What the official count leaves out
The figures come from a presentation given by Franco Cuccureddu, the regional councillor for tourism, crafts and commerce, at the TTG trade fair in Rimini on 15 October 2026. The file was created on 14 October and runs to 48 slides.
Two qualifications sit on the slide itself, in small type under the chart. The 2026 monthly series is marked dati da consolidare, data still to be consolidated, and the whole comparison is labelled escluse locazioni private, private rentals excluded. Every table in the section repeats the same restriction: alberghiero, extra-alberghiero senza locazioni private.
The excluded category is large. In the same presentation, full-year 2025 figures put locazioni occasionali private at 4,460,195 nights, up 37.26% on 2024, out of 21,922,765 nights in total. Capacity data in the deck count 46,935 private-rental units in 2025 against 7,388 extra-hotel structures. So the 13.8 million nights reported for 2026 describe hotels and classified extra-hotel accommodation, not the island's full accommodation market.
The comparison itself is sound: the January to August 2025 figure of 13,227,568 nights is drawn on the same basis, so the 4.58% is like-for-like. What the number cannot do is stand next to the 21.9 million full-year 2025 total, which includes private rentals, or be read as a count of people. Arrivals are check-ins, so a guest moving between properties is counted more than once.
Italians down, foreigners up
The provenance table is the most striking part of the deck. January to August, excluding private rentals:
Italian visitors: 1,521,815 arrivals and 6,500,392 nights, down 0.53% and 1.04% on 2025
Foreign visitors: 1,802,141 arrivals and 7,333,026 nights, up 8.12% and 10.13%
Foreign share of nights: 47.6% in 2024, 50.3% in 2025, 53.0% in 2026
By accommodation type, hotels took 8,525,864 nights, up 2.28%, while classified extra-hotel accommodation took 5,307,554, up 8.50%. Growth is concentrated in the foreign market and in the non-hotel segment that is still inside the official count.
Month by month, the change is May
The monthly table, on the same restricted basis, shows where the eight-month gain came from. Change in nights against 2025:
January: 113,055 nights, down 8.97%
February: 130,445, down 1.12%
March: 175,077, down 1.12%
April: 608,851, up 2.10%
May: 1,603,255, up 22.40%
June: 2,938,212, up 3.94%
July: 3,950,761, up 3.10%
August: 4,313,762, up 2.00%
The first quarter fell. May did most of the work, and the three peak months grew between 2.00% and 3.94%. A reading that treats this as broad-based seasonal spreading does not survive the table: the winter months went backwards.
Airports and card spending measure different things
Passenger movements through Cagliari, Olbia and Alghero reached 10,084,043 in January to September, up 9.25% on 2025. International passengers rose 18.96% to 4,115,544 while domestic passengers rose 3.43%. Olbia handled 4,019,000 passengers, up 11.08%, with international traffic up 15.69%. Alghero's international traffic rose 48.57% while its domestic traffic fell 5.39%.
These are movements in both directions, including residents and day trips, and they exclude arrivals by sea. They are a measure of connectivity, not of accommodation demand. A passenger routed through an Italian hub counts as domestic whatever their nationality.
On spending, the deck reports Mastercard card transactions in Sardinia up about 10% for January to September, with foreign customers accounting for 52% of measured spending. Its own summary line reads: la spesa cresce soprattutto per via dell'aumento delle transazioni, i turisti spendono con maggiore frequenza. In English: spending grows mainly because of the increase in transactions, tourists spend more frequently. That is an observation about frequency, not about higher budgets per visitor, and transactions at physical terminals miss prepaid accommodation and cash.
The United route, and what it is not
United's Newark service is a previously announced plan for summer 2027, not a new flight. Olbia airport operator GEASAR published the timetable on 27 August 2026: UA298 leaves Newark from 27 May 2027 on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays until 21 September, and UA299 leaves Olbia from 28 May on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays until 22 September, flown by a Boeing 767-300ER. The release adds that all flights are subject to government approval.
The airport is Newark Liberty in New Jersey, not JFK, and the service is seasonal rather than year-round. It is also not Sardinia's first United States link: Delta opened New York JFK to Olbia in May 2026, and the region reports more than 29,000 passengers on that route between 21 May and 30 September. Whether a nonstop adds visitors or moves existing connecting passengers onto a direct flight cannot be read from capacity alone.
A note on the numbers
The accommodation data cover January to August and exclude private rentals; the airport and card figures cover January to September and are not comparable with them. The 2026 accommodation series is provisional on the region's own label. The Mastercard series measures card transactions at physical terminals, not total tourism income, and growth in turnover says nothing by itself about profit, wages or how much stays on the island. The deck gives no municipal breakdown, so none of this describes Olbia or any single town. We have asked the regional press office for the final tables, the extraction date and the treatment of private rentals, and will update this article if the answers change the picture.
Sources: Regione Autonoma della Sardegna, TTG Rimini presentation, 15 October 2026 (PDF) · ANSA, 15 October 2026 · La Nuova Sardegna, 15 October 2026 · GEASAR, United Newark timetable, 27 August 2026 · ISTAT, tourism glossary on arrivals and presences
Related reading
Elsewhere on Sardinia Blog: the 21.9 million nights recorded in 2025, the baseline these figures are measured against; the summer 2026 occupancy ranking; and Olbia third on Skyscanner's 2027 trending list. Also: the Eurostat platform series, which counts the private rentals this one leaves out.
Sardinia Blog is published within the Rental12 ecosystem, an owner-operator letting homes it owns in Olbia and Golfo Aranci rather than a property manager acting for other owners. Its own note on supply-led demand and its press archive are company statements, not independent evidence.