Sydney's new hotels: seven openings in 2025, eleven more to come

Seven hotels opened in Sydney in 2025, the busiest year in the city since the Capella and the W arrived in 2023. They range from 14 rooms above a restaurant in Paddington to a 307-room Botany Bay hotel that spent three years being rebuilt. Behind them sits a pipeline of eleven projects with dates running to 2029, and the centre of gravity is shifting: Parramatta, Crows Nest and the Western Sydney airport precinct now have as many announcements as the harbour.

The list below follows the order in which things happened, then the order in which they are due. Where a date has already passed without a confirmation, we say so.

2025: small, local and mostly converted

The year opened with the smallest of them. The Grand National Hotel by Saint Peter welcomed its first guests on 31 January in an 1890s corner pub at 161 Underwood Street, Paddington. Josh and Julie Niland had been running Saint Peter, Josh's whole-fish restaurant, on the ground floor; the 14 rooms upstairs are their first hotel. Studio Aquilo kept the marble fireplaces, architraves and old tiling, then painted around them in bolder colours than the dining room below. Rooms start at about AUD 600, with the minibar and snacks included.

Two weeks later, on 13 February, The Eve Hotel opened at 8 Baptist Street, where Redfern meets Surry Hills. TFE Hotels runs it for the Toga Group. The design team is Sydney from top to bottom: Adam Haddow of SJB as architect, 360 Degrees for the landscape, George Livissianis for the interiors, art by Louise Olsen and Tarryn Gill. Its 102 rooms each have a balcony, a Juliet balcony or a terrace. Liquid & Larder, the group behind Bistecca, runs the food: LOTTIE, a Mexican rooftop restaurant beside a 20-metre pool, and Bar Julius in the lobby. From AUD 470. The Wunderlich Lane precinct around it is still filling in.

lyf Bondi Junction came on 9 April, Ascott's second lyf in Australia after Collingwood in Melbourne. Bates Smart designed the 11-storey building, and the 197 units are studios of around 17 square metres, with a shared kitchen, coworking desks and a rooftop gym replacing the usual lobby. From AUD 190. Bondi Beach is a short bus ride away; the station is an eight-minute walk.

October brought three openings at once. 25hours Hotel Sydney The Olympia opened on 9 October inside the heritage-listed West Olympia Theatre on Oxford Street, the first 25hours in Australia and in the Southern Hemisphere. Three firms worked on the conversion (Tonkin Zulaikha Greer, Indyk Architects and Woods Bagot), and the 109 rooms are split into "Dreamers" and "Renegades". The Palomar, the London restaurant, made its Sydney debut on the ground floor, with Mitch Orr as culinary director; a rooftop bar, Monica, plays on 1960s Hollywood. From AUD 400.

Caption by Hyatt Central Sydney is a different bet. It is the brand's first hotel in Australia, at 13 Parker Street in Haymarket, a block from Central Station, with 174 rooms and one all-day venue, Talk Shop, where chef Yammi Cheung serves burgers and rice bowls and the hotel hosts mahjong nights. Mitchell & Eades used recycled materials for the interiors. From AUD 170, the lowest published rate of the seven.

Then there is The Brighton Hotel at Brighton-Le-Sands, which is not new in the strict sense: it is the former Novotel Sydney Brighton Beach, reopened after a three-year renovation as an MGallery. All 307 rooms were redone in sea-foam green, stone and timber, and Peter Conistis runs the Greek restaurant Ammos. Moving a hotel from Accor's midscale tier to its boutique-luxury label is a long jump, and the suburb sits next to the airport rather than the harbour. Rooms from AUD 350.

The year closed on 1 December with InterContinental Sydney Coogee Beach, formerly a Crowne Plaza. Owner Salter Brothers closed most of the building for a year, and Woods Bagot redesigned it. The first phase put 198 rooms and suites back in service; the infinity pool, event terrace and two pickleball courts followed, and IHG announced the renovation complete on 23 April 2026. The Èliva Spa was due in May. Rick Stein's first Sydney restaurant is on the ground floor. From AUD 610.

