In a collection of hermit crabs from supralittoral, intertidal, and subtidal areas of the Maldive archipelago (latitudes 7°0′N and 0°4′S, longitudes 72°30′ and 73°40′E), 27 species were found, belonging to the generaCoenobitaLatreille 1829 (family Coenobitidae),CalcinusDana 1851,CiliopagurusForest 1995,ClibanariusDana 1852,DardanusPaul'son 1875,DiogenesDana 1851,PaguristesDana 1851 (family Diogenidae), andCatapagurusA. Milne Edwards 1880,MicropagurusMcLaughlin 1986,PagurixusMelin 1939,PylopaguropsisAlcock 1905, andTrichopagurusde Saint Laurent 1970 (family Paguridae). This hermit fauna was in part composed of species widely distributed within the Western Indian Ocean (12 species); seven species were previously known from a few localities, seven were recorded for the first time in the Western Indian Ocean, that isCalcinus guamensisWooster 1984, C.pulcherForest 1958,Calcinussp.,Clibanarius boschmaiBuitendijk 1937, C.corallinus(H. Milne Edwards 1848),Micropagurus polynesiensis(Nobili 1907), andTrichopagurus trichoph-thalmus(Forest 1954). A new species,Catapagurus alcocki, is described and illustrated by one of the authors. The species composition from this archipelago is discussed and compared with lists previously compiled for other areas of the Western Indian Ocean. As shown by a clustering technique, the Maldives hermit crab fauna has a closer affinity with the cluster composed by the Mascarenes, Seychelles, Madagascar, Somalia, Kenya, South Africa, Mozambique, and Tanzania, than the geographically closer Western India and Sri Lanka.