Macao’s visitor arrivals broke the 40-million benchmark for the first time last year, the Public Security Police (PSP) announced yesterday.
A PSP statement, released on its WeChat account last night, reported that Macao recorded 40.06 million visitor arrivals in 2025. This marks the highest annual number on record, representing a 1.66 percent increase over the previous record of 39.406 million set in 2019, before the Covid-19 pandemic. The 2025 visitor numbers also reflect a considerable 14.7 percent rise compared to the 34.93 million recorded in 2024.
The majority of arrivals in 2025 were from mainland China, accounting for 72.4 percent of the total. Hongkongers made up 18.2 percent, Taiwanese 2.5 percent, and foreign nationals accounted for the remaining 6.9 percent.
The PSP’s figures for 2025 visitor arrivals are subject to slight adjustment by the official Statistics and Census Bureau (DSEC), which is scheduled to release its detailed data on January 23.
[See more: Macao’s hotel occupancy rate tops 90 percent in November]
In addition to visitor arrivals, the PSP statement also revealed that Macao recorded a total of 235 million entries and exits at its border checkpoints in 2025. This figure is a 9.8 percent increase year-on-year and represents the highest annual number on record for total checkpoint crossings. For comparison, the total number of entries and exits in 2024 was around 210 million, and in 2019 it stood at approximately 190 million.
These entry and exit figures encompass local residents, visitors, non-resident workers, non-local students enrolled in Macao, and all others with a special permit to stay in the city.
In 2025, local residents accounted for 36.4 percent of all border crossings, while visitors made up 33.9 percent. Non-resident workers and their family members represented 26.2 percent, and non-local students comprised 3.2 percent. The Barrier Gate checkpoint was the busiest, recording 124 million entries and exits last year, which is 52.7 percent of the total.
The city’s 2025 border-crossing figures also established new daily records. A daily high of 837,000 entries and exits was set on 2 May 2025, only to be broken again on New Year’s Day last week with a new record of 866,000 recorded movements.
