Graffiti in Brisbane has increased significantly, with about 24,000 more tags appearing in the city from last year, bringing the past financial year's total to 83,334.

Since the 2009-10 financial year the number of graffiti tags – the nicknames graffiti artists use to identify themselves – found and removed in the Brisbane City Council area had consistently declined year on year, from 139,891 tags in 2009-10 to 59,278 in 2015-16.

There were 83,334 graffiti tags removed by the council in Brisbane in the 2016-17 financial year Credit:Harrison Saragossi

The spike in the 2016-17 financial year broke this downward trend.

The graffiti data gathered by the council revealed for the past two years vandals were primarily targeting the inner-city suburbs of West End, the Brisbane CBD and South Brisbane.