Venice Carnival and Biennale Visitor Numbers: 700,000 Biennale Tickets, No Carnival Count, and No Day-Tripper Data

The Biennale counts tickets, and only tickets

La Biennale's closing release for the 60th International Art Exhibition, published on 24 November 2024, reports 700,000 tickets sold. That is 18% more than the pre-pandemic 2019 edition, and second only to 2022, according to the release. Its detailed numbers page gives 699,304 visitors at week 31 and an average of 3,321 per opening day. A further 27,966 presences during the pre-opening days are counted separately and are not part of the 700,000. Visitors from abroad made up 59% of the public. La Biennale counts more than 190,000 students and under-26s and 94,035 people in organised groups, and gives their shares as 30% and 18%. Those shares do not reproduce against its own 699,304, which gives 27.2% and 13.4% (our arithmetic), and the closing release gives a different group figure: 24,519 people in 2,877 guided groups.

The two pages use two words for the same number. The headline says tickets sold and the numbers page says visitors. The difference matters because of how the ticket works. A standard Biennale Arte ticket is valid for one entry to the Giardini and one to the Arsenale, on the same day or on different days, according to La Biennale's 2026 information page. A ticket sold is therefore neither one person nor one entry. A visitor on a three-day or weekly pass, or an accredited professional, can enter many times, and the releases do not say how those passes are counted. The 700,000 is best read as a count of tickets, the unit La Biennale's own headline uses.

The Architecture exhibitions are smaller and follow the same rules. The 19th International Architecture Exhibition closed on 23 November 2025 with 298,000 tickets sold, 5% more than 2023, plus 17,584 pre-opening presences. Half the public came from abroad and half from Italy, and under-26s numbered more than 84,000, or 28%. The 2023 edition closed on 26 November 2023 with 285,000 tickets sold and 14,150 pre-opening presences. The headline of that release says presenze and its text says tickets sold. The rise from 285,000 to 298,000 is 4.6%, which La Biennale rounds to 5%.

La Biennale calls the 2025 exhibition the most visited Architecture Biennale ever. The release bases that on high pre-opening attendance compared with the "record" 2021 edition. The 2021 closing release, published on 21 November 2021, gives 298,600 tickets sold plus 6,000 pre-opening presences. On tickets alone, 2025 sold 600 fewer, 0.2% below 2021. With pre-opening presences added, 2025 reaches 315,584 against 304,600, which is 3.6% more (our arithmetic). The ranking therefore holds only on the measure La Biennale chose, and the gap comes entirely from pre-opening days. The 2023 release, which called its edition the second most visited without naming the first, is consistent with this: 285,000 tickets is below 2021's 298,600.

The 61st Art exhibition, In Minor Keys, opened on 9 May 2026 and closes on 22 November 2026, so there is no final total yet. La Biennale has published two figures. Pre-opening accreditations from 5 to 8 May came to 27,935, 4% more than 2024. About 10,000 visitors had entered by 18:00 on the first public day, about 10% more than the 2024 opening day. The 4% reproduces against the 26,795 accreditations in La Biennale's 2024 opening release. The 10% does not reproduce against the 8,697 first-day visitors in that same release, which would give about 15% (our arithmetic). The 2026 figure is a count to 18:00, and the 2024 figure is not described the same way, so the two may not be like for like. The 2024 closing release adds a third pre-opening figure, 27,966 presences, which is a different measure from accreditations.

The other Biennale sectors publish on their own terms. The 83rd Venice International Film Festival, held from 2 to 12 September 2026, sold 117,656 tickets to the public, 14% more than 2025, and 14,000 accreditations were collected, according to La Biennale's numbers release of 13 September 2026. The Film Festival is a different event with a different audience, and its tickets should not be added to the Art or Architecture totals.

Prices shape what a ticket count represents. A full single ticket to the Art exhibition cost €25 in 2022 and €30 in 2026, according to La Biennale's information pages. The over-65 and Venice-resident rate stayed at €20 and the student and under-26 rate at €16. The three-day pass rose from €35 to €40 and the weekly pass from €45 to €50. Full accreditation, valid on every opening day, cost €85 in 2022 and €80 in 2026. Multi-entry products are a small part of the price list and an unknown part of the count.

