Hate Crowds? Here’s the Skinny on the World’s Most Crowded Cities

According to the 2026 Overtourism Index, Santorini, Greece, is the world’s most overcrowded city. As protests against mass tourism are spreading from Barcelona to Bali, a new report by the digital entertainment platform JB.com shows where international travelers actually create the biggest problems.

• Over 3 million tourists visit Santorini every year, flooding a tiny island with just 15,500 permanent residents.
• Venice handles 94K+ tourists every single day, with visitors outnumbering locals by 133-to-1.
• Kyoto, Japan, hosts more than 150K travelers daily, nearly 40 times the number of people actually living there.

The index examined visitor numbers across 30 popular travel destinations to find where tourists outnumber locals by the widest margin. Based on population data and annual tourist arrivals, the study calculated how many visitors each city receives for every resident living there.

The CEO of JB.com commented on the study: “Mass tourism wasn’t a problem until budget airlines made international travel affordable for everyone. In the 1980s, visiting Venice or Santorini meant you had money for expensive flights and hotels. Now you can book a round trip to Greece for less than a tank of gas. This democratized travel, which is great, but it also means destinations that were built for 50,000 annual visitors are now getting 3 million. The infrastructure can’t keep up, and locals end up leaving because they can’t afford rent when landlords realize tourists will pay triple.”

This visitor-to-resident ratio shows where overtourism creates the biggest problems. The report also looked at tourist density per square kilometer and the daily number of tourists each destination handles throughout the year.

Here’s a look at the top 10 cities where tourists outnumber locals the most:

Destination	Tourist Density per km2	Tourist-to-Resident Ratio	Daily Number of Tourists
Santorini, Greece	46,575	21935.48%	9,315
Venice, Italy	83,133	13312.75%	94,521
Dubrovnik, Croatia	105,799	7815.43%	6,087
Kyoto, Japan	67,633	3836.56%	153,425
Phuket, Thailand	1,091,667	2808.18%	35,890
Chicago, USA	90,759	2030.00%	150,685
Amsterdam, Netherlands	104,566	1914.51%	62,740
Brussels, Belgium	150,617	1134.71%	66,849
Vienna, Austria	48,337	992.91%	54,959
Los Angeles, USA	26,498	891.50%	94,521

You can access the complete research findings here.

1. Santorini, Greece

• Visitors per year: 3.4 million
• Population: 15.5K
• Tourist-to-resident ratio: 219.4
• Daily tourists: 9,315
• Tourist density: 46.5K per km2

Santorini is the most overcrowded tourist destination in the world. With only 15K+ permanent residents, the island receives 3.4 million tourists each year. This translates to over 9,000 daily visitors, flooding narrow streets and beaches that were built for a small fishing community. For every single person living here, 219 tourists pass through annually, outnumbering residents more than 200-to-1.

2. Venice, Italy

Venice comes second with tourists outnumbering residents 133-to-1. The Italian city houses just under 260K permanent residents, but receives 34.5 million visitors annually. On a typical day, there are roughly 95K travelers entering Venice.

The overtourism problem becomes even clearer when you account for the city’s small size. Spread across just 415 square kilometers, Venice sees over 83K tourists per square kilometer, meaning some locals may even find it hard to walk through their own neighborhoods during peak season.

3. Dubrovnik, Croatia

Dubrovnik ranks third, drawing 2.2 million visitors annually to a city of just 28K people. The destination is much smaller than Venice, with its old town squeezed into only 21 square kilometers.

This means more than 100K tourists are crammed into every km2 here, making the city one of the most overcrowded places in the world. And with 6,000 new visitors passing through each day, it’s no wonder that UNESCO has warned that overtourism might threaten the city’s heritage status.

4. Kyoto, Japan

Kyoto takes fourth place in the overtourism index. Japan’s cultural capital receives 56 million visitors annually, and that’s nearly 40 times its population of 1.46 million people. This means the town sees over 153K tourists arriving every single day, more people than many cities count in total.

Kyoto does cover 828 square kilometers, though, so it can handle tourist traffic better than Venice or Dubrovnik, but the big crowds at temples and traditional neighborhoods still overwhelm the city.

5. Phuket, Thailand

Phuket rounds out the top five cities with the biggest overtourism problem. Thailand’s largest island receives 13.1 million tourists every year, which is the same as nearly 36K daily visitors. For every resident here, there are 28 tourists arriving, and that proved tough for the city.

The hotels and restaurants started to occupy nearly every meter of coastline, while locals have been priced out by short-term rentals. Squeezed into just 12 square kilometers of developed beach areas, the island now sees over 1 million visitors in every km2, the highest tourist density in the world.