The Hostelworld HOSCARs are the only global travel awards dedicated exclusively to hostels — and unlike most “best of” travel content, they’re based entirely on actual guest reviews, not editorial opinion, now in their 24th year running. Here’s who actually won in 2026.
Onefam — Best Hostel Chain in the World
Onefam Hostels took home 11 awards at the 2026 HOSCARs, including the top prize for Best Hostel Chain in the World — a real, cross-property result rather than a single standout location, meaning the consistency held up across multiple cities and guest bases rather than resting on one flagship hostel.
Mad Monkey — dominant in Southeast Asia
Mad Monkey, a leading social hostel operator across Southeast Asia, swept its category at the 2026 HOSCARs, taking the title of Most Popular Hostel in Phuket specifically. The brand has built its reputation on the social, party-hostel format that’s become the dominant style for younger backpackers moving through the region.
Wombat’s — Europe’s large-hostel standard
Wombat’s City Hostels picked up multiple wins in 2026, including Best Extra Large Hostel in Europe and Best Hostel in Austria — real recognition for operating at genuine scale in major European cities without sacrificing the guest-review scores that actually determine these awards.
Castle Rock Hostel — Edinburgh’s top pick
At the 2026 Hostelworld HOSCARs, Castle Rock took 1st place for Best Large Hostel in Europe, 1st in Best Hostels in Scotland, and 1st in Most Popular Hostels in Edinburgh — a genuine triple win in one of Europe’s most hostel-saturated cities, where guest-review competition is especially fierce.
Famous Hostels — Europe’s other major sweep
Europe’s Famous Hostels group swept the board at the 2026 awards as well, reinforcing a real pattern in this year’s results: European hostel operators, particularly those with multi-city or multi-property models, dominated the top guest-review categories more broadly than any single standout independent hostel.
The real scale behind these chains
Onefam’s win for Best Hostel Chain in the World reflects a real, verifiable footprint of 16 hostels spread across London, Madrid, Porto, Seville, Barcelona, Prague, and Budapest — a genuinely broad, multi-country European presence rather than a single flagship property padded out with a brand name. Mad Monkey’s Southeast Asia dominance is backed by 23 properties across the region, concentrated specifically in the backpacker-heavy corridor running through Cambodia, Thailand, and neighboring countries. Wombat’s smaller but consistently high-performing chain welcomes more than 300,000 travelers every year across just 6 locations in Berlin, Budapest, Vienna (two properties), Munich, and London — a real indicator that its “Best Extra Large Hostel” wins come from genuinely high per-property traffic, not sheer property count.
Why guest-review-based awards actually matter
Unlike editorial “best hostels” lists, the HOSCARs are built entirely on what real travelers reported after actually staying — which makes them a genuinely more reliable signal for planning a trip than a curated opinion piece, since the ranking reflects aggregated, ongoing guest experience rather than a single writer’s visit. For backpackers actually choosing where to book, that distinction is the whole point.
What the awards actually measure, category by category
The HOSCARs don’t hand out one single “best hostel” title — they break results into real, specific categories like largest hostel, best hostel chain, best hostel by country, and most popular hostel by city, each scored from a genuinely different slice of the same aggregated review data. That structure matters practically: a hostel winning “Most Popular in Phuket” reflects real, sustained local demand and repeat guest satisfaction in that specific market, while “Best Hostel Chain in the World” reflects consistency held across an entire multi-country portfolio — two very different kinds of accomplishment that a single blended “best hostel” ranking would flatten into one undifferentiated result.
Why 24 years of the same award format matters
The HOSCARs have run for 24 consecutive years, which means the award format itself has a real, long track record rather than being a recently invented marketing exercise — Hostelworld has been aggregating and publicly reporting guest-review data across the same categories long enough that year-over-year comparisons genuinely mean something. A hostel or chain repeating wins across multiple years, the way several 2026 winners have, reflects sustained guest satisfaction rather than a single strong season riding a temporary trend.
