Bilgin 263

The launch that redrew the map

When Tatiana went into the water in 2020 she was the largest yacht ever built in Turkey, and her delivery in July 2021 was timed to a debut at the Monaco Yacht Show. The industry took note. An 80 metre, four deck, 1,688 GT displacement yacht is flagship territory for any builder, and Bilgin had produced one on schedule through a global pandemic.

The point of the 263 was never a single boat. The yard conceived it as a series and delivered the second and third hulls, Leona in 2023 and Al Reem in July 2025, on a cadence that established Bilgin as a repeat performer at this size, with the awards to match.

Design by Unique Yacht Design and H2

All three hulls share naval architecture and exterior lines by Unique Yacht Design, the Istanbul studio that has drawn every modern Bilgin. The profile is long and unusually slender for the volume, with a fine bow and a low, layered superstructure that keeps 80 metres looking athletic at anchor.

Interiors are by H2 Yacht Design of London. On Tatiana that means rich Macassar ebony, rare eucalyptus and heavily veined marble across eight suites for twelve guests. Leona went on to win the exterior design category at the BOAT International Design and Innovation Awards, and Al Reem was named best motor yacht over 60 metres at the Design et al awards in 2026.

Three 80 metre sisters in five years moved Bilgin from promising outsider to proven flagship builder.

Engineering, emissions and range

The 263 is a steel hulled, aluminium superstructure displacement yacht with a 12.2 metre beam and 3.5 metre draft. Twin MTU 16V 4000 series engines of 2,560 kW each give Tatiana a top speed of 19 knots, quick for 1,688 gross tonnes, and a 168,000 litre fuel capacity delivers a 5,000 nautical mile range.

Tatiana was built to comply with IMO Tier III emissions rules, with an exhaust treatment system the yard promoted hard at launch, and press coverage at the time placed her among the cleanest yachts in her class. For a buyer thinking a decade ahead, Tier III compliance on a 2021 delivery is real protection against tightening port and marine park regulations.

Life on board at 80 metres

Volume is the quiet argument for the 263. Four decks and around 1,700 gross tonnes produce genuine flagship spaces, from a full owner's deck to the beach club the yard counts among its signature features, with service infrastructure for a crew of twenty running hotel grade operations for twelve guests.

Each hull was customised around the shared platform, and the three differ meaningfully in layout and interior character. That is the practical advantage of a series from a custom yard. The naval architecture is proven, the systems are debugged across sisterships, and the owner's brief still decides what the yacht feels like.

The 263 as an asset

The series is complete at three hulls, with Al Reem described as the third and final 263, which gives the trilogy a fixed supply. Scarcity, award pedigree and the largest built in Turkey title all work in the owner's favour over a long hold.

The 263 remains the yacht that anchors Bilgin's credibility at the top of its range. An owner buying into the brand's newer 50 metre series is buying the engineering culture this trilogy proved at 80 metres, and the three sisters themselves sit in a bracket where comparable European tonnage trades at a clear premium.

How the three Bilgin 263 sisters actually differ

Tatiana came first and set the numbers everyone still measures the series against: 168,000 litres of fuel, 48,000 litres of fresh water and a quoted range of 5,000 nautical miles at a 19 knot top speed. Leona followed in 2023 with a visibly different exterior colour scheme, the red hull that later won her the BOAT International award, and a lighter set of tanks at 155,000 litres of fuel and 45,000 litres of water. Despite carrying less fuel, brokers list Leona's range as 6,000-plus nautical miles at 11 knots, longer than Tatiana's. That gap is never explained in any published material, and it is one of several places where the series' own numbers do not fully agree with each other.

Al Reem, delivered in July 2025 as the third and final hull, is the bigger jump. Bilgin added nearly 100 gross tons of interior volume without lengthening the hull, stretched the exterior decking by about 20 percent, raised the mast height and increased generator capacity, along with a new ventilation system not fitted to her sisters. The owner's brief was explicitly minimalist, removing the standard saloon bar in favour of an art installation and adding a waterfall into a foredeck jacuzzi, a different interior mood from Tatiana's contemporary colour-block palette and Leona's Grecian-themed beach club. Al Reem's contract was placed in 2022 through the brokerage Bluewater, well before the hull went into the water, which is the closest thing to a public paper trail any of the three commissions has left. Read together, the three hulls look less like a fixed production model and more like a semi-custom platform that Bilgin kept refining commission to commission, with the published paperwork on guest counts, cabin numbers and even one broker's engine listing for Leona never quite catching up to the changes. A buyer comparing brochures for any one hull should treat Bilgin's own figures as the starting point and a broker's listing as the number to double check, not the other way round, since this series is the clearest example on the whole site of a builder's own specification sheet drifting away from what a later sale listing actually reports.

Pour qui: An owner who wants true 80 metre volume and presence on a proven, award winning platform, bought at Turkish build economics.