Bilgin Yachts

Five generations on the Bosphorus

Bilgin traces its craft to a family boathouse at Salacak, on the Asian shore of the Bosphorus, where master boatwrights were shaping fine wooden hulls at the start of the twentieth century, some of them for the Ottoman court. The business that became Bilgin Yachts was formally established in 1929, and it has never left the family. Five generations later the yard is still privately held and still run by the people whose name is on the transom.

The modern arc runs through a private workshop opened in 1957, a move to larger premises on the western edge of Istanbul in 1975, and a steady climb from 10 to 20 metre motor yachts into genuine superyacht work. The first international sale came in 2002, and within two decades the yard had gone from local builder to a fixture of the Monaco Yacht Show.

An Istanbul yard built for in-house control

Headquarters and outfitting sit at West Istanbul Marina, with hulls and superstructures fabricated at a dedicated facility in Yalova, across the Sea of Marmara. In total the company works across more than 79,000 square metres of production space in Turkey, and it keeps an unusual amount of the build in-house, from metalwork to joinery.

Bilgin is a member of SYBAss, the association of the world's leading superyacht builders, and positions itself in the 50 to 120 metre custom bracket. Its design bench is notably stable. Naval architecture and exterior lines come from Unique Yacht Design on every recent series, with interiors by H2 Yacht Design on the flagships and Hot Lab on the 50 metre platforms.

The 80 metre statement

The pivotal moment came in 2020, when the yard launched the 80 metre Tatiana, the largest yacht ever built in Turkey. She was delivered in July 2021 and made her debut at that year's Monaco Yacht Show, a coming-out moment watched closely by an industry that had long filed Turkish yards under refit work and smaller custom builds.

Two sisterships followed. Leona was delivered in 2023 and won a BOAT International Design and Innovation Award for her exterior. Al Reem, delivered in July 2025, completed the trilogy. Three 80 metre yachts handed over in five years is a production record very few yards outside northern Europe can show.

What the order book says to an owner

The current range is built on a sub-500 GT platform family, the 163, 170 and 173 series, which shares engineering while leaving layout and interior open to the owner. The order book suggests the strategy is landing. The first 173 is being built for the owner of an earlier Bilgin, who brought the name Giaola-Lu back for the new boat, and the second 53 metre hull sold in April 2026 through Edmiston ahead of a delivery scheduled for 2028.

For a buyer weighing the yard as an asset decision, the signals are repeat clients, a sold forward book, an award record across three series and delivered proof at 80 metres. Bilgin builds to full custom finish from an Istanbul cost base, and the recent sales suggest international buyers have done that arithmetic.