Lake Como and Lake Garda visitor statistics: three Garda shores, one Como province and no common count

Lake Garda: three shores, three publishers and one unofficial total

The largest single count is for the Veneto shore. The Camera di Commercio di Verona, the provincial chamber of commerce, gives 14,953,755 tourist nights for the "Lago di Garda Veneto" destination in 2025, in its Report Turismo 2026. That is 0.4% more than in 2024 and 9.4% more than in 2019. The chamber defines the destination as the municipalities that face the lake plus those of its hinterland, so the figure covers more than the shoreline. It calls the 2025 data provisional until ISTAT publishes its own.

Eight lakeside municipalities in the chamber's tables account for 13,060,334 of those nights, about 87% (our arithmetic). Lazise alone recorded 3,948,947 nights, Peschiera del Garda 2,534,053 and Bardolino 2,520,308. Hotels took 32.3% of nights and other accommodation, mostly campsites, holiday villages and apartments, 67.7%. Campsites and holiday villages alone recorded about 6.9 million nights, 6.2 million of them by foreign guests.

The lake dominates its province. The chamber of commerce counts 19,903,358 nights across the whole province of Verona in its summary, a figure its own Table 1 prints as 19,903,538, so the report disagrees with itself by 180 nights. On either figure the Garda destination holds about 75% of the province's nights (our arithmetic), more than four times the city of Verona's 3,300,780. The city and its sights are covered in our Verona travel guide.

The Brescia shore is counted by Visit Brescia, the province's tourism agency. Its new integrated observatory, built with the support of the Camera di Commercio di Brescia, gives the Lake Garda area 9,011,816 nights and 2,303,724 arrivals in 2025, an average stay of 3.91 nights. The figures were reported by the local news site BsNews on 27 June 2026. They are about 72% of the 12,513,783 nights recorded across the whole province of Brescia (our arithmetic). The report does not list which municipalities form the Garda area or say whether the data are provisional.

The provincial figures give some context. The whole province of Brescia recorded 3,515,620 arrivals in 2025, with an average stay of 3.56 nights. Foreigners made 60.4% of arrivals and 72% of nights. The Garda area's average stay, 3.91 nights, is longer than the province's. The observatory publishes no accommodation split for the Garda area, so the reason is not measured.

The northern tip is counted by Garda Dolomiti, the local tourism board for the Trentino side. Its members' meeting reported "oltre 4,15 milioni di pernottamenti", over 4.15 million overnight stays, for 2025, according to the newspaper L'Adige on 11 May 2026. The article gives no arrivals, no change on 2024 and no geographic boundary.

Add the three and the total is about 28.1 million nights (our arithmetic). Garda Unico, the interregional body that promotes the lake, put the total at close to 28 million nights in 2025, on provisional data from the three regions. Il Giorno, in a special section on 26 March 2026, wrote "a ridosso di quota 28 milioni" and also that the total "supera i 27 milioni", exceeds 27 million. A sponsored article in il Dolomiti on 7 March 2026 wrote "quasi 28 milioni". Garda Unico published no breakdown or method in either piece. Our sum mixes three publishers and three definitions, and the Veneto part includes inland municipalities, so it is only a rough check on the 28 million figure.

Why the Garda figures cannot be added up into a trend

A whole-lake total for an earlier year exists, made in yet another way. In November 2024 L'Adige reported a total of 25,614,000 nights in 2023, prepared by the research centre of Confindustria Brescia with the Osservatorio per il turismo sul lago di Garda, a joint body of the Università Cattolica and the Comunità del Garda. It used ISTAT data. That study put the Veneto shore at over 14 million nights, the Brescia shore at about 7.7 million, Trentino at about 3.6 million and the Mantua share at about 250,000.

Setting 25.6 million in 2023 against about 28 million in 2025 would suggest growth of about 10%. That comparison does not hold. The 2023 figure is ISTAT data reworked by a research centre. The 2025 figure is a promotion body's sum of provisional regional data. The Brescia part alone moves from about 7.7 million to 9,011,816 between the two, a jump of 17% (our arithmetic) that may come mostly from different municipality lists and methods. Neither publisher reconciles the two.

