KFC announced in July that it would open 10 more restaurants in southern Italy and the islands by the end of 2026, across Abruzzo, Campania, Calabria, Puglia, Sicily and Sardinia, as part of a national plan to open 35 in total this year and reach 250 by 2028.
“The south and islands are an increasingly strategic area for KFC’s growth in Italy,” said CEO Corrado Cagnola.
McDonald’s plans around 60 openings this year and aims to reach 1,000 restaurants by 2029, up from around 800 today. Italy CEO Giorgia Favaro said in March that the chain’s biggest opportunities lay in the provinces, small towns and the south, where it was expanding its presence.
The south has long been a harder market for the chains, with strong local food traditions and lower spending power.
But the economy in southern regions has grown faster than in the centre-north since the pandemic, according to the Bank of Italy, and fast-food chains are now targeting shopping centres, retail parks and smaller towns in areas they haven't previously reached.
McDonald’s, which arrived in Italy 41 years ago, is still by far the country’s largest fast food chain. It has more than 813 restaurants, which remain heavily concentrated in the north and around the big cities.
The region of Lombardy alone has 190 McDonald’s restaurants, according to the list on the company’s Italian website, with 32 of those in Milan. Lazio has 108, with 62 in Rome. At the other end of the scale, the regions of Molise and Basilicata have three each and Valle d’Aosta just one.
KFC opened its first Italian restaurant much more recently in 2014 and has grown faster than any other chain since. It had 150 restaurants in 17 regions by the end of 2025 and now has 155.
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The chain was slower to reach the south than McDonald’s, but that is where much of its recent growth has come from. It opened 15 restaurants in the south in 2025, and this year’s openings will take its total in the south and islands to 53.
Still, the arrival of some more specialised fast-food outlets means there is ever more variety available - even if it's not to everyone's taste.
For example, French chain O’Tacos recently opened a restaurant in Milan serving 'French tacos', a grilled wrap filled with meat, fries and cheese sauce which our colleagues at The Local France assure us "bears absolutely no resemblance to a Mexican taco".
Not every chain has found a market in Italy. Domino’s closed its last 29 Italian outlets in 2022, seven years after it arrived, as it perhaps unsurprisingly struggled to compete with local pizzerias.
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