Marbella seen from the slopes of La Concha, the city spreading along the coast to the sea

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Marbella

Photo: Diliff, CC BY-SA 3.0

Ask how many people live in Marbella and you will get two official answers. The Instituto Nacional de Estadística (INE) counted 159,786 residents on 1 January 2025. The town hall’s own register had reached 173,420 by 1 January 2026, and the council has pointed out that the gap costs it state funding. Either way, this is a real working city: the second-largest municipality in Málaga province and the seventh-largest in Andalucía, stretched along 27 km of coast below the Sierra Blanca.

This guide covers the municipality as a whole: the old town and city centre, the five districts the council uses, how people move around, and what official data says about homes and prices. Separate guides look more closely at Nueva Andalucía and Puerto Banús, San Pedro de Alcántara, and the Golden Mile with Sierra Blanca.

Life in Marbella

Marbella is lived in all year, not only in summer. At the start of 2026 the municipal register recorded residents of 155 nationalities. Of the 173,420 people registered, 110,214 were Spanish citizens, and the largest foreign community was British, with 5,638 residents. INE’s household income atlas for 2023 points the same way: 29.5% of residents held a foreign nationality, the average age was 42, and 16.9% of people were aged 65 or over.

Services are spread across the municipality rather than gathered in one centre. The NLS knowledge base counts 41 schools and two kindergartens, 44 pharmacies, 35 supermarkets, nine clinics and seven shopping centres. The council runs covered food markets in the city centre, in the Divina Pastora neighbourhood and in San Pedro Alcántara. Its weekly street market moves between districts: Monday in Marbella town, Thursday in San Pedro Alcántara, Friday in Las Chapas and Saturday in Nueva Andalucía.

The climate is a practical attraction as much as a holiday one. Average annual temperatures are between 18 and 19 °C, with more than 2,900 hours of sunshine a year and roughly 646 mm of rain. The local calendar has its own anchors: the Feria y Fiestas de San Bernabé in June, around the patron saint’s day on 11 June, and the Marbella International Opera Festival, held since 2001. San Pedro Alcántara keeps a separate feria in October.

The old town and city centre

Before the Castilian conquest the town was the Moorish Marbal·la, which the 14th-century traveller Ibn Battuta praised for its fertile surroundings. It passed to the Crown of Castile without fighting on 11 June 1485, the same date on which the town now celebrates San Bernabé.

The historic quarter takes in the Casco Antiguo, the Barrio Alto and the Barrio Nuevo, with remains of the medieval castle. Its heart is the Plaza de los Naranjos, laid out in the Castilian Renaissance style after the conquest, with the town hall of 1568 on the square. Nearby stand the 15th-century Chapel of Santiago and the church of Santa María de la Encarnación, begun in 1618. Homes in the old town are mostly older houses and apartments on narrow streets, so check access, parking and the condition of the building before you commit.

From the Alameda gardens, the Avenida del Mar leads down to the seafront promenade. Along it stand ten bronze sculptures designed by Salvador Dalí and cast by the Bonvicini foundry in Verona, set among fountains and pergolas. It is one of the few places where the old town, the modern centre and the beach meet in a single short walk.

Marbella was an industrial town long before it was a tourist one. In 1832 the La Concepción company built the first charcoal-fired blast furnace for non-military use in Spain here, to smelt iron. Tourism arrived in the second half of the 20th century: the Marbella Club Hotel opened in 1954, and the marina at Puerto Banús in 1970.

How the municipality is divided

The Ayuntamiento organises Marbella into five districts, each with its own district board (Junta Municipal de Distrito). It helps to know them, because an address described as “Marbella” can be ten kilometres or more from the old town.

  • Marbella Este: the eastern side of the city itself and the most populous of the five districts.
  • Marbella Oeste: the western side of the city, including the Divina Pastora neighbourhood and Nagüeles on the way towards the Golden Mile.
  • Nueva Andalucía: the planned district between the Río Verde and the Río Guadaiza, known as the Golf Valley, which includes Puerto Banús.
  • San Pedro Alcántara: the former farming colony founded in 1860, plus the Guadalmina area on the border with Estepona.
  • Las Chapas: the long eastern coastal stretch, reaching as far as the small port of Cabopino and the protected Dunas de Artola.

Three of the districts have their own headquarters away from the city hall: San Pedro Alcántara on the Plaza de la Iglesia, Nueva Andalucía on Avenida Miguel de Cervantes, and Las Chapas on Calle Pinsapo. For a buyer, the district says more about daily life than the postcode does: a flat near the Plaza de los Naranjos, a house in San Pedro and a home near the Dunas de Artola are all in Marbella, but they offer very different routines.

The coast and the mountains

The municipality’s 27 km of shoreline is divided into 24 beaches. At the eastern end, in Las Chapas, the Dunas de Artola (also called the Cabopino dunes) were declared a Natural Monument by the Junta de Andalucía in 2001. The protected area covers about 19 hectares of mobile and fossil dunes and includes the Torre de los Ladrones, an old defensive tower listed as a heritage site.

There are three harbours, and each has a different use. Puerto Banús is the large marina in Nueva Andalucía. La Bajadilla, in the city, is the base of Marbella’s fishermen’s guild as well as leisure boats. The small port of Cabopino lies at the eastern end of the municipality, near the Dunas de Artola.

