Molise is emptying, and here is the arithmetic

Between January 1, 2020 and January 1, 2026 Molise lost 14,576¹ residents, falling from 300,516¹ to 285,940¹, a drop of 4.9% in six years.

The capital accounts for 938 of the loss

Campobasso went from 48,337⁵ residents on January 1, 2020 to 47,399⁵ on January 1, 2026: 938⁵ people, down 1.9%. The region fell 4.9% over the same six years.

So the capital is thinning at well under half the regional rate. Whatever is emptying Molise is emptying it outside Campobasso, in places too small to make the news when a school closes.

The intermediate reading confirms the trend rather than a shock: 292,150¹ residents on January 1, 2022, on the way down from 300,516¹ to 285,940¹.

136 towns, 2,100 residents each

Molise has 136³ comuni across two provinces, Campobasso and Isernia, with an average of 2,100³ residents per town in 2026. The number of comuni has not moved since 2020.

That average is the number to hold on to when you plan a trip here. A town of 2,100 ha³s a bar, a church and a bus that leaves early; it does not have a taxi rank at 11 pm or a hotel with a night desk.

That average carries Campobasso and its 47,399⁵ residents inside it, so it overstates the size of an ordinary Molise town. The distribution is the point here, not the mean.

The region itself was created in 1963

Constitutional law 3 of December 27, 1963 made Molise the twentieth Italian region, splitting it off from the old Abruzzi e Molise. It amended articles 131⁴ and 57 of the Constitution, carried the signature of president Antonio Segni, and took effect on January 19, 1964.

Molise has therefore existed as a region for less time than most of the people now leaving it have been alive. Guidebooks published before 1964 file the whole area under Abruzzo, which is worth knowing if you are reading anything old about your family's town.

Second from the bottom, 0.49% of Italy

Molise holds 285,940¹ of Italy's 58,942,828² residents, which is 0.49%² of the country. Only Valle d'Aosta has fewer people, 122,554²; Basilicata, the next region up, has 525,281².

Both figures are ISTAT estimates for January 1, 2026, calculated on the same post-census series for every year quoted here, which is what makes the six-year comparison legitimate.

Small does not mean identical, either. Valle d'Aosta is small and full of visitors; Molise is small and almost untouched by them, and those are two different kinds of empty.

What an average of 2,100 changes about a trip

An average of 2,100³ residents per town turns a visit to Molise into a scheduling problem rather than a choice between restaurants. The service you need exists; the question is on which day and at what hour.

Two habits pay off here. Call before you drive, because a town of that size runs on one person being present, and fix your bed before you fix your route, since the beds are the scarce item and the roads are not.

The depopulation figure is not a warning label. It is a description of the room you will be walking into: a Roman site with nobody in it on a Tuesday is the same fact as a school with one class in it, seen from the other side.

What this page does not tell you

The 14,576¹ figure says how many people left, not why, and no verified breakdown of births, deaths and outward migration sits in our data for Molise. Anyone who tells you the split without citing the demographic balance is guessing.

ISTAT publishes that balance region by region. Until we have read it directly and can quote the numbers, the causes stay off this page, and what remains is the measurement: a region of 136³ towns, 4.9% lighter than it was in 2020.

↑ Contents