Foreign tourist arrivals in the Canary Islands fall in April for the first time in five years

The number of foreign tourists arriving in the Canary Islands fell by 8.3% in April compared to the same month in 2025, standing at 1,214,347, while their spending decreased by 6.8%, to 1,796 million euros, according to data published this Tuesday by the National Statistics Institute.

In Lanzarote the drop in the number of arrivals was already visible in March when 3.7% fewer tourists arrived than in the same month last year.

Since March 2021, this is the first time that the Canary Islands have suffered a significant monthly setback in the number of foreign tourists they receive. Since then, the islands had chained together 60 consecutive months of increases, with the only exceptions being September and December 2025, but in both cases the drops were less than 0.1% (-0.02% and -0.09%, respectively).

The same applies to the revenue generated by tourists from other countries, which had been growing non-stop for 60 consecutive months in the Canary Islands, except for slight setbacks in December 2025 (-0.60%) and February 2026 (-1.62%).

In the accumulated balance for the first four months of the year, the influx of foreign tourists to the Canary Islands has stagnated compared to the record year of 2025: there are 5,696,844 who have chosen the islands this year to spend a few days on vacation, a 0.2% increase.

The decrease in income generated by foreign tourism in the islands in April was determined not only by the decrease in the number of visitors, but also by a reduction in the length of stay, which was 8.1 nights, 6.1% less than in the same month of 2025.

These lower figures for travelers and the number of days they stayed in the archipelago led to a decrease in income for the island's vacation sector, despite the average spending per person increasing slightly compared to the immediately preceding April, by 1.7%, reaching 1,497 euros.

To an even greater extent, 8.3%, the average daily spending of foreign tourists in the Canary Islands in April grew compared to a year earlier, standing at 182 euros.

In Spain as a whole, the total spending of international tourists rose in April by 7.4% year-on-year, to 11,686 million euros, and the average daily expenditure of each of these travelers increased by 1.4%, to 189 euros.

Spain also received 5.2% more visitors from other countries in April than in the same month of 2025, reaching a figure of 9.1 million, which led to a cumulative increase of 3.4% in the first quarter of the current year, totaling 26,561,050 of these tourists.