Greek island groups explained: the Cyclades, Dodecanese, Ionian and five more

The short answer

Greece's islands are usually described in groups, and the list a traveller meets most often is the one the Greek National Tourism Organisation (GNTO) uses on its own website: the Argosaronic islands, Crete, the Cyclades, the Dodecanese, Evia, the Ionian Islands, the North Aegean islands and the Sporades. The same site counts 6,000 islands and islets in the Greek seas, of which 227 are inhabited.[1]

A group tells you roughly which sea and which part of the country an island is in. It does not tell you how it is administered, and the GNTO's groups and Greece's administrative regions do not line up exactly. Nor does belonging to the same group tell you anything about how islands connect: XTOUR does not publish ferry or flight routes, crossing times or timetables between any of them.

The lists in the middle column are the GNTO's own "Where to Go" lists and island texts.[9][8][7][6][4][5][3][2] The last column is XTOUR's own coverage: a destination's group is where it sits, and it says nothing about how near it is to any other island in the same group.

The Cyclades: islands in a circle around Delos

The GNTO's Cyclades page explains the name directly: it comes from the imaginary circle the islands form around the sacred island of Delos. The same page tells the myth in which Poseidon turned nymphs called the Cyclades into islands.[2]

Its tour of the group runs from Andros, which it calls the northernmost island, to Santorini at the southern end, and it names Naxos as the largest. It also picks out the Small Cyclades, Iraklia, Schinoussa, Donousa and Koufonisia, as a cluster of their own.[2]

Two details on that page matter for how XTOUR treats its Cycladic destinations. First, the GNTO lists Santorini (Thera) and Thirasia as two entries.[2] XTOUR's Santorini destination is the main island, not Thirasia. Second, the GNTO lists Delos as an island in its own right, alongside Mykonos.[2] XTOUR lists Delos separately and never treats Mykonos as the island that contains it; the Delos explainer sets out why.

The two official sources describe Delos differently. The GNTO's Cyclades page calls it "uninhabited Delos".[2] Hellenic Heritage, the visitor site of the Hellenic Organization of Cultural Resources Development (ODAP), gives on its Delos page a population of less than 25 people, mainly staff working at the archaeological sites.[10] XTOUR reports both and does not choose between them.

The Dodecanese: fourteen islands on the GNTO's list

The GNTO places the Dodecanese in the southeastern Aegean. Its "Where to Go" list has fourteen islands: Astypalea, Kalymnos, Karpathos, Kasos, Kastellorizo, Kos, Lipsi, Leros, Nisyros, Patmos, Rhodes, Symi, Tilos and Chalki. The text adds smaller islands: Telendos and Pserimos in its paragraph on Kalymnos, Kinaros and Levitha as islets near Leros, and Arki and Agathonisi, named with Lipsi.[3]

The page says the Dodecanese were under Italian rule until 1947. It also describes Astypalea's main town as combining Cycladic and Dodecanese aesthetics.[3] XTOUR's reading is that the line between neighbouring groups is drawn by convention, not by any hard border. XTOUR's one Dodecanese destination is Rhodes, the whole island; the Rhodes guide covers its medieval city.

Crete: an island group of one

Crete is a group of its own on the GNTO's site, which calls it the largest island in Greece. Its "Where to Go" list is of places on the island, Heraklion, Chania, Rethymno, Agios Nikolaos, Elounda, Ierapetra and Sitia, plus Gavdos, a separate island that the page calls the southernmost tip of Europe.[5]

The page also says that in 2025 the Minoan Palatial Centres, Knossos, Phaistos, Malia, Zakros, Zominthos and Kydonia, were included in the UNESCO World Heritage List.[5] XTOUR's Cretan destinations are Heraklion and Chania. For Knossos, see Knossos or the Heraklion Archaeological Museum.

