With the fairytale châteaux of the Loire Valley in the west, sun-soaked vineyards and beaches down south, and, of course, Paris, it’s no surprise France has been the world’s most-visited country for decades. It’s only getting easier to get there, too, with Italian rail operator Trenitalia planning a direct rival to Eurostar on the London-Paris route by 2029.
But there’s a twist on the horizon. According to a recent trend forecast, France’s reign at the top isn’t guaranteed to last.
A prediction from a joint study by Deloitte and Google said Spain would overtake France as the world’s most-visited country by 2040, with an estimated 110 million annual visitors compared to France’s projected 105 million. At the time of reporting, Spain was working with a 2023 baseline of around 84 million visitors, a solid but distant second place. Two years on, though, the numbers behind that prediction are looking a lot more convincing.
The country welcomed a record 97 million international tourists last year, according to Spain’s National Institute of Statistics, spending an estimated €135 billion between them. That’s a huge jump from the 2023 figure the original forecast was made on, putting Spain well on the path to its 2040 target already, with 15 years still on the clock.
France, for now, still holds the crown. It topped the charts again last year with 102 million visitors, up from 100 million in 2024, when the country hosted the summer’s Olympic and Paralympic Games.
So why is Spain closing in? There’s the obvious appeal of roughly 300 days of sunshine a year, comparatively cheap flights and milder winters than most of northern Europe. But it’s not welcome news for everyone – that same growth has intensified an already tense debate around overtourism, with residents in Barcelona, the Balearics and the Canary Islands raising concerns over overcrowding, stretched public services and rising housing costs. Several regions have already introduced stricter regulations in response, so whether Spain can hit 110 million visitors by 2040 without a serious rethink of how it manages tourism remains an open question.
For more on where things currently stand, here’s why Spain is Europe’s most popular travel destination right now.
Plus: The European cities fighting back against overtourism in 2026.
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