Four of the seven are conversions of existing buildings, a pub, a theatre, a Novotel and a Crowne Plaza, and none is on the harbour.

Late 2026: Parramatta and the airport

The Sebel Sydney Parramatta, a 51-suite extended-stay hotel on Victoria Road developed by Nirskam Group and managed by Accor, was announced for August 2026 with rates from about AUD 270. We have not found confirmation that it has opened, so it still sits on our upcoming list. It would be Accor's 22nd hotel in Western Sydney.

The Courtyard by Marriott Western Sydney Airport is the first hotel in the Aerotropolis: 200 rooms, a AU$70 million budget, designed by Hassell, and a completion date meant to coincide with the opening of Western Sydney International Airport. Late 2026 is the target and no opening has been announced.

2027: the harbour tower and the second CBD

The biggest name is the Waldorf Astoria Sydney at One Circular Quay, the brand's first hotel in Australia. The 28-storey tower, designed by Kengo Kuma & Associates with Crone Architects, has 220 rooms and suites, a rooftop bar and two restaurants by Curtis Stone, his first venture in Australia. It was once expected in 2026; Hilton now says 2027, and the latest indication is early in the year.

Parramatta gets a larger project: the Sydney Marriott Hotel on Church Street, 279 rooms in a JQZ mixed-use development, due mid-2027. It will be the fifth Marriott Hotels property in Australia and the first in Western Sydney.

Deicorp and Trilogy Hotels have two Marriott projects with the same late-2027 target, both on the lower floors of residential towers. The AC Hotel Sydney Hyde Metropolitan, 104 rooms below 169 residences in a tower by Candalepas Associates, will be the city's first AC, with construction under way as of February 2026. The Courtyard Sydney Crows Nest takes the first three levels of Falcon & Alexander, a 16-level tower at 391 Pacific Highway, five minutes from the new Crows Nest Metro station. At 100 rooms it is Courtyard's return to Sydney, and the Metro link is what makes the North Shore address viable.

Motto by Hilton Sydney City Centre is Hilton's seventh brand in Australia and the first Motto. It moves into the former Bank of China building at 39-41 York Street, near Wynyard Park, redrawn by Bates Smart: 152 rooms, including 14 bunk rooms and 56 interconnecting configurations for groups and families, plus a rooftop bar. Development consent dates from October 2024.

Crystalbrook Sydney Harbour is a rebrand rather than a build. Crystalbrook Collection paid about AUD 100 million in 2022 for the 176-room Rydges Sydney Harbour on George Street in The Rocks, a pair of buildings that includes the 1920s Harrington's Buildings, and plans to relaunch it in late 2027 with a rooftop pool and bar. It will be the group's first Sydney hotel after Cairns, Newcastle and Byron Bay. The building keeps trading as a Rydges until then.

2028 and beyond

The least certain date belongs to the Florin Hotel at 499 Kent Street. The AU$275 million conversion of the 1936 former Australian headquarters of Universal Pictures, designed by SJB, would add about 17 storeys to the three heritage levels and put an 18th-floor suite with a glass floor above a rooftop pool. EVT Hotels & Resorts is due to run the 228 rooms under its Independent Collection. It was meant to open in late 2027; by August 2026 the nearly complete asset was being marketed to investors, with a first-quarter 2028 estimate. The developers may sell before it opens, and the date stays to be confirmed.

Two signings follow. Radisson RED Sydney Haymarket, the brand's first in Australia, was signed on 26 August 2026 with developer Ceerose: a 31-storey tower with 328 rooms about 200 metres from Central Station, targeting 2029. Accor announced a 143-room Novotel in the Nova Rêve development in Castle Hill on 8 October, with an opening in early 2029 beside 253 apartments.