School ends, but for millions of Italian families the (bitter) bills are starting right now. For many working parents, in fact, summer no longer means three-month long holidays, but rather finding a solution to reconcile professional commitments with looking after their children during the school break. And more and more often this solution has a cost that risks significantly weighing on the family budget.
According to the fourth monitoring of the Eures-Adoc Observatory, which analyzed around 200 private summer centers in eight large Italian cities, in 2026 the national average rate for a full-time summer center reached 179 euros per week per child.
What does it mean? That to cover the central eight weeks of summer a family spends an average of 1,432 euros for a single child. A figure that becomes even more demanding when there are two children. In this case the average cost is close to 2,800 euros, with peaks well exceeding 3,000 euros in the most expensive cities.
The most expensive cities
Leading the cost ranking is Milan, where the average rate reaches 233 euros per week per child. A family with two children can spend around 3,500 euros for eight weeks of attendance.
They follow:
@Eures-Adoc
In the South, prices are lower, but not easily sustainable:
What is worrying is not only the absolute numbers, but the speed with which they are increasing. In fact, the survey shows that summer camp fees have grown by 3.5% in the last year, compared to inflation that remained at 2.7%. If we look at the last three years, the increase reaches 27%.
In practical terms, each family today spends around 38 euros more per week per child compared to 2023. And what makes the picture even more complex is the scarcity of discounts for large families: almost one summer center in two does not provide any discount for siblings. And where there is a reduction, this rarely exceeds 10%, averaging around 7%.
@Eures-Adoc
Not even the part-time formula represents a real solution. Generally limited to morning activities and without a canteen, it still involves an average expense of 119 euros per week, which in the regions of Central Italy reaches around 130 euros.
Behind these numbers lies a broader issue regarding Italian family welfare. Every summer thousands of families find themselves faced with the same dilemma: reducing working hours, relying on grandparents, incurring increasingly higher expenses or completely giving up some educational and recreational opportunities for their children.
And while we continue to talk about support for the birth rate, reconciliation between work and family and female participation in the labor market, the cost of summer centers remains one of the most critical and least addressed items of Italian family policies. Because if children’s summer should be about playing, socializing and discovering, for many parents it increasingly risks turning into a race against the calendar and the bank account.
HERE is the full report.
