Italy airport traffic tracker 2026: the busiest airports to September, and where 9.8 million extra passengers went

The ranking to September: Fiumicino, Malpensa, Bergamo, Naples, Venice

Assaeroporti publishes cumulative passenger figures for 41 airports each month on its traffic data page. The January–September 2026 table gives Fiumicino 39,688,456 passengers, Malpensa 24,087,446 and Bergamo 13,871,761. Naples follows with 11,137,665 and Venice with 10,016,416. Those five are the only Italian airports above 10 million so far this year. Eleven airports passed 5 million. Twenty-five passed 1 million, against 23 in the first nine months of 2025, and Pescara and Trapani are the two new members of that group.

Two pairs swapped places compared with January–September 2025. Venice moved from sixth to fifth, past Catania, which fell 3.3%. Linate moved from eighth to seventh, past Bologna, which grew 3.2%. Palermo stayed ninth, Bari tenth and Pisa eleventh. Ciampino, Rome's second airport, slipped from 16th to 18th after a 1.0% fall, behind Florence and Brindisi.

Further down, 23 of the 41 airports kept their 2025 position and 18 moved. Comiso made the largest climb, from 37th to 31st. Rimini rose two places to 27th, and Lamezia Terme and Lampedusa one place each. Salerno fell furthest, from 30th to 33rd, and Parma dropped two places to 35th. Both swaps in the top ten involved an airport that shrank or grew below the national 5.5%.

Some gaps are narrow. Catania leads Linate by 216,984 passengers and Linate leads Bologna by 208,513. Cagliari leads Turin by 64,745. Those are the margins at the end of September. The tracker will record whether they hold when the next table appears.

Rome and Milan are airport systems, so a single-airport ranking understates Milan. Malpensa, Linate and Bergamo together handled 46,981,382 passengers in January–September 2026, 25.1% of the national total, and grew 4.2%. Fiumicino and Ciampino together handled 42,673,221, or 22.8%, and grew 0.9%. Our Milan airports report covers how Linate and Bergamo outgrew Malpensa, as far as the published data allow. Venice, Treviso and Verona, the three airports of the Veneto, handled 15,977,496 together, up 8.1%.

Table 1 uses published 2025 figures, not estimates. Assaeroporti's 2026 page shows only percentage changes. Its January–September 2025 table, still online, gives the absolute numbers for the same months. For all 41 airports, the change calculated from the two tables matches the percentage printed on the 2026 page to one decimal place. The changes in passengers in this tracker are our subtraction of one published figure from the other.

Airports growing 8% or more added two thirds of the new passengers

Sorting the 41 airports by growth rate shows where the 9.8 million extra passengers went (Table 2). Five airports grew by less than 3%. Because they include Fiumicino and Malpensa, this band holds 36.1% of all passengers, and it added 668,993 passengers, or 6.8% of the national gain. Eleven airports grew by 3% to 8%, among them Bergamo, Naples, Bologna and Pisa, and added 30.2%. Seven grew by 8% to 12%, among them Venice, Linate and Bari, and added 35.5%. Ten grew by 12% or more and added 32.8%.

The fastest band is small in passengers and large in effect. Its ten airports hold 10.2% of traffic and grew 20.3% together. Palermo alone added 1,082,047 passengers, the largest absolute gain of any Italian airport. Turin added 668,785, up 18.0%. The rest of the band is regional airports growing from small bases: Pescara (+33.1%), Trapani (+32.7%), Lamezia Terme (+16.8%), Lampedusa (+22.0%), Rimini (+48.4%), Bolzano (+27.4%), Comiso (+286.1%) and Taranto-Grottaglie, which handled 1,803 passengers. Our report on the southern airport surge looks at Palermo, Bari, Olbia and Cagliari in detail.

Six airports supplied more than half the national gain. Palermo, Bergamo, Venice, Naples, Linate and Bari together added 5,195,996 passengers, 53.0% of the increase, while holding 31.6% of passengers. Each of the six added more passengers than Fiumicino and Malpensa combined. Bari added 722,866 and Linate 721,147, the smallest gains of the six, against 639,384 for the pair.

At the other end, eight airports lost passengers. Together they handled 12,618,900 passengers and lost 518,358, which offsets 5.3% of the gains elsewhere. Catania accounts for most of that loss. The losing airports are covered in their own section below.

