Open to the Mediterranean for almost 4,500 years, Málaga is a city shaped by the meeting of cultures and by a historic vocation for exchange, creativity and hospitality. From its earliest coastal settlements and its Phoenician origins around the 8th century BC, to its current consolidation as a major city in southern Europe, the capital of the Costa del Sol has built a distinctive identity in which heritage, innovation and a lasting relationship with the sea coexist.
Today, Málaga projects this heritage as a dynamic, connected urban destination in constant transformation. Spain’s sixth-largest city by population, with more than 600,000 inhabitants, combines the richness of its historical and cultural legacy with a firm commitment to innovation, sustainability and the continuous improvement of the visitor and citizen experience.
Málaga presents itself as a city that looks to the future without losing sight of its essence: Mediterranean, open, creative and ready to lead a smarter and more human tourism model.
| Admission to the Smart Tourism Destinations Programme |
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| Outstanding initiatives
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- Málaga exceeded 1.83 million hotel visitors, who generated 3.75 million overnight stays in 2025.
- 26.76 million passengers passed through Málaga Airport in 2025.
- 331 cruise ships carrying 570,481 passengers arrived at the Port of Málaga in 2025.
- The city’s visitor satisfaction rating stands at 9.89 out of 10, while its recommendation rating is 9.93 out of 10.
- Visitors particularly highlight the city’s cultural and leisure offering, its rich heritage and its gastronomy.
- With more than 2,200 meetings and over €280 million in direct economic impact in 2025, Málaga strengthens its positioning in the meetings tourism sector (MICE).
- The project “Decentralisation of Tourism in the City of Málaga”, within the Tourism Sustainability Plans in Destinations that form part of the 2022 Andalusian Territorial Tourism Sustainability Plan, under the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan (C14.I1.2), promotes a diversified and resilient tourism model through a series of alternative tourist routes. These routes are conceived as tools for territorial dynamisation, helping to distribute visitor flows more evenly and enrich the tourism experience in the city of Málaga.
- Implementation of the Málaga Smart Destination Platform: PID 2024, aimed at improving tourism management in Málaga through the deployment of an integrated multi-module system. This destination management platform will enable the centralised collection of a new generation of data, as well as its storage, processing and analysis for decision-making, and will connect with the national PID Central Node.
- Participation in the European D3Hub project, which provides sustainable solutions based on data-driven evidence.
- Málaga has been recognised by the European Community of New Gastronomy (ECNG) as European Capital of Gastronomic Culture 2026.
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Technical data
VAT number:
P2906700F Address: Avenida Cervantes, 4 Postal code: 29016 Telephone: 951 92 60 10 Region: Andalucía Province:
Málaga Population:
Málaga Country:
España Local entity type: Ayuntamiento Date of membership:
20190227 Diagnosis: Sí Diagnosis date:
20/12/2024 Destination Type:
Urbano marítimo Population:
591,637 Area (km²):
395.71 Density (inhab/km²):
1,495.13
Level in the Network: Nivel 3
