ACI EUROPE has released its traffic report for January 2026. The European airport trade body has revealed that passenger traffic across the European airport network increased by 4.6% in January when compared to the same month last year.
When it comes to airports in the non-EU+1 market, they significantly outperformed with 8.8% growth year on year, whereas those in the EU+ market2 saw volumes expanding by a solid 3.6%.
Olivier Jankovec, ACI EUROPE’s Director General, 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 traffic 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.”
The association says that small airports of under one million passengers delivered the most contrasted results in January – as was the case throughout 2025. While they achieved the best performance overall with an impressive 12.7% growth in passenger traffic when compared to the same month last year, they kept faring the worst when compared to pre-pandemic (2019) volumes (-28.7%).
The continued fragility in the new aviation market dynamics regarding these airports is also demonstrated in the number of fully recovered airports within their traffic category. For small airports, less than half – 49% – managed to fully turn the corner on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
