its own are what was quoted when we asked. Where that is the case, the venue's own page says so.
Media contact
Data questions, older seasons, the full methodology, or a figure you want checked before you print it: [email protected]. Reproduce the figures freely — credit "Marbella Gone Mad" and link the page you took the figure from.