The Carnival has no count, only estimates

The Carnival's official output for 2026 is a list of origins. At the inter-force coordination meeting called by the Prefecture at the city's Smart Control Room, officials told ANSA that 173 nationalities had been present. Spain led the foreign visitors with 14.1%, followed by France with 13.7%, the United Kingdom with 9.7%, Germany with 7.5%, the United States with 6.3% and Australia with 4.7%. The same report gave social-media reach of 4 million users on Facebook and 5.8 million on Instagram. It gave no visitor total and no occupancy figure. ANSA does not say how the shares were measured, and the Smart Control Room's counting area and method are not published.

Every head count in circulation is an estimate. On 17 February 2025 il Nord Est reported that the Carnival had begun on Sunday 16 February and that, for the opening as a whole, there was talk of about 150,000 presences, half of them overnight guests. The paper does not say whether that figure covers the Sunday alone or the opening weekend. The same article put the crowd following the Sunday water parade of about 100 boats on the Grand Canal at 60,000, and described that figure itself as roughly counted. It named no source for either number. On 23 February the paper reported 130,000 tourists arriving on Saturday 22 February, again with no source. That is the largest figure we found that is clearly for a single Carnival day in any recent edition.

The one estimate with a named official dates from 2023. Marco Agostini, commander of Venice's municipal police, told Sky TG24 that about 100,000 people had poured into the city on the Saturday, in a report dated 20 February 2023. It was a verbal estimate with no method given, and the report does not state the calendar date of that Saturday. We found no comparable head count for the 2024 or 2026 editions.

The closest thing to a measurement comes from mobile-phone data. A study by researchers at Ca' Foscari University of Venice and the University of Udine, published in Tourism Economics and reported by Il Resto del Carlino on 18 June 2024, tracked SIM cards across 2022. It found an average of about 98,000 visitors a day, of whom 32,339 were overnight tourists and 61,461 day-trippers. Those two parts add to 93,800, and the newspaper does not explain the rest. The busiest day of the year was Sunday 30 October 2022, during the All Saints weekend, with 143,246 visitors: 54,253 tourists and 88,993 day-trippers. That peak was not a Carnival day.

The same study estimated that a mainstream cultural event adds about 11,000 visitors to a day, roughly 8,500 of them day-trippers. It names the Carnival, the opening of the Biennale, the Film Festival, the Redentore and the Sensa as examples. It also found that about 2,000 residents stay in the city on event days and about 400 leave temporarily. We could not open the study itself, so its area and method are as the newspaper reports them.

Set side by side, the figures show the problem. The press estimate of 130,000 for Saturday 22 February 2025 is close to the 143,246 of the busiest day the phone study found in all of 2022, and the 150,000 for the 2025 opening may cover more than one day. The study puts a typical event day's effect at about 11,000 extra people. All of these can stand, because they measure different areas, years and things. Neither supports a Carnival total, and adding day estimates together into a season figure would be inventing one.

The one counting system Venice has built for day visitors does not reach the Carnival. The access fee applied on 29 days in 2024, 54 in 2025 and 60 in 2026, and each season began in April. For 2027 the city executive approved 72 fee days, up from 60, according to ANSA on 15 October 2026, and press reports place them between March and mid-August. Shrove Tuesday falls on 9 February 2027, so on those reports no day of the 2027 Carnival is a fee day either. The Comune's access-fee site says the 2027 arrangements will be announced by 31 December 2026, so the exact dates are TBC. The Carnival therefore produces no payment count and no exemption count.

Private data cover prices, not people. The Data Appeal Company, a commercial analytics firm, measured accommodation rates in the historic centre over the three Carnival weekends of 2024. It found online accommodation rates 40% higher than in 2023 and, for double rooms on the third weekend, up to 57% above the average for the first three months of 2024, and short-term rental rates 47% higher than in 2023. Travelport flight data in the same report put the Americas at 16% of arrivals at Marco Polo airport in the period, Japan at 9%, France at 8% and England at 7%. These figures show demand pressure. They say nothing about how many people came.

