Italy's tourist tax in 2026: no national rate, a €5 default cap, and a €12 headline for Milan's 5-star hotels only

Who sets the rate: the comune, under a €5 default ceiling

The legal base is article 4 of Legislative Decree 23/2011. It lets three kinds of local authority levy the tax: provincial capitals, unions of comuni, and comuni on regional lists of tourist localities or art cities. The ceiling is €5 per person per night. We confirmed the wording "sino a 5 euro per notte di soggiorno" in three municipal documents that quote the article: the Comune di Arezzo's copy of the decree, the Comune di Bologna's 2026 tariff proposal (DG/PRO/2025/283) and a 2025 tariff deliberation of the Comune di Modena. We did not open the current consolidated text of the article on Normattiva, which returned an error.

The first exception is permanent. Comma 1-bis of article 4, added by Law 197/2022 (comma 787), lets provincial capitals whose tourist presences are twenty times their residents charge up to €10. We saw this provision in the premises of the Modena deliberation and in an informazionefiscale explainer (14 January 2023), not in the consolidated statute. Rome stands apart. Its €10 "contributo di soggiorno" rests on separate legislation for Roma Capitale, which Il Sole 24 Ore identifies as Decree-Law 78/2010. We did not open that decree.

The tax is charged per person and per night, and almost every detail beyond the ceiling is municipal. Exemptions for children differ: under 10 in Rome, under 12 in Florence, under 14 in Bologna, under 10 in Venice. Caps on taxable nights differ too: 10 consecutive nights in Rome, 7 in Florence, and no tax after the 5th night in Venice's tariff booklet. The research found no national cap on nights and no national list of exemptions in any text it read. A traveler who stays two weeks in Rome and two weeks in Florence meets two different sets of rules.

Coverage is uneven, and nobody keeps a list. The Ministry of Tourism's statistics office wrote in 2022 that no official list of comuni applying the tax exists (Ufficio di Statistica, "Imposta di soggiorno e flussi turistici", October 2022). That gap returns in the revenue section below.

The 2026 add-ons: a Jubilee extension and an Olympic option

The Jubilee option began in the Budget Law for 2024. Article 1, comma 492 of Law 213/2023 let provincial capitals, unions of comuni and article 4 comuni add "up to 2 euro per night" for 2025, "on the occasion of the Jubilee". It covered a class of comuni, not Rome alone. Naples and Milan both used it, and the Bologna proposal quotes the same scope in its premises.

The Budget Law for 2026 extended it. Law 199/2025, commi 683 and 684, says the 2025 increases "may also apply to 2026". It adds a condition that did not exist before: 30% of the extra revenue goes to two State funds, the Fondo unico per l'inclusione delle persone con disabilità and a fund for minors removed from their families. A decree from the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) was due by 30 April 2026 to set how the State share is identified. We confirmed this through a note on the Budget Law by ANCI-IFEL, the research arm of the association of Italian municipalities. We could not read the statutory text of the two commi: Normattiva returned an error and the Gazzetta Ufficiale copies we found were truncated or rendered as images. We did not find the MEF decree. Whether a comune that skipped the increase in 2025 may start it in 2026 is unclear; the legal site leggeinchiaro (24 May 2026) flags the same doubt.

The Olympic option sits in a different law. Decree-Law 156/2025, article 4, commi 6 and 7, converted by Law 191/2025, lets comuni in Lombardy and Veneto within 30 km of a competition venue raise the tax "up to 5 euro per night" in 2026 only. Half of the extra revenue goes to the State budget for Games works; the other half stays with the comune for the usual tourism uses. An MEF decree was due by 31 March 2026. Our source is the Chamber of Deputies research dossier on the decree (D25156, 4 November 2025). We did not find the decree on the State share, and we did not verify which comuni besides Milan applied the Olympic increase. Cortina, Bormio and Livigno remain unchecked.

Both options set a maximum. Neither sets a flat charge. Milan's 4-star and 5-star rate went from €7 in 2025 to €10 in January 2026, and only the 5-star rate reached €12 in April. Milan's sequence fits the stacking arithmetic, though no source we opened breaks it down this way: €5 in 2024 (then the legal maximum, under delibera 1456/2023), €7 in 2025 with the Jubilee €2 (Assolombarda's copy of the November 2024 delibera), €10 in January 2026, and €12 for 5-star hotels from April 2026. The last figure equals €5 base plus €2 Jubilee plus €5 Olympic, the most both 2026 options allow. That makes the Milan 5-star rate 140% higher than in 2024 (derived, ours).