The top five's share fell from 54.1% to 52.8%

Growth away from the largest airports shows up as falling concentration. Fiumicino held 21.2% of Italian airport passengers in January–September 2026, against 22.1% in the same months of 2025. The top three held 41.5%, against 42.9%. The top five held 52.8%, against 54.1%, and the top ten 75.3%, against 76.2%. These shares are our calculation from the two Assaeroporti tables, with each period's top group ranked within that period.

The ten largest airports grew 4.3% together. The other 31 grew 9.5%. Without Fiumicino and Malpensa, Italy's airports grew 8.0%. With them, the national figure is 5.5%. Two airports that hold a third of the traffic and grew 1% pull the national rate down by about two and a half points.

On Assaeroporti's full-year 2025 table, the top five held 54.45% of passengers and Fiumicino 22.30%. Those full-year shares are not directly comparable with nine-month shares, because the summer weighs more in a nine-month total, so the like-for-like test is against January–September 2025.

Falling concentration does not mean Fiumicino and Malpensa are shrinking. Both grew. Our Fiumicino report sets the airport's 1.1% against the expansion plan its operator has proposed. Malpensa's single-month figure for September was +4.5%, faster than its nine-month rate of 0.9%. Fiumicino's September was +0.6%. One month is not a trend, and the tracker will show whether Malpensa's September figure holds.

September as a whole ran ahead of the year to date. Italian airports handled 23,928,672 passengers in the month, up 6.5%, against 5.5% for the nine months. The same airports led. Palermo grew 29.9% in September, Turin 26.0% and Venice 14.6%. Catania fell 15.4%. September is 12.8% of the nine-month total, so a single strong month moves the cumulative rate only slightly.

Passengers also grew faster than flights. Aircraft movements, which include every take-off and landing, rose 4.7% to 1,436,446 over January–September, while passengers rose 5.5%. On average each movement carried about 130.3 passengers, against about 129.3 a year earlier on a base derived from the rounded percentage. The table gives no seat counts, so it cannot say whether fuller aircraft or larger aircraft explain the difference. Cargo fell 0.9% to 928,259 tonnes.

Southern and island airports supplied 47% of the gain

Grouping the 41 airports by ISTAT's four statistical macro-areas shows the same shift on the map. Airports in the South, from Abruzzo to Calabria, handled 26,192,454 passengers in January–September 2026, up 10.0%. Airports in Sicily and Sardinia handled 29,395,123, up 8.1%. Together they added 4,569,573 passengers, 46.6% of the national gain, while holding 29.7% of traffic, up from 28.8% a year earlier. Northern airports grew 5.8% and supplied 44.8% of the gain, close to their 42.6% share of passengers. The seven airports of central Italy, where Fiumicino and Ciampino dominate, grew 1.6% and supplied 8.6% of the gain while holding 27.7% of passengers. The grouping is ours. Assaeroporti publishes airports, not regions.

Within the South and the islands, Sicily's five airports added 1,341,424 passengers, up 7.5%, despite Catania's fall. Palermo supplied 1,082,047 of that net figure. Puglia's four airports added 988,292, up 11.1%, and Sardinia's three added 854,854, up 9.2%. Calabria's three airports grew 12.5%, the fastest of the regions with more than one airport, and added 424,626. Campania's two airports added 683,577, because Naples' gain of 812,240 outweighed Salerno's loss. Every southern and island region with more than one airport grew faster than the national 5.5%.

International passengers supplied about four fifths of the growth

The Assaeroporti table splits each airport's passengers into domestic, international (with an EU subtotal), direct transit and general aviation. The split is published for January–September 2026, airport by airport. International passengers numbered 128,968,991, up 6.6%, or 68.9% of the total. Domestic passengers numbered 57,192,897, up 3.0%. Passengers on EU routes numbered 85,895,785, up 6.8%. Direct transit came to 318,477 and general aviation and other traffic to 644,454. The four lines add up exactly to the 187,124,819 total.

Working back from the rounded percentages, international routes added about 8.0 million passengers and domestic routes about 1.7 million. That puts international traffic at about 83% of the combined domestic and international gain, and at about four fifths of the whole national gain of 9,796,881, which also includes general aviation and direct transit. Both figures are derived and approximate. A domestic passenger is counted at two Italian airports, once departing and once arriving, so the domestic line counts each domestic trip twice by design.

