Italian GDP flat in third quarter, Milan the worst performer in Europe

The preliminary estimate released by Istat on 30 October indicates that Italian GDP remained unchanged in the third quarter of 2026 compared with the previous quarter. On an annual basis, gross domestic product grew by 0.8% compared with the third quarter of 2025, a pace slowing from the +1.0% recorded in the second quarter of the year.

Value added increased in services and agriculture, while it decreased in industry. Istat also notes that acquired growth for the whole of 2026, adjusted for calendar effects, stands at 0.8%. A technical factor should be kept in mind when reading the data: the third quarter had four more working days than the previous quarter and one more than the same period in 2025.

On the same day, the Milan Stock Exchange closed the session as the worst performer in Europe. By midday the index had already lost 1.03%, penalised by the decline in technology sector shares. The Ftse Mib fell below 49,500 points, with the spread between Btp and Bund rising above 118 points.

The European picture nonetheless remains uneven: other exchanges on the continent opened the session mixed, with Frankfurt down 0.27% and Madrid down 0.65%, while London rose 0.56%. At the eurozone level, overall GDP grew by 0.4% in the third quarter, a pace higher than Italy’s.

The combination of a stalled national economy and a sharply falling stock market on the same day points to a divergence between Italy’s macroeconomic performance, essentially stable, and the market reaction, driven more by the technology sector than by growth data. The differential between Italian and German government bonds remains above 118 points, a level that measures the perceived risk on Italian public debt relative to German debt.