Coastal regions and populations worldwide experience the challenge of coastal access constraints. Owing to South Africa’s socio-economic background of apartheid, equitable access to coastal resources remains a challenge. Integrated coastal management has been the subject of numerous research in South Africa, nevertheless, the issues surrounding coastal access and global best practices received little attention. This study was conducted due to insufficient documentation of global practices for addressing coastal access challenges relevant to South Africa. The objective of this paper was to contextualize the challenges of coastal access in South Africa and assess the best practices in selected countries to address them. This study was contextualized in terms of the established literature and previous studies. In examining the key public coastal access challenges, a thematic literature review was used to systematically identify themes and gaps. The best practices for public coastal access are examined in this research using global examples. The following challenges were identified, that is, influence by private properties, apartheid spatial legacy, influence of new developments, lack of institutional capacity, policy gaps and funding constraints. The study concludes that lessons learnt from different case studies should be integrated into policy framework of South African integrated coastal management to improve public coastal access.