Guests spent 14.57 million nights in Greek short-term rentals booked through online platforms in the second quarter of 2026, 8.3% more than a year earlier, Eurostat data show. That beat the EU’s 5.3% rise and every rival southern market we compared.
The figures come from Eurostat, the EU’s statistics office, which published data for April to June 2026 on 2 October. They count nights booked through Airbnb, Booking and Expedia in holiday rentals. Hotels and campsites are not included.
The numbers
| Greece | 2025 (nights) | 2026 (nights) | Change (%) |
|---|---|---|---|
| April | 2,663,213 | 2,750,343 | +3.3 |
| May | 3,681,904 | 4,415,088 | +19.9 |
| June | 7,116,211 | 7,409,033 | +4.1 |
| Q2 total | 13,461,328 | 14,574,464 | +8.3 |
| Q2, guests from abroad | 12,102,817 | 13,049,992 | +7.8 |
| Q2, guests from Greece | 1,358,511 | 1,524,472 | +12.2 |
| First half (January–June) | 16,304,478 | 17,840,043 | +9.4 |
May drove the quarter, with nights up almost a fifth. April and June grew by 3% to 4%. The May jump was not only Greek: across the EU, platform nights rose 14.2% in May, against 1.4% in April and 1.2% in June. Guests from abroad accounted for 89.5% of nights in the quarter, but Greek residents’ nights grew faster.
The first quarter was stronger still in percentage terms. Nights rose 14.9% on a year earlier, to about 3.27 million from 2.84 million, a much smaller quarter than the second.
Greece against other markets
| Market | Q2 2025 (nights) | Q2 2026 (nights) | Q2 change (%) | First-half change (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Greece | 13,461,328 | 14,574,464 | +8.3 | +9.4 |
| Italy | 39,723,040 | 42,935,391 | +8.1 | +10.0 |
| EU 27 | 245,677,191 | 258,791,712 | +5.3 | +6.9 |
| Portugal | 13,660,188 | 14,013,636 | +2.6 | +3.3 |
| Spain | 48,021,828 | 48,919,142 | +1.9 | +3.7 |
| Croatia | 10,425,804 | 10,540,274 | +1.1 | +2.1 |
| Cyprus | 1,990,345 | 1,941,875 | −2.4 | +4.8 |
Over the first half of the year, Greece (+9.4%) was second only to Italy (+10.0%) among these markets.
Greece moved slightly ahead of Portugal in the quarter, after trailing it a year earlier. Its share of all EU platform nights rose from 5.5% to 5.6%. Spain remains far larger, but its nights grew by less than 2%.
Where in Greece
Eurostat’s regional data run only to the first quarter of 2026, so the regional picture is for 2025 as a whole. Of 52.1 million platform nights in Greece in 2025, these four regions took the most:
| Region | Nights in 2025 | Share of Greece (%) | July–August share of the year (%) | January–March and November–December share (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Attica | 10,412,572 | 20.0 | 24.3 | 25.7 |
| South Aegean | 9,037,378 | 17.3 | 49.1 | 2.0 |
| Crete | 8,828,327 | 16.9 | 44.0 | 4.1 |
| Ionian Islands | 8,644,420 | 16.6 | 52.4 | 0.9 |
Attica, which includes Athens, had the most nights and the flattest year. A quarter of its nights fell in January–March and November–December. In the South Aegean, which includes the Cyclades and the Dodecanese, and in the Ionian Islands, about half of the year’s nights fell in July and August alone.
What is driving it
Eurostat’s release does not give reasons for the changes. The data show that guests from abroad supplied most of the extra nights in the quarter: 947,175 of the 1,113,136 added. Eurostat notes that these are experimental statistics and should not be added to other tourism statistics on holiday rentals, because they may overlap.
What it means for buyers
Short-term rental investors. Demand through the platforms is still rising faster in Greece than in the EU as a whole. The regional figures show how different the calendar is: an Athens flat earns nights all year, while a Cycladic or Ionian property depends on a short summer. Rules on short-term letting also apply; owners and property managers file short-term stay declarations with the tax authority (AADE), and the deadline for stays ending in September 2026 has been extended to 13 November 2026.
Golden Visa buyers. A home bought for a Golden Visa under the current rules cannot be let short-term, so these figures matter less for that route.
Second-home buyers. Owners who let a holiday home for part of the year face a season concentrated in July and August on the islands. Rent from a Greek property is taxed in Greece wherever the owner lives, as our rental income tax guide explains.
How we got these numbers
National figures come from Eurostat dataset tour_ce_omr (nights spent, all guests, guests from abroad and domestic guests), updated on 2 October 2026. Regional figures come from dataset tour_ce_omn12 (NUTS 2 regions). Quarterly and half-year totals are the sums of the monthly values, and the percentages are our calculations from them. The data cover only bookings made through Airbnb, Booking and Expedia, and Eurostat publishes them as one combined figure. Eurostat updates them every quarter.
