Italy’s commercial data centres could attract €36.9 billion ($41.5 billion) of investment through 2036, according to a study by the Italian Datacenter Association (IDA).

The industry group presented its 2026 market research at its Data Center Symposium in Rome on October 8.

According to Bloomberg’s account of the study, IT capacity in Italy’s commercial data centres stood at 460 megawatts in 2025.

The group expects it to reach about 2.3 gigawatts by 2031, roughly five times as much. The study links the growth to demand for AI and cloud computing.

Milan and the surrounding Lombardy region remain the centre of the market. However, newer projects are appearing in Piedmont, Puglia, and Sardinia.

The study also shows a gap between plans and on-the-ground work. Firms have asked to link between 60 and more than 100 gigawatts to the grid.

But only about 1.9 gigawatts of projects are at an advanced stage. A similar queue led Denmark’s grid operator to pause new connection deals in May.

Past plans have also outpaced spending. From 2023 to 2025, the sector spent €7.1 billion of the €10.5 billion it had planned, or about 68%.

Meanwhile, the government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has given data centres priority and faster permits.

On August 4, the Council of Ministers declared two projects worth about €6.8 billion to be of national strategic interest.

One is a K2 Strategic campus of up to 400 megawatts near Milan. The other is a 30-megawatt AI site in Sardinia from Energy Vault.

The new forecast is larger than the one IDA gave a year ago. In October 2025, the group expected €21.8 billion of spending on building data centres over five years, with capacity reaching 2 gigawatts by 2031.

Italy is not the only country in southern Europe to draw interest. In Spain, Alibaba has held talks with Solaria, a solar firm, about power for a planned data centre.