Istanbul overtakes Heathrow to become Europe's busiest airport

For the first time, Istanbul airport is the busiest in Europe. In July 2026 the Turkish hub recorded 8.15 million passengers, against 7.86 million at London Heathrow.

The overtaking results from two opposing movements. Heathrow's traffic fell 1.5 per cent compared with the same month a year earlier, while Istanbul's grew 2.3 per cent. These are modest changes, but the two airports had been close for months.

Part of the London decline has an identifiable cause. Heathrow's connections to the Middle East fell 20.2 per cent, a retreat linked to conflicts in the region. For a hub that lives on transit traffic towards Asia and the Gulf, the closure or reduction of those routes weighs on the total more than it would at a predominantly point-to-point airport.

London's primacy had lasted a long time. Heathrow was Europe's busiest airport from 1996 to 2019, lost the position in 2020 with pandemic restrictions and had regained it in 2023.

Istanbul has gathered other records in recent days. On Sunday it set the European daily record with 289,732 passengers, while Sabiha Gökçen, the city's second airport, handled 179,789 on the same day. In 2025 the main airport closed the year with 84.4 million passengers, second in Europe and eighth in the world. It entered service in 2019.

The structural difference between the two hubs concerns space. Istanbul was built on open ground, with room for expansion planned from the design stage. Heathrow, by contrast, operates on a site surrounded by residential districts, with only two runways used close to the limit of their capacity.

That is why the London airport's management is pressing to accelerate the third runway. The British government gave the project political approval in 2025 and launched a public consultation in June 2026. Prime Minister Andy Burnham has not yet taken a definitive position. Even with a green light, construction timescales are measured in years, and until then the gap with Istanbul will depend on how long instability in the Middle East lasts.