The official statistics leave out the day-trippers

Regione Veneto's statistics office published provisional ISTAT figures for 2025 in its Statistica Flash of February 2026. The row labelled Venezia recorded 10,764,091 arrivals, up 0.9%, and 38,555,987 nights, down 0.7%. The text places those figures in the Città metropolitana di Venezia, the former province. It takes in beach resorts such as Jesolo, Caorle and Bibione as well as Chioggia and the mainland, and it is far larger than the city. Any article that calls 10.8 million "Venice visitors" is reporting the metropolitan area, and only its registered overnight guests.

The same document states that its figures exclude day tourism. It cites an ISTAT estimate of about 8 million day trips by Italians to places in Veneto in 2024, and says day-trip data are not available at municipal level. A Carnival Saturday, a Biennale weekend and a cruise call are all largely invisible in these tables. Cruise passengers, the subject of our separate analysis of Venice cruises five years after the big-ship ban, sleep on board and do not appear in accommodation counts at all.

For the Comune itself, the latest yearbook we found is the Annuario del Turismo with 2023 data. It counts 5,664,611 arrivals and 12,628,079 nights in the Comune, of which 3,817,295 arrivals and 9,091,691 nights were in the historic centre, as set out in our article on Venice depopulation. The yearbook is annual and cannot isolate February. We did not find an edition with 2024 data.

The nearest seasonal figure is a quarter. Unioncamere Veneto's tourism observatory reported 1,112,998 arrivals in "Venezia" in the first quarter of 2026, up 4.08%, and 2,481,982 nights, up 2.26%, in a document dated 22 May 2026. The page does not say whether Venezia means the city, the metropolitan area or a tourism district, and it mentions neither February nor the Carnival. The 2025 Carnival ran into March and the 2026 Carnival ended on 17 February, so only the full quarter puts the two editions on a similar footing. Even that cannot separate the Carnival from everything else in the quarter.

No source attributes overnight stays to the Biennale. La Biennale's releases publish none, and we found no study by the Comune, the Region or Ca' Foscari estimating them for the Art or Architecture exhibitions. Comments from hoteliers on opening weekends are trade quotes, not statistics. The Film Festival does have an impact estimate. The consultancy JFC put total benefits from the 2025 edition at about €712 million, with more than €64 million in direct spending by guests, journalists and visitors, according to il Nord Est on 2 September 2025. Most of the total is not spending: about €342 million is estimated media value and more than €226 million is "enhancement" of the Venice brand, and the published components add up to about €729 million, not €712 million (our arithmetic). That estimate covers the Film Festival only, gives no count of nights or people, and does not transfer to the Art or Architecture exhibitions.

Scale helps read the crowd estimates. The historic centre had 48,489 residents at the end of 2024, according to the Comune's statistics office as reported by Il Post, which defines that area as the six sestieri plus Giudecca. A single-day Carnival estimate of 100,000 to 130,000 people is between about 2.1 and 2.7 times the resident population of the area where most visitors gather (our arithmetic, setting a press estimate against a registry count). The Biennale's 2024 daily average of 3,321 tickets is about 3% of the 98,000 average daily visitors in the 2022 phone study (our arithmetic, mixing years and units). On the figures that exist, the Biennale adds a steady stream across seven months, and the Carnival concentrates its crowd into a handful of days.

The national picture is better measured than either event. ISTAT and the Bank of Italy publish annual totals for nights, arrivals and spending, set out in our guide to Italy's 2025 tourism figures. Venice's events sit below the level at which those series can see them.

What the circulating figures describe

Several numbers attached to the Carnival and the Biennale describe something else. The most common is five million. It comes from the artisans' confederation CNA, whose survey for 2023 projected five million attendances at Carnival events across Italy, two million paid overnight stays and about 500,000 foreign visitors. Venice ranked first in that survey, and the totals are national. The Data Appeal Company repeated the national figures, credited to CNA, in its January 2024 report on the Venice Carnival, where a reader can easily take them as Venice's.

CNA's 2026 survey of its member businesses gave the Venice Carnival an economic movement of more than €200 million, according to AGI on 17 February 2026. The same report gives about 2 million visitors between Giovedì grasso and 17 February across Carnival destinations, without stating the area. It is a business-association estimate with no published method, and it contains no Venice visitor count. Season totals in the millions for Venice's Carnival alone, such as three million visitors, appear on travel sites without a source. We found none for any of them.

