Which country reads the most in Europe? The question comes up often, and the answers floating around mix old studies, commercial polls and incompatible definitions. Yet there is one reliable source for comparing countries: Eurostat's EU-SILC survey, which in 2022 asked adults across the whole European Union the same question: have you read at least one book in the last twelve months?
Short answer: Luxembourg comes first (75% of people are readers), followed by Denmark, Estonia, Sweden and Finland. France ranks 10th out of 26 countries (62%), above the EU average (53%). Spain is 14th (54%) and Italy 24th (35%). Germany does not appear in the ranking, because Eurostat did not consider its data reliable.
The European reading ranking
The table below shows the share of people aged 16 and over who read at least one book during the year, along with the share of heavy readers (10 books or more), based on Eurostat 2022 data (table ilc_scp27).
| EU rank | Country | Read at least 1 book | Read 10 books or more |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Luxembourg | 75.2% | 18.0% |
| 2 | Denmark | 72.1% | 19.6% |
| 3 | Estonia | 70.7% | 19.7% |
| 4 | Sweden | 69.7% | 21.5% |
| 5 | Finland | 69.6% | 22.7% |
| 7 | Ireland | 66.6% | 26.3% |
| 10 | France | 61.7% | 19.8% |
| 14 | Spain | 54.2% | 9.1% |
| EU average | 52.8% | 13.8% | |
| 22 | Portugal | 41.9% | 5.1% |
| 24 | Italy | 35.4% | 11.3% |
| 26 | Romania | 29.5% | 3.1% |
Outside the European Union, Switzerland beats everyone with 80.6% of readers, and Norway reaches 71%. At the other end of the ranking, Romania, Cyprus and Italy bring up the rear.
One detail is worth noting: having many readers and reading a lot are two different things. Ireland is only 7th for the share of readers, but it has the most heavy readers of any country (26.3% read at least 10 books a year), ahead of Finland and Sweden. France also stands out on this measure, with nearly 20% heavy readers. Italy, on the other hand, has few readers but a share of heavy readers (11.3%) close to the average: those who do read there read a lot.
Why Northern Europe reads more
The Nordic and Baltic countries have topped the ranking for a long time. Several factors are regularly put forward to explain it: very dense and well-used public library networks, a strong reading tradition at school, and cultural policies that make reading an everyday habit rather than an elite pastime. Luxembourg, a multilingual country where many people read in several languages, points to another factor: the variety of what is on offer.
These explanations remain hypotheses: Eurostat data measures how many people read, not why. What it does show is a very clear and consistent gap between women (60.5% are readers in the EU) and men (44.5%), which also appears in every one of the national surveys below.
France: 18 books a year on average
According to the Les Français et la lecture barometer conducted by Ipsos for the Centre national du livre (April 2025), 87% of French people aged 15 and over read at least one book during the year, and they read 18 on average, down from 22 in 2023. Reading time has fallen to 31 minutes a day, and only 56% consider themselves regular readers, the lowest level in ten years. We break down these figures in our article How many books do French people read.
Italy: a two-speed country
Italian figures depend heavily on the definition used. In its report published in July 2026 covering the year 2024, Istat estimates that 57.1% of Italians aged 6 and over read at least one book, counting reading for school and work. If only leisure reading is counted, the share drops to 40.5%. The regional gap is striking: more than 60% of people are readers in the Center and North, compared with 47% in the South. Women read much more than men (62.6% versus 51.2%), and only 17.4% of leisure readers read every day.
Spain: half of Spaniards read every week
The 2025 barometer of the Spanish Publishers Federation (FGEE), published in January 2026, shows that 66.2% of Spaniards aged 14 and over read books in their free time, and that 51.5% are frequent readers who read at least once a week. Madrid leads the regions (72.8% of readers), with Extremadura in last place (59.8%). Here again, women read more (72.3% versus 59.8%).
Germany: fewer and fewer book buyers
Germany is the big absentee from the European ranking: Eurostat did not publish its figure, which it considered unreliable. The available data covers book purchases rather than reading. According to the German Publishers and Booksellers Association (Börsenverein), 34.4% of Germans aged 10 and over bought at least one book in 2025, or 25.9 million people, down from 41.1% in 2020. The decline is especially sharp among 10 to 15-year-olds, whose number of buyers fell by 30.6% in a single year.
Why the figures do not always match
You may have noticed that Italy has 35.4% of readers according to Eurostat and 57.1% according to Istat. Both figures are correct, but they do not measure the same thing: a different minimum age (16 versus 6), a different year, and a broader or narrower definition of reading. That is why only Eurostat data, collected with the same questions in every country, makes a ranking possible. National surveys help you understand each country from the inside, not compare them with one another.
Read more, wherever you live
In France, the main reason people give for not reading more is lack of time, cited by 68% of respondents in the CNL survey. That is the idea behind Cobalt: making reading fit into busy days, with the key ideas of great non-fiction books in 5 minutes, to read or listen to. More than 40 summaries are freely available at https://www.cobaltapp.io/en/resumes, and the app can be downloaded at https://www.cobaltapp.io/download.
Sources: Eurostat, EU-SILC 2022, table ilc_scp27 (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/ilc_scp27/default/table); CNL/Ipsos, Les Français et la lecture, April 2025; Istat, Libri e biblioteche, July 2026; FGEE, Barómetro de Hábitos de Lectura y Compra de Libros 2025; Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels, Buchmarkt kompakt 2025/2026.