Nurse pay in Italy, net of tax in 2026

CCNL Sanità, the agreement behind every nursing payslip

Practically every nurse in the Italian public system is covered by the CCNL del Comparto Sanità, the national collective agreement for healthcare. Aran negotiates it on behalf of public employers, facing the healthcare unions CGIL, CISL, UIL and NURSING UP across the table. Renewal is famously sluggish: the 2019 to 2021 agreement was not signed off until 2022, leaving nurses waiting years for increases they had already been promised.

Nursing sits in the D1 to D3 and DS bands under the CCNL. A D1 entrant starts near €24,500 gross a year, with scatti lifting that every two years toward roughly €28,000 at D3 for an experienced floor nurse and €33,000 to €38,000 at DS coordinator level. Those figures cover base salary and the indennità di comparto, leaving out the variable supplements paid for nights, weekends and specialisation.

Private clinics and hospital groups such as GVM Care & Research, Humanitas and the Ospedale San Donato Group work under different frameworks, and some pay a little over contract to hold on to nurses who would otherwise take the security of a public post or leave the country. At the better private facilities the premium runs €2,000 to €4,000 a year above the equivalent CCNL public role.

How nursing pay is spread across Italy in 2026

P90 generally means fifteen years or more of experience in a coordinator or specialist post, or work in high-supplement settings such as emergency, intensive care and night rotations. The figures include the indennità di comparto and exclude overtime and irregular supplements wherever these are not contractually guaranteed.

The median nursing salary of €27,500, taken apart

A nurse on €27,500 still receives the detrazione da lavoro dipendente, the IRPEF credit designed to soften the tax burden on lower-paid employees. It tapers away above €28,000, so at the median nursing salary it is still doing real work, cutting the effective IRPEF bill by roughly €1,880.

Estimate for Lombardia; regional addizionale varies by region (1.73% Lombardia to 3.33% Calabria). Effective net varies accordingly.

The allowances that genuinely raise monthly pay

A number of specialisation and environment allowances are guaranteed by the CCNL Sanità rather than left to the employer. The indennità di pronto soccorso adds roughly €200 a month gross for nurses in emergency departments, in recognition of the intensity and risk the work carries. The indennità di rischio covers infectious disease wards, oncology units where cytotoxic agents are handled and certain intensive care settings, normally worth €150 to €180 a month gross.

The CCNL pays night supplements by the night worked, not as a fixed monthly sum. Eight nights a month at the contractual rate, roughly €18 to €25 above the daytime figure, puts €1,700 to €2,400 on annual gross, which is far from decorative. Weekends work much the same way. An intensive care nurse in a northern teaching hospital working regular nights and weekends can realistically reach €32,000 to €36,000 gross against a contractual base of €27,000.

The arithmetic that keeps pushing nurses abroad

Mutual recognition under EU Directive 2005/36/EC means the Laurea in Infermieristica travels without further examination to Germany, Switzerland, France, Luxembourg, Britain through the post-Brexit UKVI route, and every other member state. Combine that portability with pay differences that change a life rather than merely improve it, and a steady outflow is the predictable result.

Put one case beside another. A nurse three years into the job, earning €27,500 at an ASL in Campania, who moves to Germany into Altenpflege or Krankenpflege can expect a starting position at €30,000 to €38,000 in the east or €38,000 to €48,000 in Bavaria or Baden-Württemberg. On €38,000 in Steuerklasse I the German net of about €2,150 a month already beats the Italian figure, before anyone counts the lower cost of living outside Munich or Hamburg. Switzerland goes further still, paying hospital nurses CHF 68,000 to CHF 90,000, near €70,000 to €95,000, which is two to three times the Italian net.

By 2030 the Ministero della Salute expects the country to be short around 75,000 nurses. How that gap gets closed without touching the wage structure is a question nobody in politics has answered.

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