Behind the city, the Sierra Blanca rises steeply and is protected as a Natura 2000 site. Its best-known summit, La Concha, reaches 1,215 m and is visible from most of the municipality. The mountains shelter the coast from the north, which helps explain the mild winters. Several short rivers run down from the hills, including the Río Real, the Río Verde, the Guadaiza and the Guadalmina. They are often dry in summer, but they are useful landmarks: the Río Verde, for instance, marks the eastern edge of the Nueva Andalucía district.

Getting around

Marbella is the most populous municipality in the Iberian Peninsula without a railway station. The nearest station is about 27 km away, near Fuengirola, so daily life depends on roads and buses. Two main roads follow the coast: the AP-7, a toll motorway, and the toll-free A-7.

Avanza runs the urban bus network, which has 14 lines stretching from San Pedro de Alcántara in the west to Cabopino in the east. The main bus station is on Avenida del Trapiche, and San Pedro Alcántara has its own station on Avenida Norberto Goizueta Díaz. Interurban coaches go to Málaga city, Málaga airport, Algeciras and Ronda, and long-distance operators connect Marbella with Madrid and Barcelona.

The NLS knowledge base places Málaga–Costa del Sol Airport (AGP) 41.8 km from Marbella; real journey times depend on traffic and on which district you start from. Gibraltar International Airport is the other option, further west along the coast.

Schools and healthcare

For many families, the choice of international schools is the reason to settle in Marbella rather than a smaller town. Schools named in the NLS data include Aloha College in Nueva Andalucía, Swans International School, the British International School of Marbella and Laude San Pedro International College. Swans has its secondary campus in Sierra Blanca, beneath La Concha, and combines the English national curriculum up to GCSE and the International Baccalaureate in the sixth form with the Spanish curriculum. Laude San Pedro takes children from two and a half to 18.

The main public hospital is the Hospital Universitario Costa del Sol, on the A-7 at kilometre 187. Private care includes Hospital Quirónsalud Marbella on Avenida Severo Ochoa, which has 24-hour general, paediatric and gynaecological emergency services, and HC Marbella International Hospital in Nueva Andalucía. The municipal tourism office also lists Hospital Ochoa.

The property market

Several official bodies publish housing figures for Marbella. These are the latest available, with the period each one covers:

  • Consejo General del Notariado, homes sold in the latest 12 months published (retrieved August 2026): 4,037 sales in Marbella at an average of €4,665/m². The average home sold cost €788,970 and measured 169 m².
  • Consejo General del Notariado, same period, Málaga province: 33,997 sales at an average of €3,061/m².
  • Ministerio de Vivienda y Agenda Urbana, home transactions based on notarial data: 4,082 homes changed hands in Marbella between April 2025 and March 2026. Of these, 481 (11.8%) were new builds.
  • Registradores de España, Estadística Registral Inmobiliaria, second quarter of 2026, Málaga province: 8,873 registered home sales at €3,254/m², with an average price of €338,816.
  • Registradores de España, fourth quarter of 2025: foreign buyers made 12.5% of home purchases in Andalucía and 13.5% across Spain.
  • The NLS, sold prices in the third quarter of 2026: a median of €4,074/m², based on only five sales. This is a very small sample, and the figure can change sharply from one quarter to the next.
  • The NLS, asking prices on 148 NLS listings in Marbella in the third quarter of 2026: €6,752/m². These are asking prices on listings at that date, not agreed sale prices.

These sources measure different things. Notarial figures come from signed deeds, the Registradores count sales once they are entered in the land registry, and NLS asking prices show what sellers were hoping for, each over its own period, so the numbers will not match. For wider context, INE’s 2023 income atlas gives average net income in Marbella of €13,384 per person and €37,606 per household, with 2.6 people in the average household.

One point is particular to Marbella: planning. In April 2006 the town council was suspended following the Operación Malaya corruption investigation. The general plan approved later, in 2010, was annulled by the courts, and the town went back to working under its 1986 plan. A new Plan General de Ordenación Municipal has since received a favourable report from the Junta de Andalucía, and a final council vote was scheduled for September 2026. Before buying, particularly a villa or a plot, ask your lawyer to confirm the planning classification and the licences for that specific property.

Who Marbella suits

Marbella suits people who want a complete town around them in every season: schools, public and private hospitals, a bus network, food markets and a cultural calendar, with the beach and the mountain both close by. It works well for families choosing between several international schools and for owners who travel often, thanks to coaches from the bus station and the airport 41.8 km away.

Within the municipality, the choice is really between districts. The city centre suits buyers who want to walk to shops, the market and the seafront. Buyers looking for gardens, golf or more space often look west to Nueva Andalucía and the Golden Mile, or east to Las Chapas, while San Pedro Alcántara offers a town centre of its own. Because official price data is published for Marbella as a whole, compare individual homes rather than relying on a single average.

Marbella on the map

Apartments for sale in Marbella

Villas for sale in Marbella

Penthouses for sale in Marbella

Townhouses for sale in Marbella

Houses for sale in Marbella

Plots for sale in Marbella

New developments in Marbella

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