The Ionian Islands, and where Kythira belongs

The GNTO describes the Ionian Islands as the group along Greece's western coast, shaped by a long period of European presence at a time when much of Greece was under Ottoman rule. Its list runs from Corfu and the small Diapontia Islands in the north, with Othoni as the westernmost point of Greece, through Paxi, Antipaxi, Lefkada, Meganisi, Kefalonia, Ithaca and Zakynthos, to Kythira and Antikythira in the south. The page calls Lefkada "the island accessible by road".[4]

Kythira is where the tourism grouping and the administrative map part company. The Municipality of Kythira says the island belongs administratively to the Region of Attica, while also counting as one of the Eptanisa, the seven Ionian islands, because it was part of the Ionian state from 1800 to 1864.[14] The Region of Ionian Islands' own website names deputy governors for the regional units of Corfu, Lefkada, Kefalonia and Zakynthos, and tags notices for Ithaca; Kythira is not among them.[12]

XTOUR's Ionian destination is Corfu Town, the town rather than the whole island.

The North Aegean islands

The GNTO's North Aegean group covers the islands in the northern Aegean, near the coast of Asia Minor: Lesvos, Limnos, Agios Efstratios, Chios, Oinousses, Psara, Samos, Ikaria, Fourni, Samothrace and Thasos. The page calls Chios the homeland of mastic gum, describes Lesvos as a UNESCO Geopark in its entirety, and mentions Samos wine.[6] Chios mastic is covered in XTOUR's Greek food guide and Samos in the Greek wine guide.

The administrative Region of North Aegean is narrower. Its website names its islands as Lesvos, Samos, Chios, Limnos, Ikaria, Fourni, Thymaina, Agios Efstratios, Oinousses and Psara; Thasos and Samothrace are not among them.[13] A notice on the website of a different region, Eastern Macedonia and Thrace, locates a site in the municipality of Thasos, "of the Regional Unit of Kavala".[15] XTOUR's reading is that Thasos is administered from Eastern Macedonia and Thrace while being a North Aegean island in the GNTO's grouping. XTOUR has not read an official statement on which region administers Samothrace, so it does not say.

The Argosaronic islands, the Sporades and Evia

Argosaronic. The GNTO's page, whose web address calls them the Saronic islands, describes them as spanning the Saronic Gulf to the entrance of the Argolic Gulf and names six: Salamina, Aegina, Agistri, Poros, Hydra and Spetses. It describes them as among the closest island destinations to Athens, and Aegina as the first capital of the independent Greek state.[7]

Sporades. The GNTO lists four: Skiathos, Skopelos, which it calls the largest of the complex, Alonnisos and Skyros. It calls Skyros the southernmost and describes its identity as "a balancing act between the Sporades and the Cyclades". Alonnisos, the same page says, is home to a National Marine Park that shelters the Mediterranean monk seal.[8]

Evia. The GNTO treats Evia as a group of its own and calls it the second largest island of Greece. Its page says Evia is joined to the mainland by two bridges at Chalkida, and its "Where to Go" list is of places on Evia, with the Lichadonisia, seven volcanic islets on its northwestern edge.[9]

Tourism groups, regions and wine names

Three different systems use the island-group names, and they do not draw the same lines.

• The GNTO's tourism groups, the eight above.[1]
• Administrative regions. The Region of South Aegean covers both the Cyclades and the Dodecanese, with a deputy governor for each.[11] The Ionian Islands are a region of their own, but, as above, the Region of Ionian Islands does not include Kythira, and the Region of North Aegean does not cover every island the GNTO lists under that name.[13][14][12]
• Protected wine names. The EU register holds Greek wine PGIs named Kyklades (Cyclades), Dodekanisos (Dodecanese), Kriti (Crete) and Aigaio Pelagos (Aegean Sea).[16] The Cyclades PGI's technical file defines its area by the administrative boundary of the Cyclades prefecture, at 30 metres altitude and above.[17]

XTOUR's reading is that the group names are useful shorthand for where an island lies, and that a precise question, such as which authority runs an island or which wine may use its name, needs the source for that system.

What XTOUR does not tell you

XTOUR does not publish ferry or flight routes, crossing times, timetables or fares between islands or from the mainland, and it does not rank islands or groups. It has destination pages only for Santorini, Mykonos, Rhodes, Heraklion, Chania and Corfu Town among the islands; every other island named here is described from the GNTO's pages and has no XTOUR record. For the country as a whole, see the Greece travel guide and the Greece country page.