The Veneto figure also crosses a series break. The chamber of commerce says that from January 2025 "rented accommodation" includes non-business short-term and tourist rentals, and that this creates a discontinuity in the series for non-hotel accommodation and for the totals. Its own 2024 value for Lazise, 4,052,124 nights, is identical to ISTAT's 2024 figure for the town, and ISTAT's 2024 municipal figures leave those rentals out. So the Veneto 2025 total includes a category that the 2024 total did not, and the reported +0.4% is not a like-for-like change. On a like-for-like basis the Veneto shore was probably flat or slightly down (our inference). No publisher has estimated it. Lazise itself recorded 2.5% fewer nights in 2025 than in 2024 even with the wider count (our arithmetic).

The same national change of basis, which added non-business private rentals to Italy's 2025 totals, is explained in our report on whether Italy is now the most visited country in Europe.

A third Brescia number appeared in September. QuiBrescia reported on 26 September 2026 that the Brescia shore was heading for "8,5 milioni di presenze" in 2026 if the trend held to the end of the year, from data analysed by HBenchmark, a hotel-data company, for Visit Brescia. That projection sits below the observatory's 9,011,816 for 2025, while the same article describes a record season with average occupancy of 85.5% from late March to late September. The two figures are very probably on different bases. Neither source explains the gap.

Lake Como: a province count for a lake shared by two provinces

The main recent figures for Lake Como come from the first edition of the Osservatorio Turistico Como e Provincia, promoted by Regione Lombardia, the Camera di Commercio di Como-Lecco, the traders' association Confcommercio Como and the tax-refund company Global Blue. As reported by the trade site Qualitytravel on 18 November 2025, the province of Como recorded 1.8 million arrivals and 5.3 million nights between October 2024 and September 2025. The average stay was 2.9 nights, rising to 3.4 in summer.

The observatory's report itself could not be found online. Every figure from it in this article comes from the Qualitytravel account, which links to no document.

The province of Como is a wider area than the lake. It includes Como city, Cernobbio, Tremezzina, Menaggio and Bellagio, but also inland towns and the shores of smaller lakes. The eastern shore, with Varenna and Lecco, belongs to the province of Lecco. No 2025 figure for the province of Lecco was found in any official source opened for this report.

Regione Lombardia's own annual report on tourism, the Rapporto sul Turismo published in July 2026, adds one measure for both provinces. Foreign visitors took 86.8% of nights in the province of Como in 2025, the highest share in Lombardy, and 76.4% in the province of Lecco. The province of Brescia, which includes Garda's western shore, stood at 72.0%. The report gives no absolute provincial totals.

The same report counts 9,426 accommodation businesses in the province of Como in 2025, up 13.9% from 8,277 in 2024. Hotels fell from 249 to 246. All the growth came from other accommodation, which rose from 8,028 to 9,180.

Lombardy's regional totals show how much missing reports matter. The region recorded 56,714,373 official nights in 2025. The regional observatory's estimate for accommodation with a national identification code, the CIN, that sent no data or anomalous data raises the total to 61,764,280, about 5.05 million nights more (our arithmetic). The report does not give that estimate by province.

Earlier figures exist only in press reports. Il Giorno reported on 4 December 2024 that the province of Como recorded 3,357,772 nights from January to August 2024, 86.1% of them by foreigners, from figures presented by the regional tourism assessor, Barbara Mazzali. That is a partial year and cannot be set against the observatory's twelve months.

A longer view comes from a university project. Researchers from EURICSE and the Università dell'Insubria, in a project funded by Ca' Foscari University of Venice, found that nights grew 52% in the province of Como and 89% in the province of Lecco between 2009 and 2024, Qualitytravel reported on 20 November 2025. Over the same period the foreign share rose from 67% to 87% in Como and from 46% to 73% in Lecco. They also found that about 60% of tourists in the Como area chose hotels, more than half of them four- and five-star, while in Lecco about 60% chose other accommodation. The study itself was not opened for this report.