For the Biennale, a claim of 20% more visitors for the 2026 Art exhibition circulated on news sites in July 2026, credited generically to Biennale ticket data. It traces to La Biennale's president, Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, quoted by il Nord Est on 7 June 2026 as saying the institution had "20 per cento in più al botteghino", 20% more at the box office. He gave no baseline, and box office can mean takings as well as tickets. La Biennale's only published 2026 figures are +4% for pre-opening accreditations and about +10% for the first public day, and no release gives 20%.

The same discipline applies to official numbers. Rome's Jubilee produced an organiser's count of pilgrims, analysed in our Rome Jubilee 2025 by the numbers, and Rome's fountain charge produced one official month of entries, set out in our analysis of the Trevi Fountain fee. Venice's Carnival produces neither, and its biggest official number for 2026 is a count of nationalities.

What this means for travelers, businesses and analysts

Travelers. Shrove Tuesday falls on 9 February 2027, so the Venice Carnival 2027 runs through late January and early February; check the official programme for exact dates, which we have not verified. Press reports place the 72 access-fee days approved for 2027 between March and mid-August, so day visitors should not have to pay to enter during Carnival; the Comune will confirm the 2027 arrangements by 31 December 2026. The crowd estimates that exist cluster on the opening and the weekends, the days police and press chose to estimate, and the phone study, on a different method, recorded a 2022 holiday weekend day in the same range. Weekdays between the weekends are the obvious alternative, although no published data show how much quieter they are. Hotel prices are measured. On the 2024 Carnival weekends, online accommodation rates in the historic centre ran 40% above the year before. For the Biennale, a full ticket costs €30 and covers one entry to each venue, which can fall on different days. The Art exhibition closes on 22 November 2026, and the next Architecture exhibition is due in 2027, with dates TBC. Overnight guests pay the city's tourist tax, explained in our guide to Italy's tourist tax in 2026.

Tourism businesses and investors. The Biennale is the better-documented demand driver and the smaller crowd. Its 2024 average of 3,321 tickets per opening day is a steady seven-month flow, with half to three fifths of the public from abroad. The Carnival is a concentrated peak that nobody measures in people. Anyone underwriting a hotel, a rental portfolio or a tour product on "Biennale demand" or "Carnival demand" will find no official overnight figure attributed to either. The Regione's Venezia series moves with the coast as much as the city, and the Comune's yearbook stops at 2023. The thresholds that would change this assessment are specific. The Smart Control Room could publish its daily presence counts for Carnival days. The council could extend the access fee to Carnival dates, which would create a payment count. La Biennale could publish unique visitors or entries by venue.

Journalists and analysts. These figures can be cited with their scope: 700,000 tickets sold for Biennale Arte 2024, with 27,966 pre-opening presences counted separately (La Biennale, 24 November 2024), and 699,304 visitors at week 31 on its numbers page; 298,000 tickets for Architecture 2025, 285,000 for Architecture 2023 and 298,600 for Architecture 2021 (La Biennale); 27,935 pre-opening accreditations for Arte 2026, +4%; 117,656 Film Festival tickets in 2026; 173 nationalities and the foreign-visitor shares for Carnival 2026 (Smart Control Room via ANSA, 17 February 2026); 10,764,091 arrivals and 38,555,987 nights in the Città metropolitana di Venezia in 2025, excluding day-trippers (Regione Veneto, provisional ISTAT); and 143,246 visitors on 30 October 2022 in the Ca' Foscari and Udine phone study, as reported. These should not be repeated: any Venice Carnival season total; "5 million Carnival tourists" as a Venice figure; a 20% rise in Biennale visitors in 2026; 2025 as the best-selling Architecture edition on tickets; €712 million as a Biennale or Carnival figure; Regione Veneto's Venezia as the city; 143,246 as a Carnival peak; and 700,000 as a count of people. The finding this article adds to the series extends the measurement gap seen in the access fee, the Trevi Fountain and Italy's ticketed landmarks. Where an event sells tickets, Venice counts it to the unit. Where it is free, nobody counts it, and the official statistics leave out its day visitors, about half of the 2025 Carnival opening crowd on the one estimate available. This article will be updated when La Biennale publishes the 2026 Art total, expected on or just after 22 November 2026.