Press reports turned these options into new ceilings. Idealista (15 January 2026) and mysolution (30 December 2025) wrote that provincial capitals could charge up to €7 and art cities up to €12. Those numbers are the sums €5 plus €2 and €10 plus €2 under an optional extension. They are not new caps that apply to every city. Rome is the clearest case. The option to reach €12 existed, and money.it (17 October 2025) and Fanpage (2 November 2023) reported that Rome could get there. Il Giorno reported on 13 February 2026 that Rome's 5-star rate "for now stays at 10". No source we found shows Rome adopting the increase, and the research did not establish whether Rome's separate contributo is eligible for the comma 492 option at all.

The Jubilee year itself is covered in our Jubilee 2025 by the numbers analysis. For tourist tax purposes, what matters is that the Jubilee surcharge outlived the Jubilee.

What the big cities charge in 2026

Table 1 lists the rates we could trace for eight cities. Rates for Rome, Milan and Florence rest on press or booking-software sources because the comuni's own pages refused our requests. Venice, Naples and Bologna come from the comuni's own documents. The table states which is which.

Rome's structure is the one most travelers meet. The 5-star rate is €10, the 3-star rate €6, and B&Bs and category 1 holiday apartments pay €6 (Finestre sull'Arte, 29 December 2023); Il Giorno (13 February 2026) confirms the 5-star €10 is unchanged. The 4-star rate is contested. Finestre sull'Arte and a second booking guide give €7.50; the booking-software firm Chekin gives €7. The evidence leans slightly to €7.50, but the two values differ by 50 cents a night and Roma Capitale's own rate page blocked our request, so we could not settle it. The tax stops after 10 consecutive nights in the same property (Finestre sull'Arte; 5 nights for campsites under the 2018 regulation), and children under 10 are exempt (Assemblea Capitolina 32/2018). If you are planning a first visit, our Rome travel guide and list of things to do in Rome cover the city itself.

Milan changed its tariff twice in 2026. Giunta delibera 1418 of 13 November 2025 set the January-to-March rates: €10 for 4-star and 5-star hotels, €7.40 for 3-star and €9.50 for B&Bs and short lets (delibera number via Assolombarda, a Milan business association that reproduces municipal acts; amounts via AGI, 13 November 2025). Delibera 144 of 12 February 2026 set the rates from 1 April: €12 for 5-star, €10 for 4-star, €7 for 3-star, B&Bs and short lets still €9.50 (greenMe, which gives the delibera number; Il Giorno reports the same hotel rates). The 3-star rate went down by 40 cents. Milan's regulation, in the version reproduced by Assolombarda (last amended 2013), exempts under-18s and caps taxable nights at 14 only in residences; hotel stays are taxed in full. We did not find a later version. Il Giorno reported that the April increase was not permanent. We could not confirm whether it ends with 2026.

Florence charges €8 in 5-star hotels, €7 in 4-star and €6 in 3-star hotels and B&Bs, for up to 7 consecutive nights, with children under 12 exempt. Those rates date from 1 February 2025 (delibera 535 of 10 December 2024), and Chekin (31 March 2026) found no 2026 change. The comune's site refused our request, so these figures are secondary. Florence's other big policy change in this period, the restriction on new short lets in the historic centre, is covered in our Florence short-term rental ban analysis.

Venice's tax is lower than its reputation. The Comune di Venezia's tariff booklet, valid from 1 April 2025, sets the high-season rate (1 February to 31 December) in the historic centre, Giudecca and the islands at €5 for 5-star hotels, €4.50 for 4-star and €3.50 for 3-star. B&Bs pay between €2 and €5 depending on their rating in "leoni", Venice's own classification. Children under 10 are exempt. The trade paper TTG Italia (13 April 2026) reports the same rates for 2026 and adds a half rate for ages 10 to 16, which we did not see in the booklet extract. The day-visitor access fee is a separate charge with its own rules, set out in our Venice access fee results. Overnight guests pay the tourist tax, and day-trippers on designated days pay the access fee.

