Sardinian capped beaches, ranked by scarcity

Four Sardinian beaches ran a published cap and a compulsory booking in 2026, and ranked by how many places exist they are La Pelosa at 1,500¹ a day, Tuerredda at 1,100², Cala Mariolu at 700³ sea landings and Cala Goloritzé at 250⁴ people at a time.

The criterion: a number in an ordinance, not a rumor

A beach qualifies here because a comune has fixed a cap by ordinance for the 2026 season and named the site where you book. Beaches that the press describes as crowded, or that circulate with unofficial numbers attached, are not on this page.

The ranking is by scarcity, not by cap size alone, because the two are not the same thing. A beach with 1,500¹ places released two days ahead behaves differently from one with 1,100² places released the evening before, and the release window decides your odds more than the cap does.

Ranked by how hard a place is to get

Read the last column, not the third. La Pelosa sits at the bottom of this ranking despite being the most famous of the four, because it is the only one where a place can be secured months in advance, and that single design choice makes it the one a fixed itinerary can survive.

Cala Goloritzé comes first for the opposite reason: 250⁴ people, a window that opens at midnight three days out, and no way to arrive except on foot.

The four release times are the whole planning problem

Nothing about one system predicts another. La Pelosa releases 500¹ of its 1,500¹ daily places at any time in the season and the remaining 1,000¹ two days before at 9:00 am. Tuerredda puts its entire allocation online at 8:00 am on the day before. Cala Goloritzé opens three days ahead at midnight. Cala Mariolu accepts bookings until 7:00 am on the morning of the visit.

Four portals, four alarms. La Pelosa and Tuerredda each run their own municipal site, spiaggialapelosa.it and spiaggiatuerredda.it, while the two Baunei coves run through the Heart of Sardinia platform.

The season dates differ too: La Pelosa from May 15 to October 15, 2026, Tuerredda from June 2 to October 15, Cala Mariolu from May 1 to October 20. For Cala Goloritzé our sources give a booking rule but no season, so treat the regime as year round until the comune says otherwise.

The one that is a hike, not a beach day

Cala Goloritzé admits 250⁴ people at once on a 7 euro ticket, free for under-fives and Baunei residents, in two bands: 7:30 am to 5:00 pm or 12:00 to 5:00 pm. Boats may not land.

The approach is 3.6 km each way with about 500¹ m of height difference, around an hour and a half down and two hours back up. That climb, in the afternoon, is the reason to buy the early band rather than the cheaper-feeling half day. Anyone comparing this cove with the other three on price alone has misread what they are buying.

The one you can legally skip the queue for

Cala Mariolu counts 700³ landings from the sea a day, and its 2 euro contribution is owed only by people arriving by boat. Reach it overland, where the path is open, and you pay nothing and book nothing.

This is the single most useful exception on the page, and it is the one most often lost in translation. The same booking system also covers Cala Luna, Cala Biriola, Cala dei Gabbiani and Su Sirboni, so a boat itinerary along that coast may need several entries at once.

If everything is full

There is no waiting list and no central overflow. What exists is La Pelosa's second tranche, 1,000¹ places two days out at 9:00 am, which is the only predictable second chance among the four.

Beyond that, the answer is a different beach: no other Sardinian shore in our verified sources runs a cap, so the constrained coast is a short list rather than a general condition. The full rules for each system, portal by portal, are set out on the four booking systems page.

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