Who visits: Germany leads foreign demand on both lakes

Germany is the largest foreign market on both lakes on the counts that name markets, although British visitors lead in Sirmione.

On the Veneto shore of Garda, foreign visitors spent about 12.7 million nights in 2025, 85.2% of the total. Germans spent 6.4 million of them. The chamber of commerce gives that as 49.9% of foreign nights, so Germans took about 43% of all nights on the Veneto shore (our arithmetic). German nights fell 5.1% on 2024 and were 8.5% above 2019. The United Kingdom was the third market, up 25.7% on 2019, and Poland's nights doubled over the same six years.

On the Brescia shore the picture is less German. HBenchmark's analysis for Visit Brescia, reported by QuiBrescia, puts German guests at 31% of the total for the Garda area in the 2026 season, without saying whether of guests or nights. In Sirmione, British visitors took 20% of nights, ahead of the Germans. HBenchmark's figures come from its own panel, crossed with online reviews and card-spending flows according to QuiBrescia. They are not the official guest register, so its shares are not directly comparable with the chamber of commerce's.

On Lake Como the lead is narrower. The Como observatory, as reported by Qualitytravel, gives Italy 17% of arrivals in the province, then Germany 14%, the United States 12%, France 9% and Switzerland 6%. The foreign share the observatory gives, 83%, matches 100% minus Italy's 17%, so it most probably refers to arrivals (our inference; the article does not say). Regione Lombardia's 86.8% refers to nights in calendar 2025. The two numbers measure different things and both can be right.

Americans are the second foreign market by arrivals but first in tax-free shopping, and three different figures circulate for their share. The Como observatory gave US shoppers 38% of tax-free spending in the province, Qualitytravel reported in November 2025. Regione Lombardia's report gives them 48% of Como's tax-free spending in 2025. A Global Blue study presented in Como, reported by Qualitytravel on 1 April 2026, put US shoppers at 31% of the total, with Swiss shoppers making 61% of transactions. The observatory's 38% excludes large-retail spending; the other two do not state their base. National figures for American visitors are in our report on American tourists in Italy in 2026, and for the UK market in our report on British tourists in Italy.

Pressure per resident: Limone's national record

ISTAT measures tourist pressure with an index of nights per resident in each municipality. In its Statistica Today on 2024 tourism, published in March 2026, Limone sul Garda ranks first in Italy at 1,097.8, ahead of Andalo (780.0) and Corvara in Badia (743.8), both in the Alps. ISTAT does not state which population year it uses. Dividing Limone's 1,216,414 nights by 1,097.8 implies about 1,108 residents (our arithmetic).

Other Garda towns appear in ISTAT's national top 50 by nights in 2024. Lazise was 11th with 4,052,124 nights, Peschiera del Garda 21st with 2,582,448, Bardolino 22nd with 2,487,568, Riva del Garda 33rd with 1,720,333, Sirmione 46th with 1,273,116, Limone 48th and Malcesine 50th with 1,191,972. ISTAT's category of lake-tourism municipalities, which covers all Italian lakes, recorded 18,707,427 nights in 2024, 4.0% of the national total, and 82.2% of them were spent by foreigners.

Legambiente, an environmental group, analysed ISTAT data for Garda's 23 lakeside municipalities in July 2025. It found that nights rose 27% between 2014 and 2024, by 32% on the Veneto shore, 23% on the Lombard shore and 19% in Trentino, according to L'Adige on 5 July 2025. It also counted more than 18 million nights in the four summer months (year not stated), against 190,000 residents.

ISTAT's summary report names no Lake Como municipality among its leaders, and no per-resident figure for a Como town is given here. The one measured cap on the lake is at Villa del Balbianello, where FAI, the National Trust for Italy, limited entries to 1,200 a day from 3 August 2023, after peaks of more than 2,000.

