WHO’S COMING · JOHANNESBURG
South Africa welcomed 10.48 million international visitors in 2025 — up 17.6%, the first year above pre-pandemic levels — and Johannesburg is where the business half of that wave arrives. Britain is now the top overseas market; Russia grew fastest.
Two of three long-haul visitors to South Africa touch O.R. Tambo first — the airport banks the business travel, the safari connections to Hoedspruit and Skukuza, and the SADC region’s visiting-everything traffic. December 2025 alone saw 738,362 SADC travellers through the country’s ports, with Mozambique, Lesotho, Eswatini and Botswana topping the ledger.
The calendar did its part: November’s G20 Summit — the first in Africa — filled Sandton and seeded the events pipeline, and the Electronic Travel Authorization, piloted during the summit, now rolls out to India, China, Mexico and Indonesia. Q1 2026 kept the pace: 2.91 million arrivals, up ~12.5% every month.
The honest complication: the US and Canada moderated in 2025 under updated travel advisories — Level 2 from Washington in May, a sharper Canadian warning in December — even as Europe surged. South Africa’s arrival record was built on regional Africa and Europe while North America hesitated.
For Johannesburg specifically, the mix matters less than the purpose: this is the business-events city of the continent — 51 MICE bids worth R894.5 million this financial year — plus the transit point for safari-bound premium leisure. The visitor who lands here spends differently: hotels, conferences, and one train ride to Sandton.
The TIO read: the national record is real and the composition is shifting east and regional — UK first, Russia fastest, SADC always. Johannesburg monetizes the purposeful end of that flow. The watch item is the North American advisory cycle; everything else is compounding.
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