EU tourism nights in the first quarter of 2026 up 3%

In the first quarter of 2026, there were 471.1 million overnight stays in tourist accommodations across the EU, marking an increase of 3.4% compared with the same quarter of 2025. January recorded 143.5 million nights (+3.2% compared with January 2025), February 154.4 million (+3.4%) and March 173.2 million (+3.7%).

At the country level, Ireland registered by far the highest increase in nights spent in tourist accommodation in the first quarter of the year, at 35.3%, ahead of Malta (11.1%) and Denmark (9.3%). Among the 9 EU countries, that saw a decline in the share of visitors, Lithuania recorded the biggest decrease (-12.9%), followed by Romania (-6.7%) and Luxembourg (-3.8%).

This information comes from monthly data on tourist accommodation published by Eurostat today. This article presents a handful of findings from the more detailed Statistics Explained article.

Source dataset: tour_occ_nim

Foreign visitors accounted for approximately 46.6% of all overnight stays in the first 3 months of 2026, with large differences among EU countries.

The biggest share of foreign overnight stays during this period was recorded in Malta (93.3%), Cyprus (85.6%) and Luxembourg (85.1%).
By contrast, foreign guests accounted for only around one-fifth of overnight stays in Germany (19.9%), Poland (20.2%) and Romania (22.4%).

Compared with the first quarter of 2025, there was an increase in both nights spent by foreign (+5.5%) and domestic visitors (+1.7%). The largest increases in overnight stays by foreign visitors were recorded in Ireland (+42.3%), Lithuania (+24.1%) and Slovakia (+15.4%). At the other end of the range, the biggest drops in foreign visitors were recorded in Latvia (-7.5%), Bulgaria (-4.3%) and Belgium (-4.0%).

Source dataset: tour_occ_nim