Milan and Lombardy tourism statistics: 56.7 million nights, ISTAT's 45.1 million, and a Games +15.2% with no source

Four counts of Lombardy's nights, and what each includes

The Region's figure comes from the observatory's annual Rapporto sul Turismo, released in July 2026 and built on the regional guest-movement returns that accommodation operators file. It counts 56,714,373 nights in 2025. Of these, 29,929,829 were in hotels and 26,784,544 in other accommodation, which covers campsites, B&Bs, holiday homes and the CIN-holding rentals that reported. Arrivals were over 22.3 million, the report says, without giving an exact total, and the average stay was 2.54 nights. The report counts as a tourist anyone who spent at least one night, so day visitors are outside it.

Eurostat's regional table for Lombardy, updated on 20 October 2026, shows 56,693,078 nights for 2025. That is 21,295 fewer than the Region's figure, a difference of 0.04%, and neither publisher explains it. For 2024 the same Eurostat table shows 45,130,529, identical to ISTAT's Statistica Today release of 9 March 2026. ISTAT's release states that non-business private rentals are not included in its extra-hotel accommodation. It also put Lombardy at 9.7% of Italy's 466.2 million nights that year.

The Region publishes a fourth number. Its report adds a modelled estimate for CIN-holding units that sent no data in 2025 or sent data the observatory judged anomalous. With that estimate included, Lombardy reaches 61,764,280 nights, 8.9% above the official count. The estimate fills reporting gaps among registered units. It is a model output, and the official regional figure remains 56,714,373.

The national picture has the same break. ISTAT's data story of 17 July 2026 says Italy's 2025 total passes 535 million nights with non-business rentals included and comes to 481 million without them. Eurostat has not restated Italy's 2024 figure on the new basis. ISTAT has not published a regional split of the rentals effect, so the share of Lombardy's jump that comes from rentals alone cannot be read from any table. ISTAT's 2024 release gives one outer marker. It puts provisional 2024 nights in non-business private rentals at 10,560,341 for the whole North-West, which covers Piedmont, Valle d'Aosta, Liguria and Lombardy, with data from 92 of Italy's 107 provinces. A counting effect of 7.9 million would place about three-quarters of that area's rental nights in Lombardy, which is possible but not shown by any table. Our regional ranking by nights per resident on both bases shows how the same break moves other regions.

How much Lombardy grew in 2025

The Region's reported growth is +7%, for arrivals and nights alike. The report gives the change and the 2025 level, and says nothing about the coverage of its 2024 base. Within that total, nights in non-hotel accommodation grew 13.8% and foreign guests' nights grew 8.9%, an increase of over 3 million. The register of accommodation grew faster than the guests did. It went from 60,807 establishments to 73,008, a rise of 20.1%. Of the 73,008, 2,808 are hotels and 70,200 are other types. Other accommodation holds most of the beds, 451,509 against 202,114 in hotels, yet hotels took 52.8% of the region's nights in 2025. Non-hotel accommodation took the other 47.2%. Its faster growth mixes new supply with units that are newly counted, and the report does not separate the two.

Foreign guests dominate. They took 68% of Lombardy's nights in 2025, according to the Region, and Il Giorno's report of the release on 14 July 2026 gives 68.07% of nights and 63.32% of arrivals. Eurostat's own 2025 split gives 38,590,753 foreign nights out of 56,693,078, which is 68.07%, so the two agree. Eurostat's foreign nights rose 31.9% on its 2024 figure. That rise is mostly the same break.

On Eurostat's 2025 count Lombardy holds 10.6% of Italy's 535,463,245 nights, against 9.7% in 2024 on ISTAT's count. Some of that rise in share is the new coverage, because rentals were added everywhere at once and in different proportions. Lombardy ranks fourth among the regions by total nights on Eurostat's 2025 table, after Veneto with 74,157,131, Lazio with 61,532,691 and Trentino-Alto Adige with 60,908,448 for its two provinces combined. Tuscany is 1.2 million nights behind Lombardy at 55,475,875. On ISTAT's 2024 count it was fifth.

The early 2026 figures point upward too. The Region's report says nights in the first five months of 2026 reached 21.2 million, against 19.5 million in the same months of 2025, a rise of 8.7%. The sentence gives no source, and it sits in a section that cites ISTAT's first-quarter release. ISTAT's first-quarter 2026 release itself gives national totals only, with no regional breakdown.

