Málaga airport's record year, the 1.5 billion euro expansion and where the Costa del Sol train stands

Málaga airport, officially Málaga-Costa del Sol, handled 26.8 million passengers in 2025, more than ever before, and in summer 2026 offered 262 direct routes to 42 countries. For an international buyer it is the single piece of infrastructure that matters most, because it is what makes a home on this coast usable for a long weekend rather than only for a fortnight. This page sets out what the airport did in 2025 and 2026, what the planned 1.5 billion euro expansion will build and when, and the honest position on the railway along the coast that has been discussed for a century and a half. The last section says what all of it means for where you buy. The areas themselves are compared in where to buy on the Costa del Sol.

The airport in 2025 and 2026

Aena, the company that runs Spain’s airports, reported that Málaga closed 2025 with 26,760,549 passengers and 186,990 flights, both records, with passenger numbers up 7.4% on 2024 (Aena, 13 January 2026). Of those passengers 22.2 million were on international flights, up 7.8%, and 4.5 million on domestic flights. Growth has continued in 2026. In August the airport handled 3,050,841 passengers, 6.6% more than in August 2025, in a month when Aena’s Spanish network as a whole set a record (Hosteltur on the Aena figures, September 2026).

In his first meeting with the press, the airport’s new director, Sergio Millanes, who took the post in July 2026, said the summer 2026 schedule was the largest in the airport’s history: 262 routes to 42 countries flown by 54 airlines, with more than 107,000 passengers on the busiest day (The Olive Press, 30 September 2026). He named the Middle East as the market growing fastest, said the summer route to New York had performed well enough for a year-round service to be considered, and put the airport’s current growth at above 6% a year. Málaga handles about two thirds of all air traffic in Andalucía.

The practical point for a buyer is the breadth of the network. From Málaga there are direct flights to almost every large city in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Scandinavia, Poland and France, to Doha in the Gulf, and in summer to New York. A home here can be reached from most of northern Europe in three to four hours and from the east coast of the United States in a single flight.

The 1.5 billion euro expansion

The airport’s terminals have a theoretical maximum of about 36.5 million passengers a year and some parts of them, such as passport control and security, are already near their limit at the summer peak. Aena’s answer is an expansion programme costed at about 1.5 billion euros, of which more than 830 million is already allocated in the current regulatory period for Spanish airports (El Español, 29 September 2026).

The design contract was awarded in May 2026 to a consortium of Cemosa, Sener Mobility and Fairbanks Arquitectos, with 60 months for the design and a further 48 months of supervision during construction (El Español, 6 May 2026). What it will build, as set out in that contract and in the director’s September briefing:

• A new pier, Dock E, almost a kilometre long with twelve gates for large aircraft.
• About 60,000 square metres of new terminal space, and the demolition of the old Terminal 1 and the existing docks B and C.
• Six times the current space for passport control, a security area more than twice the current size with new scanning equipment, and three times the current space for arrivals.
• A second link between the two runways, so that aircraft no longer cross on a single two-way taxiway, and larger aprons and stands.
• More than 3,300 new long-stay parking spaces and more than 3,900 for hire cars.
• Space reserved for a future railway connection.

Construction is planned to begin around 2029 and to take about seven years, so the finished airport is a project for the second half of the 2030s. In the meantime the airport is operating, and growing, within its current buildings. The director’s stated aim is that the airport should never be the limit on the region’s growth over the next twenty to thirty years.

The train that already exists

Málaga has a suburban railway, the Cercanías line C1, which runs from the city centre through the airport to Torremolinos, Benalmádena and Fuengirola. Trains run every twenty minutes for most of the day and the journey from the airport to Fuengirola takes a little over half an hour. For a buyer in any of those three towns this is a working link to the airport and to Málaga city today, without a car. The line ends at Fuengirola. Marbella, Estepona, Manilva and Sotogrande have no railway, and the drive from the airport is about 45 minutes to Marbella and an hour to Estepona outside the summer peak, and longer in it.

The coastal train: where it actually stands

A railway along the whole coast has been proposed, in one form or another, since the nineteenth century. The current attempt is a feasibility study commissioned by the Ministry of Transport for a line from Nerja in the east to Algeciras in the west, about 195 kilometres by road. The contract was authorised on 30 May 2025 and awarded to the consultancies WSP Spain and APIA for 819,761 euros, with eighteen months to complete it (El Español, 8 August 2026). The study is divided into five sections: Málaga to Fuengirola, which would mean improving the existing C1 line, then Fuengirola to Marbella, Marbella to Estepona, Estepona to Algeciras, and Málaga to Nerja.

In January 2026 the government’s representative in Málaga, Javier Salas, said the Fuengirola to Marbella section was considered feasible and was the one with the greatest demand, and that a route following the A-7 motorway was one of the options being studied (El Español, 14 January 2026). That section would need about 47 kilometres of new railway through some of the most densely built land in Spain.

The study was due at the end of November 2026. A four-month extension has moved the deadline to 2 April 2027. Until it is published there is no agreed route, no cost estimate from the ministry, no division into phases and no construction timetable. Those are the four questions the study exists to answer. Earlier, unofficial estimates for the whole corridor have been in the region of several billion euros. If the study finds the Fuengirola to Marbella section viable, the next steps would be an informational study, environmental assessment, public consultation, detailed design and funding, each of which takes years. A realistic reading is that no train will run to Marbella in this decade.

What this means for where you buy

• The airport is the fact, the train is a hope. Buy on the strength of what exists. Málaga airport is large, well connected and growing, and it will stay open and expanding through the works. The coastal train should carry no weight in a purchase decision in 2026.
• The three towns on the railway have something the rest of the coast does not. Torremolinos, Benalmádena and Fuengirola are the only resort towns with a train to the airport and to Málaga city, which matters for a buyer who would rather not keep a car in Spain. They are compared in Benalmádena and Fuengirola.
• West of Fuengirola, count the drive. A home in Marbella or Estepona is reached by car. For most buyers that is an acceptable 45 to 60 minutes, but it should be timed on a Friday evening in August as well as a Tuesday in February before any offer is made.
• Do not pay for the train. If a seller or an agent cites the future railway as a reason a price is justified, that is a reason to look harder at the price, not at the railway.

The new developments in the towns on the C-1 line are on the Fuengirola and Benalmádena and Torremolinos lists.

How I handle it

My approach is the same at every price point: proper research on the property and its area, a straight assessment of what it is genuinely worth, and careful negotiation on your behalf. Part of that research is the journey: how a home connects to the airport by road and, where it exists, by train, at the times of year you would actually use it. If you are deciding between a town on the railway and one beyond it, that conversation is part of the buying service, and you can book a call to talk it through.

Figures checked on 4 October 2026 against the sources linked above. The airport publishes monthly figures and the railway study is due on 2 April 2027, so treat this page as a dated reading of the position.

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