The split changes how the two largest airports look. At Fiumicino, domestic passengers fell 2.8% and international passengers grew 1.7%, which works out at roughly 220,000 fewer domestic passengers and 530,000 more international ones. Commercial traffic, which leaves out general aviation, grew 0.7%. The line for general aviation and other traffic grew 49% to 381,309, which explains much of the difference between 0.7% and 1.1%. The table does not say what that line contains at Fiumicino. Malpensa showed the reverse pattern: domestic passengers rose 4.1%, international passengers 0.4%, and passengers on EU routes fell 0.8%. In passengers, Malpensa's domestic routes added roughly 150,000 and its international routes roughly 80,000.

At the growth airports the international line did most of the work. Palermo's international passengers rose 34% to 3,316,702, while its domestic passengers rose 5.1% to 4,912,493. That puts roughly 840,000 of Palermo's 1,082,047 extra passengers on international routes, close to four fifths. Domestic routes still carry 59.6% of Palermo's passengers, the highest domestic share among the six large airports in Table 3. Venice's international passengers grew 10.3%, Naples' 9.8% and Bergamo's 8.0%, and at each of the three international routes supplied more than four fifths of the airport's gain.

Across the six airports in Table 3, international routes added roughly 3.8 million passengers, close to half the national international gain. Fiumicino and Malpensa supplied about 610,000 of that. These per-airport figures are derived from rounded percentages and are approximate. None of the lines says where the passengers came from or whether they were visitors.

Several airports reversed their 2025 trend

Set against January–September 2025, the 2026 table looks like a seesaw. Malpensa grew 9.9% in the first nine months of 2025 and 0.9% in the same months of 2026. Bergamo fell 4.1% and then grew 7.4%. Naples grew 0.4% and then 7.9%. Venice grew 1.5% and then 9.9%. Palermo grew 2.8% and then 15.1%. The 2025 rates come from Assaeroporti's own January–September 2025 table, which compares with 2024.

The swings are larger at small airports. Salerno grew 305.9% to 322,757 passengers in January–September 2025 and fell 39.9% to 194,094 in 2026. Comiso fell 61.2% to 84,286 and then grew 286.1% to 325,439. Trapani fell 7.7% and then grew 32.7%. The table does not show routes or airlines, so it cannot say which changes drove these swings.

The published series do not explain any of these reversals. Assaeroporti's monthly table gives passengers, aircraft movements and cargo, and no reasons, and the association's summer commentary put no figures on the causes it named. Ryanair said on 1 October 2026 that several regions were abolishing the municipal passenger surcharge or cutting airport costs. Our surcharge analysis found no source that measures the effect on traffic.

Catania, Salerno and Ciampino lead the airports that lost passengers

Eight airports lost passengers in January–September 2026. Catania lost the most, 317,111 passengers, a fall of 3.3%, and dropped from fifth place to sixth. Its September was down 15.4%. Mount Etna's eruptions closed the airport several times during the year. Our report on the Etna closures lists the windows and notes that no official source publishes closure hours or measures the effect on passengers.

Salerno lost 128,663 passengers, falling 39.9% to 194,094, after growing more than fourfold in the same months of 2025. Our Salerno report sets out what is known about the fall and what has not been published; it uses the January–August figures, when the fall stood at 41.6%. Salerno's November figures will also carry part of Naples' traffic, because Naples closes for a month in November. Ciampino lost 28,877, a fall of 1.0%. The other five are small airports: Forlì (−15.6%), Cuneo (−15.4%), Foggia (−27.2%), Brescia (−2.3%) and Grosseto (−4.0%). Brescia handled 6,342 passengers in nine months and Grosseto 3,566, so their percentages move on very small numbers.

Comiso, the small airport in the south-east of Sicily, gained 241,153 passengers over the same months and climbed six places. The table cannot say how many of those passengers would otherwise have flown from Catania.

Which national series this tracker uses

Italy has two national airport series. ENAC, the civil aviation authority, publishes one annual report; its 2025 edition, released on 11 May 2026, gives 229,740,554 passengers at 44 airports. Assaeroporti's tables cover 41 airports and give 230,080,945 for 2025. ENAC's list has three more airports, and ENAC leaves direct transit passengers, who stay on board during a stop, out of its airport analysis, while Assaeroporti counts them. This tracker uses Assaeroporti throughout, because ENAC publishes once a year, and compares like with like: Assaeroporti 2026 with Assaeroporti 2025. Mixing the series creates small errors that can look like findings. Fiumicino's 39,688,456 passengers to September include 84,087 direct transit passengers, which ENAC's headline basis leaves out. Nationally, direct transit came to 318,477 in nine months, 0.17% of the total. Our 2025 report explains the two series and Fiumicino's competing 2025 totals in full.

