EU tourism nights up by 1.7% in first half of 2026
In the first half of 2026, there were 1 321 million overnight stays in tourist accommodations across the EU, a 1.7% increase compared with the first 6 months of 2025 (1 299 million).
At country level, Ireland (+14.6%), Malta (+9.9%) and Slovakia (+5.9%) had the highest increases in the share of overnight stays in tourism accommodation in the first 6 months of this year compared with the same period of last year. Meanwhile, 9 countries recorded a fall, with the highest being in Cyprus (-7.7%) and Romania (-6.7%).
Source dataset: tour_occ_nim
Foreign visitors (non-residents of the country, EU and non-EU) accounted for almost half (48.9%) of all overnight stays in the first half of 2026, with large differences among EU countries. The biggest share of foreign overnight stays at the beginning of the year was recorded in Malta (95.2%), Cyprus (92.6%) and Luxembourg (87.7%).
By contrast, foreign guests accounted for less than a quarter of overnight stays in Germany (18.5%), Poland (19.8%) and Romania (23.0%).
The rise in nights spent by foreign visitors in the first half of 2026 (+2.5% compared with the first half of 2025) was almost 3 times as much as the growth in nights spent by domestic visitors (+0.9%).
For more information
- Statistics Explained article on nights spent at tourist accommodation establishments
- Thematic section on tourism
- Database on tourism
- Tourism visualisations
Methodological notes
- Nights spent: a night spent (or overnight stay) is each night a guest/tourist (resident or non-resident) actually spends (sleeps or stays) in a tourist accommodation establishment or non-rented accommodation. This article focuses only on nights spent in tourist accommodation establishment, while non-rented accommodation is out of the scope of this release.
- Tourism accommodation establishments are classified and described in groups according to the statistical classification of economic activities in the European Community (NACE) Rev. 2 classification as follows:
- I551 (hotels and similar accommodation)
- I552 (holiday and other short-stay accommodation)
- I553 (camping grounds, recreational vehicle parks and trailer parks)
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