Milan: a province total, a city share and no 2025 city count

Eurostat's table for the province of Milan, the Città metropolitana, shows 22,844,935 nights in 2025 and 18,011,675 in 2024. That is a rise of 26.8%, close to Lombardy's 25.6% on the same table. The province crosses the same counting break, and no publisher gives a change on comparable coverage for it. Its share of Lombardy's nights moved only from 39.9% to 40.3% between the two years on Eurostat's figures. Attilio Fontana, President of Regione Lombardia, gave the province's share as 40.28% in a speech in Brescia on 12 June 2026, in askanews wire copy carried by QdS, which matches Eurostat's province figure set against the Region's total.

The city itself has no 2025 total in any source we found. ISTAT's 2024 table puts the Comune di Milano at 14,054,184 nights, second among Italian municipalities after Rome, on the old basis. That is 78.0% of the province's 2024 figure, by our arithmetic. The Region's 2025 report says Milan is the only Lombard province where most nights are spent in the provincial capital, and puts the share at 77.7%. Applying that share to Eurostat's province figure gives roughly 17.8 million nights in the city in 2025. That is an approximation of ours, mixing two publishers, and nobody has published the number.

The Region's report adds the composition. Foreign guests took 70.8% of the province's nights in 2025. Only Como, at 86.8%, and Lecco, at 76.4%, had higher foreign shares, with Brescia at 72.0%. In Cremona, Lodi, Mantua, Monza and Pavia, Italian guests were in the majority. The province had 31,249 accommodation establishments, 42.8% of the regional register, and only 691 of them were hotels. The remaining 30,558 were other types of accommodation. The province's share of the regional total barely moved across the break, which suggests the rentals added in 2025 were not concentrated in Milan out of proportion to the rest of Lombardy. Rome has the same problem of several series for one city, as our Rome tourism statistics analysis shows.

Milan's arrivals: two systems, two answers

Arrivals are counted in two different systems, and the totals point in opposite directions. Assolombarda's Osservatorio Turismo, published in November 2025, gives 8.2 million arrivals in the Città metropolitana of Milan in 2024, citing ISTAT. That is 5.9% of Italy's arrivals and up 8.3% on 2023. Foreign guests made up 64.8% of them. The same study estimated 8.7 to 8.8 million arrivals for 2025, by applying to the ISTAT base the 6.6% growth from January to October 2025 recorded by the Milan police headquarters. Assolombarda describes those police data as capturing arrivals in private tourist rentals precisely. It is an estimate made before the year ended.

The city's own monthly series uses the police registration returns that every accommodation operator files for each guest. Il Giorno reported on 29 April 2025, from a Comune di Milano report on those returns, that the city of Milan alone had 9,068,728 arrivals in 2024. That is more for the city than ISTAT records for the whole province. One possible explanation is our own inference. Operators of private short lets are required to file the same police returns as hotels, while ISTAT's 2024 figures leave non-business rentals out. No publisher has reconciled the two series. In the same series, city arrivals fell 0.7% in February 2025 and 0.5% in March 2025, after about two years of continuous growth, Il Giorno reported.

Neither series counts people. A guest who moves between two hotels is counted twice, and a day visitor is not counted at all. The figure of about 10 million tourists a year, used by Milan's tourism councillor Martina Riva in Il Giorno on 13 February 2026, carries no year and no definition. It sits closest to the city's police-return series. Assolombarda also reports hotel room occupancy in Milan of about 70% in 2024, unchanged on 2023, and 72% from January to July 2025, citing ISTAT and Confindustria Alberghi. We found no occupancy series for the Games themselves. Readers choosing a base in the city can compare districts in our guide to where to stay in Milan.

The Region's +15.2% for the Olympic window

The Region's report states the Olympic figure twice, on pages 46 and 51. Between 6 and 22 February 2026, it says, nights in Lombardy rose 15.2% compared with the same period of the previous year. Along the Via Olimpica the rises were larger, with Lecco at +46.8%, Como +31.6%, Milan +31.2%, Monza +22.1% and Varese +21.8%. The report gives no absolute nights for the period, does not name the dataset and does not say whether the figures cover hotels only or all accommodation.

