Munich Airport is a Finalist for Best Airport in the World at the
2026 Travelling for Business Awards, and it remains the airport that European frequent flyers name when asked where connecting is actually pleasant. Europe's first five-star-rated hub has held that standard for years by treating the transfer passenger — aviation's least loved customer — as the main event of the whole operation.
The Lufthansa joint-venture Terminal 2 and its satellite building are the beating heart of the machine: gates organised around short, honest walking distances, security that moves, and published connection times that can genuinely be trusted at thirty-five minutes because the whole operation — baggage, buses, boarding — is built and staffed to honour them. For UK travellers, frequent feeds from London and the regions meet onward banks spanning half of Europe together with the Middle East and Asia, with new routes joining the summer schedule as the hub's second-home carrier expands — Munich increasingly shares Lufthansa's long-haul growth rather than merely feeding Frankfurt's.
Then there is the Bavarian layer, which no rival can fake. The airport brews its own beer at Airbräu — Europe's only airport brewery — hosts a genuine Christmas market complete with ice rink between the terminals each winter, and sends off Oktoberfest season in style, traditional dress included, a tradition that reached the aircraft themselves when
crews flew in Bavarian garment from the airport's home city — the sort of colour that keeps
Travelling for Business readers fond of the place. Surrounded by visitor parks and served by relentless S-Bahn links into the city, it is an airport with civic pride designed in from the aprons up.
The service substance underwrites the charm: punctuality and baggage performance sit consistently among Europe's best, lounges across the alliances are plentiful and calm, and wayfinding assumes an intelligent adult in a hurry. Corporate bookers value the predictability; their travellers remember the weisswurst. Few airports convert first-time transfers into stated preferences at Munich's rate, which is its own kind of performance metric.
A place among the 2026 Finalists recognises the rare hub that is both operationally elite and genuinely liked. Winners will be announced at the 2026 Travelling for Business Awards, and Munich's blend of precision and personality gives the category its most contented passengers.
