Barcelona is today connected by air with 66 countries —221 destinations— through 379 routes. Josep Tarradellas Barcelona-El Prat Airport closed 2025 with 57.5 million passengers and 360,786 operations, record figures that place it as one of the city's major gateways, and as the sixth airport with the most traffic in the European Union. But the figures for today's aerial Barcelona go back more than a century: specifically, to 1916, when Barcelona's first airfield was born, in El Remolar, on the grounds of the La Volatería farm, from which it initially took its name.
Only two years later, in 1918, the airfield moved to land in El Prat de Llobregat, a few hundred meters from the original location. That first aerodrome was home to the Aeroclub de Catalunya, a base for airships and seaplanes of the Navy and the Army, and marked, from its beginnings, its international vocation, thanks to the French aviator and industrialist Pierre-Georges Latécoère.
On December 25, 1918, Latécoère arrived at El Prat aboard a Salmson 300, as part of the project to create a major airline between Toulouse, Casablanca, Dakar and, later, South America. A few months later, in September 1919, two Breguet XIV planes from Latécoère Airlines took off from Toulouse bound for Morocco and made a stopover in El Prat, before continuing to Alicante and Rabat. The next day they arrived in Rabat with the first letters of the Franco-Moroccan postal service. Thus, from its beginnings, El Prat was already part of the first international air routes connecting Europe with North Africa.
These were postal routes, however. The first regular commercial services did not arrive until 1927, when Iberia inaugurated its first line, between Barcelona and Madrid's Cuatro Vientos airport. Almost three decades later, in 1963, the airport exceeded one million passengers for the first time. And seven years later, in 1970, Pan American inaugurated the New York-Lisbon-Barcelona connection with a Boeing 747 and that same year the Barcelona-Madrid air shuttle began. In 1977, traffic already exceeded five million passengers.
But the big leap to consolidate itself as the great international infrastructure it is today came with the Barcelona Olympic Games. In 1992, the expansion of terminal B and the new terminals A and C came into service, and that same year the airport exceeded 10 million passengers for the first time.
The last big leap? In 2009, when the current T1 came into service, the great transformation that would finally turn Barcelona-El Prat into the great international airport it is today, capable of accommodating more than 57 million passengers in a year.
Specifically —and jumping to the present after this historical review— the airport recorded almost 5.9 million passengers in July of this year. The figure totals 34.2 million passengers on commercial flights so far this year, according to Aena data, 4.7% more than between January and July 2025. And of these, 25.9 million corresponded to international travel and the remaining 8.3 million to domestic flights, which is already the usual proportion for Barcelona airport: 75% international and 25% domestic.
According to the latest data published by Aena, during the month of July, 35,886 aircraft operations were managed; totaling 215,228 in 2026. And regarding cargo, 20,435 tons of goods were transported in July, a figure that represents an 8.1% increase compared to July last year, reaching 125,309 annual tons.
As for the number of airlines, 90 airlines currently operate at Josep Tarradellas Barcelona-El Prat airport. And among them, five concentrate a large part of the traffic: Vueling, with 40% of the market share and 22.7 million passengers in 2025; Ryanair, with 16%; Wizz Air, with 5%; easyJet, with another 5%, and Iberia, with 4%.
221 destinations: where does Barcelona fly?
Europe continues to be, by far, Barcelona's main connection area, with Spain, Italy, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany as the main destination countries. But the airport's network also extends far beyond the European continent: the 379 routes connect Barcelona with 221 destinations in 66 different countries.
And one of the areas where Barcelona is especially strengthening its connectivity is Asia. This summer, in fact, the airport has celebrated reaching its most extensive network of connections with the continent, with direct flights to Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Seoul. In fact, the Barcelona Air Route Development Committee (CDRA) has placed among the priorities of its Strategic Plan 2026-2030 to consolidate current connectivity and expand Barcelona's presence in the main Asian markets.
This summer the airport has reached its most extensive network of connections with the Asian continent
But Asia is not yet the airport's main market. In 2025, flights originating from or destined for America moved 3.5 million passengers, while connections with the Middle East and Asia added 2.7 million. Africa, for its part, concentrated 1.8 million passengers.
However global the network may be, the bulk of Barcelona-El Prat's traffic remains eminently European. The routes with the most passengers are Palma de Mallorca (2.4 million passengers in 2025), followed by Madrid (1.8 million), Rome (1.7 million), Amsterdam (1.6 million), and Lisbon (1.4 million).
The passenger: who flies to Barcelona?
According to Aena's annual report, 56% of passengers at El Prat airport travel for holidays or leisure, while 22% do so to visit family or friends and 17% for business or work reasons. Regarding origin, 40% reside in the province of Barcelona, 22% in the rest of Spain, and 38% are foreign residents. By nationality, the distribution is almost half and half: 53% Spanish and 47% foreign.
We also know that the most common passenger is between 30 and 49 years old, a range that accounts for 42% of the total, followed by young people between 15 and 29 years old, who represent 32%.
Now what? The airport expansion
The debate about the expansion of Barcelona-El Prat has accompanied the airport's growth for years. At the end of 2019, when traffic exceeded 52 million passengers, Aena began to propose a new major investment in anticipation of the saturation of the facilities. The project already ruled out at that time building a fourth runway into the sea due to the environmental impact it would have had.
The plan, however, soon met with strong political, social, and environmental opposition. And the debate intensified in 2021, with the clash between the Spanish government and the Generalitat and environmental mobilizations, until the project was shelved in the summer of that year. In the following years, the debate remained stalled, while the economic sector defended different alternatives.
But the situation began to change in 2024, when the Generalitat and the Ministry of Transport activated a technical commission to study the future of the airport in view of a faster-than-expected recovery in traffic after the pandemic. In 2025, with the new Government of the Generalitat, the project was put back on the table with a concrete proposal: to extend the third runway, the one closest to the sea, by 500 meters, accompanying the action with an environmental compensation plan with more than 250 hectares of renaturalization in the Llobregat Delta.
The current roadmap foresees an investment of 3.2 billion euros and places the start of the main works in 2029, with the aim of having the new infrastructure completed by 2034. Before that, however, the environmental compensation and renaturalization actions should begin.
Therefore, the expansion is not yet under construction. What has been launched is the planning. In July 2026, Aena awarded the drafting of this new Master Plan for the airport and its Strategic Environmental Assessment, in a contract worth 2.68 million euros and lasting five years. This document will have to specify how the airport will be transformed over the coming decades and complete the corresponding environmental processing. The forecast is that the new Master Plan will be approved in 2029.
And meanwhile, Barcelona-El Prat is expanding its capacity without waiting for major works. The airport is allocating 800 million euros to different actions in terminals T1 and T2 with the aim that T1 gains about 70,000 square meters (a 15.5% increase in surface area) and T2 faces the most important remodeling since its construction, with an investment of 153.4 million euros.
The expansion also seeks to strengthen long-haul flights and consolidate Barcelona as an international hub:
Aena's proposal aims to increase capacity to 70 million passengers, yes, but it's not just about big numbers. The expansion also seeks to strengthen long-haul flights and consolidate Barcelona as an international hub: an airport where a portion of passengers do not have Barcelona as their final destination, but arrive there to connect with another flight and continue their journey to a third city. An aerial Barcelona, which is not only a destination, but also a connection point between Europe and the rest of the world.