Two lakes in one table: nights, stays, foreign shares and markets

Readers often want the two lakes compared directly, and the numbers support only a few careful versions of that comparison.

By volume, the Veneto shore of Garda alone recorded about 2.8 times the nights of the province of Como (our arithmetic: 14,953,755 against 5.3 million). That compares a lake-and-hinterland area in calendar 2025 with a province over a twelve-month period ending in September 2025, from two publishers. It gives a fair sense of scale and should not be quoted as a precise ratio.

By length of stay, the Brescia shore of Garda averaged 3.91 nights per arrival in 2025 and the province of Como 2.9. Both averages are computed by the publishers themselves. Visit Brescia publishes no accommodation split for its Garda area, so the reason for the longer stay is not measured.

By foreign share, the two lakes are close. Regione Lombardia gives the province of Como 86.8% of nights by foreigners in 2025. The Verona chamber gives the Veneto shore of Garda 85.2%. These come from two publishers with different area definitions, so a 1.6-point gap means little. The Lombard shore of Garda, measured at provincial level, is lower at 72.0%.

By market, Germany is the top foreign market on both. Germans took about 43% of all nights on the Veneto shore and 14% of arrivals in the province of Como. These are different measures from different publishers, so the gap cannot be sized.

By access, both lakes depend on Milan's airports, and Garda also on Verona's. Milan Malpensa handled 31.2 million passengers in 2025, up 9%, according to its operator SEA, and Bergamo 16.9 million, according to ENAC, the civil aviation authority. Airport passengers count each arrival and each departure and include residents, so they are not visitors to either lake. Full-year 2025 figures for Verona airport were not found for this report.

Seasons and crowds: when Lake Garda holidays and Lake Como holidays peak

Both lakes are summer destinations. On the Veneto shore, July recorded about 2.9 million nights and August about 3.1 million in 2025, about 40% of the year between them (our arithmetic). Lakeside hotels there had average net bed occupancy of 60.5% over the year, and other accommodation 42.9%, according to the chamber of commerce.

On the Brescia shore, HBenchmark measured average occupancy of 85.5% from late March to late September 2026, with peaks of 94% in July and August, as reported by QuiBrescia. That is occupancy of the hotels in its panel, a different measure from the chamber of commerce's net bed occupancy.

In the province of Como, June to September held 56% of arrivals and 65% of nights in the observatory's twelve months, as reported by Qualitytravel. The rest of the year therefore carried about a third of nights. The two lakes' published seasonal shares cover different months, so they do not show which lake has the sharper peak. The Verona chamber gives monthly totals only for July and August.

The latest Lake Garda tourism news gives early signs for 2026. The Austrian site vienna.at reported on 29 September 2026 that German nights on the Veneto side rose 4.8% in the first half of 2026, from preliminary data of the Veneto regional statistics system. That figure is press-reported and partial, but it points the other way from the 5.1% fall in German nights in 2025.

What this means for travelers, businesses and analysts

Travelers choosing between the lakes should expect far more overnight visitors on Garda, foreign guests making up most nights on both, and longer average stays on Garda's Brescia shore (3.91 nights) than in Como province (2.9). Garda's Veneto shore took about 40% of its nights in July and August 2025, and HBenchmark's panel of Brescia-shore hotels was 94% full at the summer peak in 2026. Our Lake Garda travel guide and Lake Como travel guide cover bases, ferries and the quieter months, and the planned Lake Como vs Lake Garda comparison will set the two side by side for trip planning.

Tourism businesses should benchmark against their own shore's publisher and say which one they use. On Garda's Veneto shore, the reported +0.4% for 2025 includes non-business rentals for the first time, so a hotel that held steady may have lost share. In the province of Como, all the growth in accommodation businesses in 2025 came from non-hotel accommodation, while hotel numbers fell. German demand on the Veneto shore fell in 2025 and recovered in the first half of 2026 on preliminary data.

Journalists and analysts should name the publisher, the area and the period with every figure, and say nights, not visitors. No official statistic covers either lake as a whole.