Venice Access Fee: Three Years of Results and 72 Days for 2027

How the fee works, and the law behind it

The access fee (contributo di accesso) is charged on people who enter Venice's historic centre during charged hours and are not exempt. The legal basis is the 2019 national budget law, Legge 145/2018, article 1, comma 1129. It authorises Venice to charge for access "with any carrier" to the historic city and the minor islands of the lagoon, as an alternative to the overnight tourist tax. The comma borrows its mechanism from the landing fee (contributo di sbarco) that small Italian islands such as Capri already charged, and caps the amount by reference to an earlier decree. The city's executive decision of 24 October 2024 (DGC 189/2024) sets the charge "within those limits" and fixes the upper rate at €10 a day.

The fee has run from 8:30 to 16:00 in every season so far. In 2024 it was a flat €5. Since 2025 it has cost €5 when paid at least four days ahead and €10 when paid later. Visitors without a voucher or a registered exemption face fines of €50 to €300, according to Euronews Italia and QuiFinanza. In 2025 the minor islands (Lido, Pellestrina, Murano, Burano and Torcello) were outside the charged area, and travellers passing through Piazzale Roma, Tronchetto or the cruise terminal without entering the centre did not pay.

Exemptions are where most of the registrations sit. The city's 2025 report lists hotel guests, workers, non-resident property owners, tenants, relatives of residents or owners, and guests invited by residents. Veneto residents and students no longer needed to register in 2025, after doing so in 2024. Overnight guests are exempt because they already pay the tourist tax, which in the historic centre runs from €1 a night in a 1-star hotel to €5 in a 5-star hotel in high season, for up to five consecutive nights. A day visitor who books late pays €10, more than twice the €4.50 a 4-star guest pays per night in high season (our comparison of the two tariffs).

Three seasons in numbers

The 2024 and 2025 figures come from the city's own reports, and both reports call their 2025 data provisional. They disagree about 2024. The July 2024 report gives revenue of €2,425,310 and an average of 16,726 paid vouchers per charged day. The 2025 report gives €2,249,505 and 16,676 for the same season. The first revenue figure equals 485,062 vouchers at exactly €5, and the 16,726 average reproduces the 32.3% fall that QDP News reports for 2026 from the city's provisional data, so we use the July 2024 figures. Neither report explains the €175,805 gap.

The 2025 report also disagrees with itself. Its chart of daily vouchers gives 14,390 for 18 April and 27,549 for 2 May, and shows five days above 20,000. Its daily table gives 12,799 and 24,951 for the same dates, and three days above 20,000. The table's 54 daily values add up exactly to the platform total of 704,467 (our check), so we use the table.

Revenue tracks the price mix

Every season's revenue is the number of vouchers multiplied by their price. In 2025 the platform sold 356,645 vouchers at €5 and 347,822 at €10, which gives the published €5,261,445. In 2026 the split was 316,099 at €5 and 363,454 at €10, which gives €5,215,035 to the euro. The 19,030 vouchers sold through agreements in 2025 added €159,980. QDP News does not say whether the 2026 total includes a similar channel.

Compared with the 2025 platform figures, 2026 sold 3.5% fewer vouchers and took 0.9% less revenue, over six more days. Compared with 2025 across all channels, revenue fell 3.8%. The city described 2026 revenue as "substantially in line" with 2025, according to QDP News, and warned that the two seasons cannot be compared arithmetically because the number and spread of days, the holiday calendar, the weather and the provisional status of the data all differ. Average revenue per voucher rose from €5.00 in 2024 to €7.47 on the 2025 platform (€7.49 across all channels) and €7.67 in 2026 (our calculations). The reason is a smaller share of early bookings. They were 50.6% of 2025 platform vouchers by our calculation, which the city's report rounds to 51%, and 46.5% in 2026, as QDP News reports.

