Sardinia, summer yacht attendance up 15.8 per cent
Gallura primary destination in the Mediterranean: 3,114 boats registered in 2025. The aggregate assets of owners amount to 2 thousand billion
Key points
Sardinia superstar, in the Mediterranean, as a destination for large yachts: between June and September 2025, the number of pleasure boats in Gallura, in the stretch of coastline between Santa Teresa and San Teodoro (including the Maddalena archipelago and the Costa Smeralda), grew by 15.8% compared to the same period in 2024, reaching 3,114. And the assets of the owners of superyachts located in that sea area reached a record figure, calculated at $2 trillion. We are talking about owners from all over the world - from Bernard Arnault, patron of Lvmh, to Sergey Brin of Google, via Jeff Bezos, owner of Amazon, to name but a few - who, for the most part, use boats made in Italy.
The numbers are the result of a highly articulated research project, developed thanks to the cooperation protocol between Cipnes Gallura (Consorzio industriale provinciale Nordest Sardegna) and the North Sardinia Maritime Directorate. "The study," explains Guido Piga, project manager, "combines three complementary levels of analysis. First: data from the Coast Guard's Pelagus system, which identifies the Mmsi (Maritime mobile service identity) identification codes, i.e. the 'digital number plates' of individual vessels, which make it possible to count only pleasure craft, avoiding overlaps with commercial traffic. Second: the international database of the specialised website Superyachtfan, used to identify part of the identified boats (name, length, value, yard and ownership). Third: Forbes list valuations, which were used to estimate the wealth associated with the owners of yachts in Gallura, thus reconstructing the overall financial dimension linked to the boating season in Northern Sardinia.
Profiled 347 superyachts worth 21.2 billion
The CIPNES, emphasises Piga, 'has carried out monthly extractions from the Pelagus system to measure the real presence of superyachts in the area. To ensure maximum statistical reliability, only unique Mmsi are counted: each vessel is recorded only once, even if it moves between several areas or stays for prolonged periods in roadstead. We can say that the research stands out as unique, on a European level, for its scientific and multilevel methodology'.
In 2025, as mentioned, there were 3,114 unique Mmsi detected, corresponding to yachts, an increase of +15.8% over 2024. Within this flow, 347 superyachts were identified and profiled, with a total value estimated at $21.1 billion (source: Superyachtfan). Even more relevant is the economic geography of the owners: coming from 51 nations, they have an aggregate wealth estimated at $2 trillion (source: Forbes). The top 10 countries of origin are the United States (72 owners), the United Kingdom (36), Italy (33), Russia (20), Germany (19), the Netherlands (16), Saudi Arabia (13), France (13), Switzerland (11) and the United Arab Emirates (10).
Members with multibillion-dollar assets
As for the aggregate assets of superyacht owners, amounting, as mentioned, to USD 2 trillion, this is distributed among shipowners from different nations; the top 10 are the United States (794.7 billion), the United Arab Emirates (457.2 billion), France (187.6 billion), Spain (132.8 billion), Italy (72.43 billion), the United Kingdom (64.5 billion), Switzerland (33.6 billion), Russia (32.3 billion), Saudi Arabia (21.5 billion) and Germany (20.7 billion).