The same paragraph reports tax-free spending up 22% in the region and 28% in the city of Milan. The passage names no source. The report's separate section on tax-free spending in 2025 credits Global Blue. Tax-free spending covers shopping refunds claimed by non-EU visitors, so it measures a narrow group of high-spending foreigners.

Fontana first gave the 15.2% in his Brescia speech of 12 June 2026, citing the first available data. Lombardia Notizie, the Region's news service, carried the Via Olimpica figures the same day and credited them to the regional tourism observatory.

The 15.2% is now a printed regional figure with a stated window. It still cannot be checked. The window covers 17 days, so it tells you nothing about the rest of February or March. The province figures have no levels behind them, so a rise of 46.8% in Lecco could be a modest number of nights. The figure also has no link to the Bank of Italy's +15.2%, which measured foreign overnight visitors' spending across Italy for the whole of February. The two figures measure different things. Our Milano Cortina 2026 visitors analysis described the regional figure as a spoken claim with no comparison window. The Region's July report supplies the window and leaves the source unnamed.

What the Bank of Italy measured in Lombardy

The Bank of Italy's International Tourism Survey interviews non-residents as they leave Italy. A staff note by Veronica Amato, published on 28 August 2026, reports the questions the Bank added about the Games for departures between 6 February and 31 March. It estimates that about 250,000 foreign overnight travelers came to Italy mainly for the Games, 249,000 in its table, and that they spent EUR 394 million.

Most of them are assigned to Lombardy. The note puts 178,000 of the Olympic-motivated travelers there, 71.4% of the total, with 827,000 nights and EUR 243 million of spending, 61.6% of the national figure. The regional rows add up exactly to the national total, which suggests each traveler is counted in one region. The note does not say how trips that crossed several regions were split.

Across all foreign overnight travelers in Lombardy, the note compares February 2026 with February 2025. Spending rose 11.9%, from EUR 675 million to EUR 755 million. Travelers rose 4.2%, from 876,000 to 912,000, and their nights rose 4.5%, from 4,236,000 to 4,428,000. Olympic-motivated travelers made up 19.5% of Lombardy's foreign overnight travelers that month and 18.7% of their nights, by our arithmetic. They also accounted for 32.2% of foreign overnight spending in the region, because they spent far more per trip than other visitors. Their stays in Lombardy averaged about 4.6 nights, against about 4.9 for all foreign overnight travelers to the region in February 2026, again by our arithmetic on the note's tables. Nationally, the note sets the Olympic visitors' EUR 394 million beside the EUR 376 million rise in all foreign overnight spending in February, and says the first is larger.

The two tables do not cover exactly the same period. The regional table for all foreign travelers covers February, while the Olympic table states no period, and the Olympic questions were asked of departures up to 31 March. The note says 99.5% of Olympic visitors left before the Paralympics began on 6 March. If all 178,000 fall within February, which the note implies but does not state, other foreign travelers to Lombardy numbered about 734,000 against 876,000 a year earlier, a difference of 16.2% by our arithmetic. The Olympic figure rests on 322 interviews with no published sampling error, so this residual is indicative only. The note makes no estimate of displacement and draws no conclusion about other visitors.

The Bank's figure and the Region's figure cannot be reconciled. The Bank counts foreign overnight travelers for the whole of February, and its survey has no published sampling error. The Region's figure covers all guests, Italian and foreign, for 17 days, from a source it does not name. A rise of 15.2% over 17 days can sit beside a rise of 4.5% in foreign nights over 28 days only if Italian guests rose sharply, if the rest of the month was weak, or if the two sources count guests differently. No published data shows which.

Money: card spending, the tourist tax and the impact estimates

Unioncamere Lombardia's report on tourist spending in 2025 uses card payments on the Mastercard network at physical terminals in the region. It found total tourist spending up 9% in 2025, after 16% in 2024, with foreign visitors' spending up 7% and Italian visitors' up 10%. Foreign cardholders made up almost 40% of the total. The province of Milan took 45% of the region's tourist card spending. The report gives growth rates and shares, with no euro totals, and card data misses cash and online payments.

