ACI EUROPE has released its traffic report for January 2026, which reveals a 4.6% increase passenger traffic across the European airport network when compared to January 2025.
Airports within the non-EU+1 market also rose by 8.8% year-on-year, significantly outperforming numbers found in 2025, whilst airports in the EU+ market saw an increase of 3.6%.
The report states that gains were markedly driven by international passenger traffic (up 5.5%), with domestic passenger levels increasing by 1.8% and remaining 8.1% below pre-pandemic (2019) levels.
Olivier Jankovec, Director General of ACI EUROPE, said:January usually gives us the first indication of traffic performance for the year – and the data we published today would normally be seen as evidence of resilient demand and positive prospects for the months ahead. But the conflict which has erupted last week in the Middle East is upending traffic forecasts, making the outlook highly uncertain for now.
The Middle East and in particular the Gulf has over the past 20 years become an important part of connectivity and traffic volumes for many European airports – from larger regional ones to major hubs. This is not just about direct connectivity and traffic3 to the Middle East, but also indirect connectivity via that region to Asia-Pacific. This means that even if part of the underlying leisure-driven demand could shift to other destinations or other direct and indirect routings to Asia-Pacific, that traffic is simply not substitutable.
January saw a number of disparities in both national and individual airport markets performance, which, according to the report, reflects a mix of factors including the primacy of of generally resilient leisure demand, the impact of aviation taxes, geopolitics and competitive pressures resulting from increased airline market power.
Airports within the East and/or periphery of the EU+ market bloc achieved double-digit passenger traffic growth, including Slovakia (+98.0%), Slovenia (+20.8%), Malta (+17.2%), Czechia (+13.5%), Cyprus (+13.3%), Ireland (+13.8%), Bulgaria (+12.6%) and Poland (+11.8%). Meanwhile, airports in the Netherlands (-7.3%) were strongly affected by adverse weather, whilst sites in Iceland (-4.3%) and Latvia (-3.2%) faced airline capacity cuts.
In the largest EU+ markets, airports across Italy (+4.1%) posted the best results, followed by Germany (+3.5%), Spain (+2.6%), France (+2.1%) and the UK (+2%). In the Non-EU+ market, the biggest increase in passenger traffic came from airports in Moldova (+35.4%), North Macedonia (+31%), Israel (+24.4%), Uzbekistan (+23.9%), Georgia (+16%), Armenia (+10.3%) and Türkiye (+9.4%), whilst airports in Montenegro (-1.7%) and Kazakhstan (+0.1%) significantly underperformed.
Istanbul (+6.4%) replaced London Heathrow (+2.2%) as the busiest European airport in January, welcoming 6.9 million passengers (vs. 6.5 million passengers for London Heathrow) – an average of over 220,000 passengers per day. Madrid (+3.5%) took the third spot from Paris CDG (+0.7%), followed by Amsterdam (-9.1%) whose performance was impacted by severe weather.
Frankfurt Airport (+4.9%) experienced dynamic passenger growth, coming seventh after Istanbul Sabiha Gökçen (+14.3%), which registered the best performance amongst Major airports.
The full report, which outlines small airport performance, freight and airport groups, can be found on the ACI EUROPE website.