The city's budget councillor, Michele Zuin, has said the gap between the two prices is too small to matter: "tra 5 e 10 euro non c'è molta differenza" (there is not much difference between €5 and €10), as quoted by QuiFinanza on 20 June 2026. Euronews Italia, citing Il Gazzettino, reported the first 42 days of 2026 as 514,710 vouchers, made up of 245,503 at €5 and 268,207 at €10. Those two parts add up to 513,710, so one of the three figures is misprinted by 1,000. On either total, early bookings were about 48% of sales in the first six weeks, close to the full-season 46.5%.

Some of the money goes back to residents. The 2025 report says at least €1.5 million went to lower the waste tariff (TARI). For 2026 Zuin said €1,771,000 had already been allocated to that purpose after operating costs, about 34% of provisional revenue by our calculation. Neither the reports nor the press coverage give the operating costs, so gross revenue cannot be turned into a net figure.

What the per-day fall can and cannot show

Paid vouchers per charged day fell from 16,726 in 2024 to 13,046 in 2025 (platform) and 11,326 in 2026. QDP News reports the 2024 to 2026 change as a 32.3% fall. Three things limit what that number can show.

The first is the calendar. Each season added days, and some of the added days may be quieter ones. Within 2026 alone, the daily average ran from about 13,940 vouchers in May to 10,179 in June and 9,597 in July, a pattern QDP News relates partly to weather. A season with more June and July days could report a lower average even if no individual day changed. The published data do not give enough day-by-day detail for 2024 and 2026 to compare matching dates, so how much of the fall comes from the calendar cannot be measured.

The second is the basis. The 2025 average of 13,046 counts platform sales only, and QDP News does not say whether the 2026 count of 679,553 includes agreement sales. If 2026 is compared with 2025 across all channels, the per-day fall is 15.5%; against the platform figure it is 13.2%.

The third is the weather, which the city itself lists among the reasons the seasons do not compare directly. The published data give no way to adjust for it.

The peaks point in two directions. The city counts days above 20,000 vouchers: 4 of 29 in 2024, 3 of 54 in 2025 and 1 of 60 in 2026, on calendars of different lengths. The single busiest day rose, and in both 2025 and 2026 it was 2 May, during the 1 May long weekend. In 2026 that day stood 6,502 vouchers above the second-busiest (18,969). Saturdays averaged about 13,661 vouchers in 2026 against 14,997 in 2025, a fall of 8.9%, smaller than the fall across all charged days. The city's own reading, in its closing statement of 26 July 2026 as reproduced by Il Nuovo Terraglio, was limited to "some signs" of lower peaks on the most critical days, with full results promised the following week.

None of this measures how many people came. A voucher counts a paying day visitor, not the people who registered as exempt and not anyone who entered outside charged hours or without paying. Paid vouchers can fall because fewer day visitors came, because more of them qualified for an exemption, because the calendar changed or because the weather was worse. The published data cannot separate those effects.

Who the fee reaches

Paying day visitors are a minority of the people registered on a charged day. In 2025 the city's report gave these daily averages for exempt registrations: 36,639 hotel guests, 4,463 workers, 3,119 non-resident property owners, 1,054 tenants, 1,404 relatives and 1,645 invited guests. With 13,046 paid platform vouchers a day, about one registered person in five paid (our calculation). Hotel guests alone outnumbered paying visitors by 2.8 to 1. The categories changed between 2024 and 2025, so these ratios do not compare across years.

The first season shows the scale of the exemption system. Over the 29 days of 2024 the city logged 3,618,114 daily registrations, including 1,398,084 hotel guests, 651,245 workers, 466,819 students and 217,589 Veneto residents. The 485,062 payments that year were 13.4% of that total (our calculation). After 2025 removed students and Veneto residents from registration, the system recorded fewer exempt people, which is one more reason the per-day figures do not compare cleanly across years.

