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%).