Macau welcomed 3.65 million visitors in January, the highest number ever recorded for the first month of the year, despite the Lunar New Year holidays falling in February, the government announced on Tuesday.
According to the Direção dos Serviços de Estatísticas e Censos (DSEC), the number of tourists was only 767 higher than in January 2025. Even so, it was enough to mark the strongest January performance since the DSEC began compiling monthly tourism data in 1998, during Portuguese administration.
The Chinese special administrative region had already registered record highs in recent months, including September (3.8 million visitors), October (3.47 million), November (3.35 million) and December (3.58 million), making January the fifth consecutive month to set a new record.
In total, Macau received more than 40 million visitors in 2025, a new all-time high that surpassed the previous record of 39.4 million set in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic.
January’s strong performance came despite the Lunar New Year — traditionally a peak tourism period for Macau — taking place at the end of February this year. In 2025, the Lunar New Year began on January 29, a timing difference that the DSEC cited to explain a year-on-year drop of 9.6%, to 1.45 million, in individual visa holders from mainland China.
Even so, visitors from mainland China and Hong Kong accounted for 89.8% of all arrivals in January. Nearly 62% of tourists, or about 2.25 million people, arrived as part of organized tour groups and stayed in Macau for less than one day.
Read more about this topic: Macau Hits Record Number of Visitors During Lunar New Year
Declines in arrivals from mainland China and Hong Kong were offset by a 20.7% increase in visitors from Taiwan and a 15.5% rise in tourists from other international markets. Macau received almost 278,500 foreign visitors in January, excluding Taiwan — the highest figure for the month since 2019.
In December, the head of the Macau Government Tourism Office said international visitor numbers had recovered to around 80% of pre-pandemic levels. While the city aimed to attract more than three million international tourists in 2025, it fell slightly short of that goal, welcoming 2.76 million foreign visitors, still up 13.7% compared with 2024.
Macau has also eased entry requirements, granting visa-free access since July 16 to citizens of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman. In February, tourism officials said Portugal would be one of Macau’s priority markets for attracting more international visitors.
The region returned this year to the Bolsa de Turismo de Lisboa, held between February 25 and March 1, after being absent from the event in 2025.
