The Canary Islands Tech and Business scene is growing. Tourism is not the whole story
Everyone talks about the Canary Islands and tourism. The protests. The overcrowding. The housing prices going up because everything is being turned into holiday rentals. That is all real. But while that argument is running, something else is quietly happening.
The islands are building a proper tech and business economy. Not instead of tourism. Alongside it. And the numbers are bigger than most people realise.
The ZEC Is Europe's Best Kept Business Secret
There is a thing called the ZEC, the Zona Especial Canaria, as the Canary Islands is a Special Zone, which has been around since 2000. The European Commission authorised it specifically to help develop the Canary Islands' economy beyond tourism. The basic idea is simple. Companies that set up real operations here, create jobs here, and run actual business activities here only pay 4% corporate tax instead of Spain's standard 25%.
Four percent. Inside the European Union. Full EU market access. Legal certainty. No tax haven grey areas. It is completely above board and EU-approved.
For years, it was a niche thing. Accountants knew about it. A few international companies used it. Most people on the islands had never heard of it.
That has changed. The ZEC now has 933 registered companies with over 12,560 related jobs. In 2025 alone, it created nearly 1,500 new jobs. That is the biggest annual increase in the scheme's entire 25-year history. Joint turnover across all ZEC companies exceeded €3.4 billion in 2024, up significantly from the year before.
The president of the ZEC, Pablo Hernández, described it as the regime gaining significant momentum and growing above the regional economy as a whole. That is not government spin. Those are real tax figures from registered company data.
Who Is Actually Setting Up Here
It is not just small startups. The ZEC has attracted companies doing genuinely interesting things.
Wooptix is developing what its supporters call some of the most innovative chip technology on the planet, from Tenerife. Ghenova, one of the most respected naval engineering firms in Europe, runs operations through the ZEC. Netflix and Disney productions have been filmed in the islands, partly because of the audiovisual tax incentives the ZEC offers on top of the corporate tax reduction.
The scheme covers ICT companies, logistics firms, biotech, renewable energy, audiovisual production, and business services. Close to 3% of all new companies created in the Canary Islands in 2025 chose to register as ZEC entities. That is up from nearly nothing ten years ago.
The location helps. The Canary Islands sit between Europe, Africa, and Latin America. Direct flights from Las Palmas and Tenerife reach most of Europe in under four hours. West African capitals are closer than Madrid. For a company that needs to operate across multiple continents, that geography actually matters.
Digital Nomads and Remote Workers Noticed First
Before the ZEC boom, it was digital nomads who figured out the islands made sense as a base.
Santa Cruz de Tenerife and Las Palmas de Gran Canaria both developed serious coworking scenes. Coworking spaces started appearing in the early 2010s and grew sharply after COVID when remote work became normal. Some of these spaces now have thousands of members across multiple locations.
The appeal is obvious if you think about it. Year-round sun. Cheap compared to London, Amsterdam, or Berlin. Fast internet. EU residency rights. A cost of living that, while rising, is still well below mainland Spanish cities. And if you set up a proper business, the ZEC tax rate.
That wave of digital workers was the preview. The ZEC company registrations are the main act.
Tech Events Are Bringing Business Tourism to Spain
There is another layer to this that connects the Canary Islands to a much bigger picture.
Spain has become one of the most important locations in Europe for major tech and industry conferences. ICE Barcelona, the biggest global gambling and gaming tech expo, draws over 45,000 attendees from 150 countries every January. SBC Summit Lisbon drew 30,000 delegates in 2025. These events bring serious business investment decisions to the Iberian region.
Industries like online gaming and iGaming in particular are booming, and the conferences that serve them are expanding. The iGaming Events 2026: A Strategic Guide covers the full calendar across Europe, Latin America, and Asia. Spain hosts multiple events on that list. And the Canary Islands, with ZEC tax advantages specifically covering digital services, ICT companies, and online business operations, sit right in the path of the companies that those events attract.
An online tech or services company based in the ZEC pays 4% corporate tax. The same company based in the UK pays 25%. In Germany, it pays up to 30% including trade tax. The maths is not complicated.
The 3D Housing Project in Adeje Shows the Direction
This month, work began on the first 3D-printed housing development in Adeje, south Tenerife. Sixteen properties, expected to be completed in two months, at a cost saving of around 25% compared to traditional construction methods.
That is not just a quirky news story, it is evidence that the Canary Islands are being used as a testing ground for new technology in real conditions. The climate is stable. The regulatory environment, partly because of the ZEC framework, is more flexible than mainland Spain in some areas. And there is a genuine housing shortage that creates demand for faster, cheaper building solutions.
The same logic applies to renewable energy projects, biotech trials, and film production. The islands are a real-world laboratory for things that are hard to test in more crowded, expensive European markets.
What This Means for People Living Here
If you live on the islands, the growth of the ZEC business scene is actually good news on most fronts.
More high-paying jobs that are not in hotels or restaurants. More young local professionals are staying on the islands rather than moving to Madrid or Barcelona for career opportunities. More economic activity that does not depend entirely on what the weather does or whether Ryanair adds a new route.
The housing pressure is real, and the ZEC growth does add to it. Professionals moving to the islands need somewhere to live. That competes with locals and long-term residents. The housing crisis is not going to be solved by tech companies setting up in Santa Cruz.
But the alternative, an economy entirely dependent on mass tourism with no diversification, is worse. The protests in 2025 showed that the current model has real limits. The ZEC is one of the serious attempts to build something alongside tourism rather than just arguing about how much of it there should be.
The Part Most Visitors Never See
When you fly into Tenerife South or Las Palmas, you see the resorts, the beaches, and the German and British tourists with suitcases. That is the Canary Islands most people know.
But there is a coworking space in Santa Cruz where a team of developers is building chip technology that Tenerife's ZEC president says is among the most innovative on the planet. There is a film crew somewhere on Gran Canaria making a Netflix production because the tax credits made it cheaper than filming in mainland Europe. There is a logistics company in Lanzarote moving goods between West Africa and Europe using the ZEC's customs advantages.
According to the ZEC's own 2025 annual figures published by La Voz de Lanzarote, if current growth continues, the ZEC could represent between 2% and 3% of all regional employment and between 7% and 9% of total business profit in the Canary Islands within a decade.
That is a big number. It does not mean tourism stops mattering. Tourism is going to stay enormous here for as long as northern Europe has bad winters.
It just means tourism is not the whole story anymore. And for an archipelago that has been trying to diversify its economy for decades, that is genuinely new.
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