What the monthly tables do not measure

The Assaeroporti table is fast and complete for what it covers. It does not cover origin. No Italian source publishes passengers by nationality or country of residence at each airport, so the table cannot say whether Palermo's international growth came from foreign visitors or from Sicilians flying abroad. It has no Schengen and non-Schengen split. It gives no seat capacity, load factors, airlines or routes.

The table also carries a sourcing note. Ten of the 41 rows, including Fiumicino, Ciampino, Venice, Treviso, Verona, Bari and Brindisi, are marked "Fonte: Aeroporti 2030". The page does not explain the note or say whether those rows are compiled on identical definitions.

The percentages on the 2026 page are rounded to one decimal place. The changes in passengers in this tracker come from subtracting the published 2025 table, which avoids that rounding. The domestic and international gains are the exception: they are derived from rounded percentages and marked as approximate. Ratios, shares and the regional groupings are our calculations.

The table counts movement through airports. Residents flying out, connecting passengers and domestic passengers counted twice are all inside the 187 million. Treating that total as a count of visitors would overstate what it shows.

How this tracker will be refreshed

Assaeroporti's October table was not online on 8 November 2026. Its statistics page returned no data file for October. The September table was online when we read it on 30 October, so the October table can be expected around the end of November. Assaeroporti has not announced a date. When the table appears, this page will be updated in place, at the same address, with the new period stated in the title and the update date shown.

Three things will change. The cumulative period becomes January–October, so every total, rank, share, growth band and regional figure is recalculated from the new table and the matching 2025 table. The narrow rank gaps listed above will be checked. And Assaeroporti's expectation of more than 240 million passengers for the full year, given in its summer release as reported by Teleborsa on 30 October 2026, can be tested against one more month. To pass 240 million, the last three months of 2026 need 52,875,181 passengers, against 52,753,007 in the same months of 2025 on Assaeroporti's figures, an increase of 0.2%. Both are our calculations.

Two later events fall outside the October table. Naples Capodichino is closed for runway works from 1 to 30 November 2026, according to the operator GESAC as reported by AGI on 29 October, with some flights moved to Salerno. That will show in the November table. The full-year 2026 table should follow in early 2027, and ENAC's report on 2026 later in the year; its 2025 report came out on 11 May 2026.

What this means for travelers, businesses and analysts

Travelers can read the ranking as a map of where the flights are. Fiumicino and Malpensa, two of the three intercontinental gateways designated in the national airport plan, handled 63.8 million passengers between them in nine months, but traffic there grew about 1%, so most of 2026's extra passengers flew through other airports. Palermo, Bari, Venice, Naples, Bergamo, Linate and Turin all grew faster than the national 5.5%. Rome and Milan each have more than one airport, and a fare to Milan can land at Malpensa, Linate or Bergamo, which handled a quarter of all Italian air passengers between them. Travelers to eastern Sicily should know that Catania closed several times during Etna's eruptions in 2026. Palermo and Comiso are the alternatives, and both grew strongly this year.

Tourism businesses and investors should treat these tables as activity counts. The 2026 growth is broad: 33 of 41 airports grew, and airports growing 8% or more supplied 68.2% of the gain. It is led by international routes, which supplied about four fifths of the increase on our derived estimate, and by airports in the South and the islands, which supplied 46.6% of it. None of that identifies visitors, nationalities or spending. The top five's share is falling, which matters to anyone pricing a regional airport, and the table cannot say whether the shift comes from airline capacity, regional charges or demand. The thresholds to watch in the next tables are the national growth rate against 5.5%, whether Malpensa's September rebound continues, and the 52.9 million passengers that Assaeroporti's 240 million expectation needs in the last quarter.

Journalists and analysts can cite these figures, naming the series each time: 187,124,819 passengers in January–September 2026, up 5.5% (Assaeroporti, 41 airports), and 230,080,945 for 2025 on the same series. Our 2025 report gave 187,124,810 for January–September 2026, as read on 30 October; Assaeroporti's page gave 187,124,819 on 8 November, and that is the figure this tracker uses. The disclaimer below lists the other figures that differ between the two readings. Treat "more than 240 million" as the association's expectation, published without a method. The series finding holds: the tables show where passengers moved and do not show why.