The booking platform's own traffic gives a rough idea of who looks the fee up. The 2025 report counts 5,802,056 page views from 178 countries: about 34% from Italy, 10% from the United States, 6% from Germany, 5% from France and 4% from the United Kingdom. These are visits to the website, not buyers, and the city publishes no breakdown of paying visitors by country.

Those registrations sit on top of a small resident population. The city's statistics office counted 48,489 residents in the historic centre at the end of 2024, as reported by Il Post on 8 September 2025, down from more than 62,000 in 2005. On an average charged day in 2025, the registered and paying visitors in the report (61,370) outnumbered the centre's residents (our calculation, mixing a 2025 daily average with an end-2024 population).

The overnight side is measured; the day side is not. The city's tourism yearbook for 2023, the latest edition we could find, counts 3,817,295 arrivals and 9,091,691 nights in the historic centre's registered accommodation. That averages about 24,900 guests a night across the year (our calculation). No official series counts day visitors. Renato Brunetta, president of the Venice Sustainability Foundation, wrote in il Nord Est on 10 July 2026 that mobile-phone data gathered for the city's Smart Control Room show an average daily presence of 223,000 people on the historic island. His own breakdown, with about 48,000 residents and 35,000 overnight guests, suggests the figure includes both. It comes from a report that had not been published at the time, produced by the body he leads, and it cannot be checked. Paolo Costa, writing in il Nord Est on 9 April 2026, estimated about 38,000 day trippers and 93,000 tourists a day. These are estimates, and they measure different things.

Enforcement and the privacy ruling

The July 2024 report counts 399,030 checks and gives no figure for fines. ARTnews, reporting on 22 July 2024, wrote that no fines were issued in 2024; the city's report neither confirms nor contradicts that. The 2025 report counts more than 445,000 QR-code checks, about 140 staff a day and about 2,500 reports, a figure that combines fines with requests for information. For 2026, QDP News reports 2,642 reports issued by the local police, still under review. No source gives the amount collected in fines.

The fee's data collection was itself found unlawful. In decision no. 468 of 4 August 2025, the Italian data-protection authority (the Garante) fined the Comune €10,000 under the GDPR. It found the processing "not proportionate" to its purpose and said the city had not shown that pre-registration on the portal was necessary for all the exempt and excluded categories. Il Post, reporting the decision on 12 September 2025, noted the authority's point that the city had set no maximum number of entrants. The Tribunale di Venezia rejected the Comune's appeal in a judgment published on 30 June 2026, according to the Garante's own record of the decision.

Il Post read the decision as linking the fee's design to a cap, since collecting data on everyone who enters would be easier to justify if numbers were limited. The Garante's own text notes that no daily thresholds were set in 2024 or 2025. Venice still has no limit. Costa's April 2026 article proposed one, a binding daily ceiling of 90,000 booked in advance and lowered each year toward 60,000.

How Venice compares with Italy's other access charges

Venice is the only Italian city we found that charges day visitors simply to enter. Other places charge for a single monument, cap entries, or charge cars. The closest legal relative is the landing fee on small islands, up to €5 a passenger under the 2011 decree on municipal taxes. Capri charges €5 from April to October, according to Finanza.com, and the fee is collected with the ferry ticket. Capri also limited organised groups to 40 people from 2026, according to L'Adige. Our Capri travel guide covers the ferry crossing where the landing fee is paid.

Rome's Trevi Fountain shows what a single-site charge produces. Since 2 February 2026, entering the basin area costs €2, and residents of Rome and its metropolitan area enter free, according to the fountain's official ticket site. Turismo Roma counted 229,896 entries and €435,194 in revenue in the first month alone, with 3,499 free entries for residents and 8,800 for other exempt categories. Radio Roma reported 577,919 entries to 7 April 2026. The Pantheon has charged since July 2023, now €7 after a rise on 1 July 2026. Our Rome travel guide covers both.

