Italian cinema admissions up 19% in first half of 2026 as films live on after release

Ticket sales recover, but less often

The Sala e salotto study, carried out by Ergo Research for Anica and presented at the MIA market in Rome on 22 October, counted 40.6 million cinema admissions in the first half of 2026, up 19% on the same period of 2025. Across the eighteen months from January 2025 to June 2026, 29.6 million people went to the cinema, a level the study places at pre-pandemic numbers. Visits per person have not returned, however. Tickets sold fell from 134 million in the eighteen months before the pandemic (January 2018 to June 2019) to 109 million in the latest period, a gap of 25 million, or 19%. Each spectator now buys 3.7 tickets, down from 4.5.

Younger audiences drive the recovery

Viewers under 35 account for 56% of admissions while making up 31% of the population, and the average age in cinemas is 36. The 15 to 24 age group is the only one that bought more tickets in 2025 than in 2019. Over-50s are the largest users of pay services, the study finds. Netflix's Italian content vice president Tinny Andreatta summed up the link between the two markets:

70% of pay views come from people who go to the cinema; there is no opposition.

Films keep earning after the cinema run

Italians watch 91 films a year, roughly one every four days, and 62% of those views are free-to-air or on-demand, while pay services account for 22%. Cinema accounts for under 2% of total viewing, yet the study presents it as the launch point for later windows. For every cinema ticket, respondents reported 8 pay-service views, rising to 19 for Italian films. In a monitoring period from 21 May to 17 June, 4.2 million admissions corresponded to an estimated 32.5 million complete views on pay services. Of recent Italian films watched on pay services, 92% had already been released in cinemas. Among the most-watched Italian titles on pay platforms that month, Buen Camino by Checco Zalone sat at the top, having drawn 9.6 million cinema spectators, followed by Diamanti with 3 million.

Institutions welcome the numbers

Anica president Alessandro Usai argued that judging films on box office alone gives a misleading picture:

Limiting the judgement of a film's success to box office figures alone is completely misleading.

Undersecretary of Culture Lucia Borgonzoni said attendance was up 35% and box office up 45% compared with last year as of 21 October. She also said films are not born and die in cinemas:

Borgonzoni also described the summer as a record one, with 20.8 million cinema attendances between June and August according to Cinetel data.

Convergence, not competition

Paolo Del Brocco, chief executive of Rai Cinema, described the relationship between cinemas and platforms as having moved from conflict to convergence. He said cinemas remain the guiding star, while the first pay window can support production finances.