Naples published its 2026 rates on the comune's own site on 12 March 2026: €6 for 5-star and 4-star hotels and for short lets, €5.50 for 3-star hotels, B&Bs and affittacamere. The comune says the increase of €1 on the base rates uses the Law 199/2025 extension. The new rates start on the first day of the second month after publication on the MEF website. The comune page gives no date. The travel site Dolcevia says 1 May 2026, which we could not confirm. Nights cap and child exemption were not stated. Our Naples travel guide covers where to stay.

Bologna uses price bands instead of stars. Its 2026 proposal sets €4.00, €5.80, €6.50 or €7.00 per night depending on the room price, with €7.00 for rooms at €121 a night or more, and short lets pay 10.5% of the price up to €7 (Comune di Bologna, proposal DG/PRO/2025/283). Turin's regulation 349, in force from 1 April 2026, sets €5 for 5-star, €4.50 for 4-star and €3.50 for 3-star hotels, with a 7-night cap and an exemption under 13; that page was read by one of our research passes and not re-opened for this article.

We did not check 2026 rates for Catania, Bari, Pisa, Siena, Como, Positano, Capri, Amalfi, the Cinque Terre, Lecce, Cagliari, Olbia, Bolzano, Trento, Cortina, Bormio or Livigno, and we do not publish rates for them.

What does a stay cost in tax? For two adults sharing a room for three nights, which is six person-nights inside every city's cap and with no exempt children, the tax comes to the following (derived, ours, from the rates in Table 1). In a 4-star hotel: Rome €45.00 (€42 if the rate is €7), Milan €60, Florence €42, Venice historic centre in high season €27, Naples €36. In a 5-star hotel: Rome €60, Milan €72, Florence €48, Venice €30, Naples €36. Only the Venice and Naples inputs come from the comuni's own documents, and the Naples start date is unconfirmed.

The headline rate is not what the average guest pays. IRPET divided Rome's 2023 tax receipts by recorded overnight stays and got €4.4 per presence. That is a ratio of revenue to stays, which mixes exempt children, capped nights, cheaper categories and under-reporting. It still shows that Rome's €10 rate describes the top category, not the typical stay.

Rates change by delibera, sometimes twice in a year as in Milan, and travelers should check the comune's own tourist tax page before they travel. This article is not legal or tax advice.

What the revenue figures count

Four numbers circulate for 2024, and they measure different things. IRPET's December 2025 report sets them side by side. BDAP, the Ministry of Economy and Finance's public accounts database, shows €702m in cash receipts from 1,105 comuni. SIOPE, the Treasury's payments system, shows €733m. IRPET's own series, built from SIOPE and JFC data, shows €761.2m excluding Rome. JFC put the year at "over €1bn".

An IRPET author, Benedetti, explains the gap in a footnote. Official data understate the tax because some comuni book it under "other tax revenue not elsewhere classified". Rome is the largest case: IRPET gives Rome €292.1m for 2024, a figure its chart labels as a JFC estimate. BDAP also covers only 1,105 comuni with receipts. The difference between JFC's "over €1bn" and BDAP's €702m is at least €298m (derived, ours), close to Rome's take. Adding IRPET's €761.2m and Rome's €292.1m gives €1,053.3m (derived, ours), in line with JFC's figure. IRPET's authors read the two series this way; we have repeated its arithmetic, not tested its data.

The 2025 figure is a JFC figure. The Osservatorio Nazionale JFC reported "just over €1.15bn", as press-reported by Italia a Tavola (21 April 2026, which gives growth of 12.8%) and Il Sole 24 Ore English (25 August 2026). We did not obtain the JFC report, and neither article states the method or the accounting basis. Dividing €1.15bn by 1.128 gives €1,019.5m for 2024 (derived, ours), consistent with JFC's earlier "over €1bn". No official full-year series for 2025 was found.

The 2026 forecasts move. JFC estimated about €1.2bn for 2026 in April (Italia a Tavola) and €1.308bn in August (Il Sole 24 Ore English). Il Sole 24 Ore English reported JFC's first-half 2026 figure as €438m, up 13%, with Rome at €110.6m. For Milan, JFC's 2026 forecast was €151m in December 2025 (Il Sole 24 Ore English, 31 December 2025) and €110m in April 2026 (SiViaggia, 23 April 2026). Two forecasts from the same observatory, four months apart, differ by €41m for one city.

The tax is concentrated in a few cities. IRPET found that eight cities accounted for 65% of national revenue in 2023, €390.9m. Rome's receipts were €165m that year on accounting records, Florence's €76,907,179 in 2024 on BDAP, both via IRPET. Our Italy tourism 2026 record watch tracks the visitor numbers behind these receipts.