Milan's tourist tax gives another view, through the city budget. Il Giorno reported on 13 November 2024 that the 2024 revenue would come to nearly EUR 80 million against a budget of EUR 70 million, and that the 2025 budget assumed EUR 105 million. On 28 November 2025 it reported that the 2026 budget forecast EUR 179.4 million, up EUR 74.4 million, driven by the Olympic-year rates. The paper said about EUR 40 million of the increase must go to the State under the Olympic surcharge rules. These are budget figures reported by the press. We did not open the Comune's accounts, and no audited 2025 outturn was found. The rates behind them are in our guide to Italy's 2026 tourist tax. According to Il Giorno on 13 February 2026, the EUR 12 nightly rate applies only to 5-star hotels from 1 April 2026. Four-star hotels pay EUR 10 and three-star hotels EUR 7. B&Bs and short-term rentals pay EUR 9.50, according to greenMe on 26 February 2026, citing the city's decision of 12 February.

The largest money figure attached to Milan is an estimate made during the Games. Assolombarda and Milano&Partners said on 16 February 2026 that the Games would generate about EUR 2.5 billion of production in the Milan area, EUR 1.045 billion of value added and about EUR 1 billion of direct spending, worth about 0.4 percentage points of GDP. The release calls the total an estimate and names no model or dataset. Hospitality was put at about EUR 139 million, 13.3% of the value added. The same release estimated a record 8.7 million arrivals in Milan for 2025. No ex-post evaluation by ISTAT, the Region, the Comune or a university had been published by November 2026.

What nobody publishes

Several basic numbers are missing. No source gives a 2025 total of nights or arrivals for the city of Milan, or a 2024 base for the province with stated coverage. The Region's report gives provincial shares and foreign shares, with no provincial totals, and its 2024 regional total appears only as a growth rate.

For the Games, the gaps are wider. Nobody counted Italian visitors, day-trippers or unique attendees. No published series gives Lombardy's February 2026 nights. Eurostat's monthly table has no regional split, and ISTAT's quarterly release covers Italy only. No measured hotel occupancy or room-rate series covers Milan during the Games. The one room-rate figure that circulated widely came from a single chain's forward bookings. The Bank of Italy publishes no sampling error for its Olympic estimates, which rest on 322 interviews in which the Games were the main reason for the trip. The source behind the Region's +15.2% is unnamed.

Transport counts are the nearest proxy, and they measure something else again. The Region's figures, as reported by Qualitytravel on 15 July 2026, put passengers at Lombardy's airports at 59.2 million in 2025, up 4.5% on 2024. Assaeroporti's 2025 count for Malpensa, Linate and Bergamo together is 59,455,325, as set out in our Milan airports analysis, and neither source explains the difference. A passenger is neither a tourist nor a night. Spending has no single measure either. The Bank of Italy measures foreign overnight visitors. Unioncamere measures card payments. Tax-free data measure refunds claimed by non-EU shoppers. Each covers a different slice, and none covers Italian visitors' spending in Lombardy in money terms. For the lakes north of the city, our Lake Como and Lake Garda visitor statistics set out the same problem at provincial level.

Claims that do not hold as circulated

Several Lombardy and Milan figures have travelled further than their sources allow. The common faults are a province figure reported as the city, a forecast reported as a result, a single chain's data reported as the market, and a regional percentage repeated without the window or source that would let anyone check it.

What this means for travelers, businesses and analysts

Travelers will find a city where foreign guests take about seven in ten nights in the province. The Region reports a sharp rise for the Games fortnight, without a named source, and the Bank of Italy's count of foreign visitors for February as a whole rose 4.5%. Most of the province's 31,249 establishments are non-hotel units, 30,558 of them, and the Region gives bed numbers only at regional level. Our Milan travel guide covers the city outside event weeks.

Tourism businesses and investors should start from the Region's reported +7% for 2025 and treat much of the 25.6% jump on Eurostat's table as a change of coverage. The province of Milan crossed the same break, and no publisher gives a comparable rate for it. For the Olympic year, the measured result is the Bank of Italy's 178,000 Olympic-motivated foreign travelers and EUR 243 million in Lombardy, within a February in which all foreign overnight spending in the region rose 11.9%. A published regional February series, an audited tourist-tax outturn for 2026 and a provincial base with stated coverage would each sharpen that picture.

Journalists and analysts should check the coverage note before comparing any two years, since 2025 is the first year with private rentals in the national count. A Milan figure needs its area named, because the province and the city differ by millions of nights. The Region's Games figures are best treated as unverifiable until the dataset behind them is named. Survey estimates of Olympic visitors carry no published margin of error, so differences built on them are indicative. The figures in the box above are the ones that can be quoted with their labels.