Pompeii took the cap route. Since 15 November 2024 the archaeological park has limited entries to 20,000 a day and put visitors' names on every ticket, according to the park. It is the one site on this list with a fixed ceiling, and it is reached through Naples, covered in our Naples travel guide. In the Dolomites, the rules apply to cars. Lago di Braies required a booking for cars between 9:00 and 16:00 from 1 July to 15 September 2026, with a €44 combined ticket. The Tre Cime toll road cost €40 per car, booked online. At Seceda a private landowner charges €5 at a turnstile whose legality local officials dispute. Our Dolomites travel guide lists each one.

Claims that do not hold

What the city has not published

• Operating costs, so gross revenue cannot be turned into net.
• A daily count of everyone who enters the historic centre, paying or exempt.
• Fine figures for 2024, and the amount collected in fines in any year.
• The final 2026 report, which the city said would follow its 26 July statement, with 2026 exemption counts.
• Day-by-day 2024 and 2026 figures, which would allow a like-for-like comparison of matching dates.
• The 2027 exemption, booking, payment and enforcement rules, and the date the booking portal opens.

2027: 72 days and the price question

The city's executive approved the 2027 calendar on 15 October 2026, on a proposal from Zuin shared with the tourism councillor, Silvia Peruzzo Meggetto, according to La Voce di Venezia. It covers 72 days from Good Friday, 26 March, to the Sunday of Ferragosto, 15 August: 4 in March, 17 in April, 15 in May, 15 in June, 14 in July and 7 in August. Hours extend to 16:30. Most charged days run Friday to Sunday, with two continuous blocks (23 April to 2 May and 28 May to 6 June), the Easter weekend with Easter Monday, and the Ferragosto weekend. That is 19.7% of the year, up from 7.9% in 2024, 14.8% in 2025 and 16.4% in 2026 (our calculation).

The city's notice sets the price at "a maximum of €10" and leaves the tiers, exemptions, booking and enforcement to later decisions. Simone Venturini, the tourism councillor during the 2024 trial, was elected mayor on 25 May 2026. In June he proposed charging €30 to €50 on selected days: "la mia proposta è di portarlo dai 30 ai 50 euro per determinati giorni" (QuiFinanza, 20 June 2026). He said he would seek talks with the government ("un confronto con il Governo"), and QuiFinanza noted that the national law caps the amount, so a higher price would need a change to it. Euronews Italia reported that the council was also weighing year-round charging or added dates such as Carnival. The October calendar keeps the €10 ceiling, and nothing in it adopts the higher price.

What this means for travelers, businesses and analysts

Travelers. A day trip to Venice between late March and mid-August 2027 is likely to land on a charged day if it falls on a weekend or a holiday. In 2025 and 2026, booking at least four days ahead cost €5 instead of €10. About half of buyers did it in 2025, and fewer than half in 2026. Staying overnight has been the way to avoid the fee, and in 2025 hotel guests made up the largest exempt group; check the 2027 exemptions when the city publishes them. The quietest charged day in 2026 was a Wednesday in late April, with 7,441 vouchers, and July had the lowest daily average. Our Venice travel guide covers booking and exemptions.

Tourism businesses and investors. At €5 to €10, the fee has produced about €5 million a year since 2025, and revenue did not rise in 2026 despite six more charged days. Operators selling day trips now face charged days from late March to mid-August. The busiest days follow the holiday calendar, and 2 May was the peak in both 2025 and 2026. A national law allowing €30 to €50, or a binding daily cap like Pompeii's, would change that picture. Neither is in force.

Journalists and analysts. Cite vouchers as payments, not visitors, and name the report and channel behind each figure. Do not repeat that 2026 was a revenue record, that the fee doubled in 2026, or that revenue shows whether the fee deterred visitors. Treat the per-day fall as a change in paid vouchers per charged day, which the growing calendar may partly explain. The finding this article adds to the series is that Venice measures payments and exemptions in detail but publishes no count of total entries and no operating costs, so neither the fee's effect on crowds nor its net yield can be assessed from public data.