What nobody publishes

No official list of comuni exists, and the counts disagree. BDAP shows 1,105 comuni with receipts in 2024. Municipal accounts show 1,259 authorities in 2023. An IRPET chart shows 1,622 for 2024. JFC counted 1,389 for 2025 and projects 1,411 for 2026 (Il Sole 24 Ore English, 25 August 2026; SiViaggia, 23 April 2026), after an earlier JFC count of 1,409 (Il Sole 24 Ore English, 31 December 2025). The spread between the lowest and highest count is more than 500 comuni. Any single number needs a source and a year beside it.

No national breakdown of spending exists either. The law earmarks the revenue for tourism, the upkeep of cultural and environmental heritage and local public services, and Law 213/2023 added waste collection (IRPET, p. 5). IRPET notes that the Corte dei conti, Italy's public audit court, has objected to non-tourism uses. The only city breakdown the research found was for Florence, in a 2024 press report. Rome and Milan breakdowns were not found in anything we opened, though we did not search every municipal budget. The hoteliers' association Confindustria Alberghi asked in April 2026 that the money stay in tourism (Italia a Tavola, 21 April 2026).

The State's new share is not yet visible. The MEF decrees that should identify the State's 30% of the Jubilee-extension increment and 50% of the Olympic increment were due on 30 April and 31 March 2026. We did not find either. No published figure shows how much the State has received.

The effect on demand has not been measured. The Ministry of Tourism's 2022 study describes trends and says it makes no causal claim. IRPET's 2025 work models which comuni adopt the tax, not how visitors respond. No source we opened measures whether higher rates change where or how long people stay.

Claims that did not survive checking

Several claims about the 2026 tax do not match the laws or the comuni's documents. Some came from the press. Some came from our own content plan, which we checked against the same sources.

Our own leads needed correcting. Our plan placed the Olympic €5 in the 2026 Budget Law; it is in Decree-Law 156/2025, and it is a ceiling on the increase. Our plan listed Milan at €12; that holds for 5-star hotels from 1 April 2026 only. An internal flag treated the Jubilee €2 as a Rome measure; the law covers a class of comuni, and Rome has not used it on any evidence found. Our plan carried the €1.15bn total without a label; it is a private estimate for 2025 and needs the official 2024 range beside it.

What this means for travelers, businesses and analysts

Travelers should expect to pay the tax at the accommodation, per person and per night, at a rate set by the comune and the property's category. In the big cities the 2026 range for a hotel guest runs from €3.50 (a Venice 3-star) to €12 (a Milan 5-star), on the sources in Table 1. Children are often exempt, with age limits that run from under 10 in Rome and Venice to under 14 in Bologna. Long stays are capped in most cities, at 10 nights in Rome and 7 in Florence. Day-trippers to Venice face a separate access fee on set days. Rates change by delibera, so check the comune's tourist tax page before you travel.

Tourism businesses and investors face a tax that can change twice in one year and that, for the first time, sends part of the increase to the State. Milan's hotels applied two different tariff tables in 2026 alone. The Olympic option ends with 2026 under the decree's text, and the Jubilee extension applies to 2026 under Law 199/2025; whether either continues in 2027 depends on future laws and councils. The case for or against higher rates rests on demand effects that no source we opened has measured.

Journalists and analysts can cite these figures with their sources: the €5 default ceiling (art. 4, Legislative Decree 23/2011); the €10 ceiling for qualifying provincial capitals (comma 1-bis, added by Law 197/2022); the optional 2026 add-ons of €2 (Law 199/2025) and up to €5 (Decree-Law 156/2025); the State's 30% and 50% shares of those increments; national revenue of €702m to €761.2m in 2024 on official and IRPET series (IRPET, December 2025); €1.15bn for 2025 only as a JFC estimate; Milan €12 for 5-star hotels from 1 April 2026; Rome €10 for 5-star hotels since 1 October 2023; Naples €6 for 4-star, 5-star and short lets (Comune di Napoli). Do not repeat: that the Budget Law contains the Olympic €5; that the State keeps 30% of the Olympic increase; that Rome charges €12; that Venice charges €7.50 or €15; that €7 and €12 are new national caps; that 1,409 or any other bare count of comuni is settled; or that the Jubilee €2 is a Rome measure.