Where Europe Gets Most Overcrowded During Peak Holiday Season

Majorca is dealing with the biggest summer crowd in Europe, with 327K extra tourists on a typical August day, according to an October 2026 report on overcrowding in Europe's top holiday regions. Our newly released study reveals which popular destinations handle heavy tourist traffic during the peak season.

• The Dodecanese islands in Greece nearly double in population by summer, hosting up to 200K holidaymakers daily during high season.
• More than 1 in 5 people in Venice on a typical August day is a tourist, with 245K extra visitors arriving in the city.
• Travelers outnumber locals in Istria, Croatia, every August, with nearly 270K vacationers filling hotels and rentals in a region of just 201K residents.

The research examined more than 1.2K European regions to find which ones get the most overcrowded in summer. The report measured factors like overnight stays in tourist accommodation, using Eurostat figures, and turned them into the number of tourists staying in each region on a typical day in its busiest month, which is August for most. It also looked at the number of people who live in each region to show how many extra tourists it takes in and how the live population spikes. Regions were then ranked by the number of extra tourists, revealing where the population grows the most in the peak season.

Here's a look at the top 10 regions where the population grows the most in peak season:

You can access the complete research findings here.

1. Majorca, Spain

• Extra people on an average August day: 327.1K
• Total people on an average August day: 1.28M
• Residents: 957.7K
• Population multiple: 1.34 times the resident count

Majorca gets the biggest summer crowd in Europe, with around 327K holidaymakers filling its beaches, hotels and streets on a busy August day. For an island with fewer than 1M locals, that means roughly a third more people sharing the same roads and seafront. So while the local infrastructure is normally planned around the resident population, the island has to stretch that across a larger group of newcomers every summer.

2. Istria, Croatia

Istria is also where summer changes everything. In August, vacationers outnumber the people who live here, with about 269K holidaymakers arriving daily in a county of only 201K locals. With that, the population more than doubles to around 470K as hotels, restaurants and the coast get too busy. The visitor numbers are not far behind Majorca's, yet Istria is a much smaller place, so the crowding is felt far more strongly.

3. Venice, Italy

Venice feels the August rush in a way few places do. Roughly 1 in 5 people in the region is a holidaymaker on any given day in August. That’s around 245K tourists sharing the city daily with 835K locals. This kind of tourist flow lifts the live population by almost 30% for the whole month, so the crowds are hard to miss here.

4. Barcelona, Spain

Barcelona hosts the biggest August crowd of any large city on the list, with around 238K tourists staying on any given day, well ahead of Rome's 167K. They share the region with nearly 6M locals, so the crowd comes to about 1 holidaymaker for every 25 residents. Still, it is a lot of people to feed and move around, and the region's population still climbs past 6.1M.

5. Dodecanese, Greece

The Dodecanese round out the top five, and they come close to doubling their population in August. About 196K extra people arrive on an average day, almost one for every local, since the islands have 209K residents. The total reaches roughly 405K. This is a group of Greek islands that includes Rhodes and Kos, and the figure averages the whole group, so the busiest islands likely feel an even bigger jump.

A spokesperson from Intersec commented on the findings:

"Roads, water supply, waste collection and emergency services are usually sized for residents, so a summer spike can put real strain on all of them. It matters even more for crisis management. Say a wildfire, a flood, or a major accident hits a packed coastal area. Can the authorities see where people are right now, and how many of them are at risk? Hotel records and ticket counts can't give precise answers. Authorities that want a live picture can look to the data mobile networks already collect. Network metadata shows how many devices are in each area and how those numbers shift hour by hour, without revealing who anyone is. With that view, responders can see which towns, beaches and roads are most crowded and decide where to send help first."