COP31 Antalya 2026: Airport, Hotels and Getting Around

Antalya hosts the 31st UN Climate Change Conference — COP31 — from 9 to 20 November 2026. For two weeks, the same arrivals hall will handle government delegations, UN agencies, journalists and civil society groups alongside the ordinary holidaymakers who booked Antalya for a quiet autumn week.

If you are flying into Antalya Airport in November 2026, for either reason, a few things are worth knowing before you book.

The venue is unusually close to the airport

COP31 takes place at the Antalya EXPO Center, in Soğucaksu in the Aksu district. It sits five to six kilometres from Antalya Airport — about ten minutes by car on a normal day.

That is closer to the runway than any recent COP venue has been, and it shapes everything else. Delegations will not be spread across a distant city; they will concentrate in a narrow band of coast that starts at the airport and runs east. The airport road becomes the conference road.

Who is coming

197 countries are parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and all of them are expected to send delegations. Türkiye hosts the conference, with Environment Minister Murat Kurum as COP31 President-Designate; Australia's Chris Bowen serves as President of Negotiations, an arrangement the two countries agreed at COP30 after both had bid to host.

The Turkish organisers say they expect around 100,000 participants across the fortnight. Other published estimates are lower, and the real figure will not be known until accreditation closes — but every version of it is a large number for a coast that is normally winding down in November.

Anyone attending the conference itself needs accreditation to enter the venue. The organisers advise applying early rather than close to the date.

What this does to hotels

November is Antalya's low season. Beach hotels along this coast usually run at a fraction of their summer occupancy, and many close for the winter altogether. In 2026 that pattern breaks for two weeks.

Demand will concentrate on the airport-to-Expo corridor — Lara, Kundu and Belek — because those are the resorts with large hotels close enough to the venue to house a delegation together. Official accommodation for delegates is being arranged through an appointed travel partner, which takes a significant share of those rooms out of general circulation.

The practical consequence is simple: if you had planned to book an Antalya hotel late, the way November usually allows, 2026 is the year not to. Resorts further west (Kemer, Tekirova) and further east (Side, Alanya) are less affected, but they are also an hour or more from the airport.

If you are landing that fortnight

Expect a busier airport than a normal November — more arrivals, longer queues at passport control, and more vehicles on the airport road. Nothing about security arrangements, accreditation zones or possible road restrictions around the EXPO Center has been published yet; when it is, it will come from the organisers and the local authorities rather than from travel companies.

What you can settle now is everything on your side: your hotel, your accreditation if you need one, and how you are getting from the terminal to where you are staying. A transfer arranged before you fly means a driver waiting for you by name at arrivals, which matters more in a crowded terminal than in an empty one — and it is the part of the trip that gets hardest to arrange at short notice when 100,000 other people want the same thing in the same fortnight.

We run private transfers from Antalya Airport to hotels along the whole coast, including the Lara, Kundu and Belek corridor where most of the conference traffic will be. Whether you are coming for COP31 or simply for a week in the sun, the advice for November 2026 is the same as it has never been before on this coast: book early.