Malaga Airport has smashed another all-time record after handling more than three million passengers in a single month for the first time in its history.

A total of 3,046,818 travellers passed through the Costa del Sol travel hub in July, according to new figures from airport operator Aena.

That represents an increase of 6.3% compared with July 2025 and works out at an extraordinary average of almost 100,000 passengers every day.

Aircraft movements also reached unprecedented levels, with 20,839 take-offs and landings during the month, 5.2% more than a year earlier.

The figures underline the continuing growth of the Costa del Sol as an international destination, but also bring Malaga Airport increasingly close to its existing capacity.

The airport is currently designed to handle around 30 million passengers per year. After welcoming a record 26.76 million in 2025, it is now on course to comfortably surpass that figure this year.

Brits dominate international arrivals

Foreign travellers continue to overwhelmingly drive Malaga Airport’s growth.

Of the more than three million passengers recorded in July, 2,559,157 were travelling on international routes, up 7.3% year-on-year.

By comparison, 484,650 passengers travelled on domestic connections, representing a much smaller increase of 1.2%.

And once again, Britain was by far Malaga’s biggest international market.

Some 702,883 passengers travelled between Malaga and the UK during July alone.

That was more than three times the number recorded for Germany, the airport’s second-largest foreign market, which accounted for 215,989 passengers.

Italy followed with 170,770, France with 163,992 and the Netherlands with 149,782.

More than 16 million passengers already this year

July’s record has pushed Malaga Airport’s passenger total for the first seven months of 2026 to 16,248,858.

That is 6.6% higher than during the same period of 2025.

International traffic accounts for almost 13.6 million of those passengers, rising 7% year-on-year, while domestic routes have carried approximately 2.68 million, an increase of 5.1%.

Meanwhile, 112,227 aircraft movements have already been handled since January, up 4.6%.

Malaga is also growing significantly faster than Spain’s airport network as a whole.

Across Aena’s Spanish airports, passenger numbers increased by 4% during the first seven months of 2026, compared with Malaga’s 6.6%.

In July alone, Spanish airports handled 34.4 million passengers, up 5%, again below Malaga’s 6.3% growth.

Airport edging closer to its limit

The relentless growth raises an increasingly important question over how much more traffic Malaga Airport can absorb.

The airport ended 2025 with a record 26,760,549 passengers, meaning it is already operating relatively close to its estimated annual capacity of around 30 million.

If the current rate of growth were maintained across the whole of 2026, passenger numbers would move towards 28.5 million, putting the airport within roughly 1.5 million passengers of that threshold.

Plans are already being developed to increase capacity to around 36 million passengers per year, considered approximately the maximum achievable within the airport’s existing footprint.

Read more Andalucia news at the Spanish Eye.