Have the Balearics overtaken the Canaries?

In the cumulative table for January to August 2026 yes, by €29 million: €16.367 billion against €16.338 billion. It is the first time this year; in July the Canaries were still €1.740 billion ahead.

Last year argues against it: from September to December 2025 the Canaries added €8.113 billion on our calculation and the Balearics €5.523 billion. This is not a forecast.

Why are the Canaries third when both reach 16.4 per cent?

The order follows the unrounded shares: 16.385 against 16.356 per cent.

What does the revised prior-year base mean?

Instead of the €16.318 billion published in 2025, today's rate implies a base of roughly €16.296 billion. The rate therefore reads better; the 2026 level does not change.

When will the figures be final?

Not this year. INE marks the data of 2 October 2026 as provisional and announces the revision for March 2027.

Balearics pass Canaries on spending by €29 million

A €29 million lead: the Balearics overtake the Canaries on tourist spending

Spain's statistics office INE released the August round of its tourist expenditure survey EGATUR on Friday, and in the cumulative table for January to August 2026 the Balearics stand ahead of the Canaries for the first time this year: €16.367 billion against €16.338 billion, a lead of €29 million or 0.18 per cent — at this scale a rounding difference that deserves an explanation rather than a drama. INE names Catalonia (18.9 per cent of all Spanish spending), Illes Balears (16.4) and the Canaries (16.4) as the largest destinations; the islands are third. Every figure is provisional. The shift that outlives a season is elsewhere: Catalonia is €2.512 billion ahead and growing at 11.12 per cent.

2 October 2026 · By Martin Kosinski · 6 min.

Photo: Luis Miguel Bugallo Sánchez (Lmbuga), CC BY-SA 3.0 (illustrative image).

The counterweight: the calendar and September to December

Up to July the islands were clearly ahead: €14.041 billion against €12.301 billion cumulative. The swing is calendar — in the month of August the Balearics took 22.8 per cent of all international tourist spending in Spain and the Canaries only 12.9 per cent, because the islands earn their money in winter. Subtract the eight-month figures from the 2025 full-year ones and September to December left €8.113 billion in the Canaries against €5.523 billion in the Balearics — a gap of €2.590 billion, close to ninety times today's lead. If that pattern repeats, the Canaries reclaim second place before December. Two caveats: the difference is our own subtraction across two provisional annexes of different vintages, and the newly implied base gives roughly €8.135 billion. And a prior-year pattern is not a forecast.

The loss that does not come back with the season

Catalonia stands at €18.850 billion cumulative, €2.512 billion more than the Canaries, and is growing at 11.12 per cent. That gap opened in July: in June the Canaries were still ahead, €11.853 billion against €11.811 billion, and a month later it read €15.519 billion to €14.041 billion. It manages that on €1,316 per tourist against the Canary €1,592, with trips of 5.8 days instead of 7.9: Catalonia wins on volume — and is at the same time the large destination improving most on value, up 6.96 per cent per tourist. INE states no cause.

€201 a day, 7.9 days

The most interesting line in table 6 is not the total but the daily rate: €201 per person per day in the Canaries cumulatively, 5.53 per cent more than a year earlier, against a Spanish average of €202 that rose only 2.88 per cent. A year ago the gap was six euros, €190 against €196 — now it is one. The total nonetheless grows by just 0.26 per cent, and the reason is length: 7.9 days instead of 8.3. Per tourist €1,592 remain, 12.1 per cent above the Spanish average and, among the large destinations, behind only Madrid (€1,972). The weakness lies in volume and in length of stay, not in the value of a holiday day.

The revised base: about €22 million

One detail explains why the Canary rate does not fit the totals. The annex of October 2025 put January to August 2025 at exactly €16.318 billion, in that same table 6; against today's €16.338 billion that would be 0.12 per cent — yet INE prints 0.26. Unwinding the rate gives a base of roughly €16.296 billion, about €22 million below what was published then. The base has moved down, which flatters 2026; the Balearic one is unchanged. What was revised is the base and with it the rate, not the level: the €16.338 billion and the €29 million lead come from the same annex. Setting two years' annexes directly against each other is doing the sum wrong.

What is being said — and what is not

At the time of writing no Canary authority or industry body had published a response to these figures. The only regional report of the day comes from Mallorca: on 2 October 2026 Ultima Hora reported 11,084,168 foreign tourists in the Balearics with spending of €16.367 billion, without mentioning the Canaries. The Canary government's position predates all this: on 5 May 2026 it presented the Impactur study with the industry alliance Exceltur, and Jéssica de León, Consejera de Turismo y Empleo, spoke of "a sector that continues to lead GDP, of a contribution based on the rising value of the tourism sector and not on quantities." The €177 daily spend cited in that release is an Impactur figure for 2025 and is not comparable with EGATUR's €201.