Chicago welcomed 56.8 million visitors in 2025 — its best since 2019 and 1.5 million more than the year before — as domestic leisure hit records while international arrivals dipped 8.6% in a difficult year for inbound America.
The mix tells a regional story: 54.9 million of 2025's visitors were domestic, and the growth engine was the drive market — the five-hour radius of Midwesterners booking downtown weekends — plus a convention calendar that put 65 citywide events on the books, up from 49 a year earlier. Business travel held at 14.2 million trips.
International was the one soft line, down 8.6% to 1.87 million as inbound travel to the U.S. broadly contracted: Canada fell 23%, overseas markets a modest 3.8%. The base remains deep — India, the UK, Brazil, Germany and France anchor the overseas mix, and Choose Chicago answered with a Brand USA partnership built on the city's skyscraper origin story.
Chicago's calendar does the heavy lifting. Lollapalooza fills August (and set an airport screening record the day after); the city hosted the Premier League Summer Series and a 61,000-sellout Ireland–New Zealand rugby rematch; IPW 2025 brought 5,000 travel trade delegates from 60 countries; and New Year's Eve closed 2025 with the city's first central-time countdown on Dick Clark's Rockin' Eve — and record hotel performance to match.
McCormick Place, the largest convention center in the Western Hemisphere at 2.6 million square feet, keeps the midweek economy humming with roughly three million attendees a year and 1.29 million hotel room nights. On the horizon: the 2026 WNBA All-Star Game, the 2026 Big Ten tournament and the 2027 MLB All-Star Game — plus a ninth straight Condé Nast Traveler Best Big City crown on the mantle.
Our read: come when the city is working, not just playing. Convention weeks price the Loop like Manhattan — check the McCormick calendar before you book — but a domestic-demand city means shoulder seasons are genuinely good: May and late September deliver the lakefront without the festival premiums. Summer owns a third of all visits for a reason; if you join it, anchor one weekend to a signature event and keep the other for the neighborhoods the convention-goers never see.
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