Cinema in Europe in 2025: more shadows than light
by Elisabetta Brunella

A total of 507.9 million cinemagoers attended cinemas in the five main European markets last year. However, the data for each individual territory - although still provisional - once again shows a mixed trend: while overall admissions are down about 5% in the 27 markets monitored, some countries - in a generally challenging 2025 - estimate a stable or even a higher number of admissions compared to 2024.

This is the case in Germany, where, in contrast to France, the United Kingdom, Spain, and Italy, a 2% increase has been recorded, bringing the number of German viewers to nearly 92 million. The gap compared to 2019, the last year before the pandemic, is around 22%, while per capita attendance is 1.10.

The French market remains the leading market in terms of attendance (2.28 tickets per capita per year), but experienced a sharp decline in 2025, dropping from over 181 million spectators to just under 157 million, a 13.6% drop. Consequently, the gap to be filled compared to 2019, which was a particularly positive year for France, rises to over 26%.

Spain is also losing ground, with provisional data speaking of 65 million viewers, a decrease of around 11% compared to 2024 and over 38% compared to 2019. Consequently, per capita frequency is around 1.32.

For Italy and the United Kingdom, the past year ended with significantly more modest declines: in Italy, admissions amounted, according to Cinetel, to approximately 68.4 million, a decrease of about 2%, while across the Channel, the market held steady, falling from 126.5 million spectators to 125.9 million (-0.5%). These results translate into a gap from 2019 levels of 28.5% for Italy and 30% for the United Kingdom, and a per capita frequency of 1.16 and 1.81, respectively.

The rest of Europe

There were also bright spots, but mostly dark spots, in the other European countries - twenty-two in total - that have reported their 2025 results.

Within the same region - such as Scandinavia, which totaled 34.7 million tickets sold, keeping the decrease to just 1.2% - contrasting trends were recorded: while Norway grew by 2.5% and Denmark by a staggering 4.5%, Sweden and Finland closed the year on the downside (-5.6% and -7.2%, respectively).

Austria boasts the most impressive increase in viewership in percentage terms (+8.1%), while neighboring Switzerland sees its audience decline by 8.2%.

In the Balkan Peninsula, Greece gains 2.3%, while Bulgaria declines by 10.5% and Serbia even by 17.1%.

Significant declines are also recorded in Turkey (-16.5%), Ireland (-9.5%) and Portugal (-8.2%), where observers speak of a structural crisis, while smaller decreases characterize the Slovak Republic (-5.7%), Slovenia (-4.7%), the Czech Republic (-3.3%), Estonia (-3.2%), Hungary (-2.4%) and the Netherlands (-2.3%).

Positive notes come from the large Polish market, which, growing by 3.7%, exceeds 51 million viewers, as well as from Croatia (3.6%) and Latvia (3.3%). A particular situation is that of Georgia which, despite losing 2.5% of spectators, has maintained levels higher than those of 2019 for the third consecutive year, the only territory having reached this goal among those mentioned in this article.

A year of popular comedies

2025 saw the release of “Das Kanu des Manitu”, which was chosen by over five million viewers and became the highest-grossing film in Germany, following in the footsteps of “Der Schuh des Manitu”, the highly successful comedy that had been a resounding success in German-speaking markets in 2001.

The comedy genre - perhaps ill-suited to export, but highly successful in its home country - is represented not only by “Buen camino”, another triumph for Checco Zalone, which once again topped the Italian box office, but also by the sequels which won over audiences in Spain and France.

In both cases, reaching their fifth episode, “Padre no hay más que uno” and “God save the Tuche” were in fact the most-watched domestic films in their countries of production, ranking fifth and sixth, respectively, in the overall rankings by admissions.

It's not a comedy, but it's worth mentioning: the most-watched title in 2025 in Denmark is the third instalment in the “Ternet Ninja” series, a domestic animated film for adults.

Once again, popular domestic productions have played a fundamental role in the sector's economy, both by helping to contain the effects of disaffection towards the big screen and by increasing cinema attendance.

This is an updated version of the article published in the Berlinale special issue of Cinema & Video Int'l, the MEDIA Salles media partner.

Admissions (x 1 000)

* provisional data