A record 26.5 million visitors — 23.7 million domestic, 2.8 million foreign led by China and India — on a map rotated decisively east and south.
Moscow’s passport table is the clearest record of Russia’s tourism pivot: Europe down to a fraction of 2019, China and India at the top, and the Gulf growing fastest of all.
26.5 million visitors in 2025 — half a million more than in 2024 and an all-time record. Domestic travelers from Russian regions supplied 23.7 million of them.
Foreign arrivals reached 2.8 million (+10%); visitors from far-abroad countries grew 16%. Hotel data shows 2.51 million foreign guests in Moscow accommodation, 52.5% of Russia’s total.
The top passports: China 473k, India 109k (+27%), Türkiye 75k, Vietnam 42k (+17%) — with Oman the fastest-growing market at +109% and Saudi Arabia building from a new five-flights-weekly Riyadh link.
The mirror image is Europe: total European arrivals to Russia held around 150,000 — Germany at 66,000 versus 560,000 in 2019, the UK and France near 8,000 each — mostly family visits rather than leisure.
Russia-wide, the inbound count reached a record 4.8–5.5 million foreign tourists depending on the counting method — up 15% — with Moscow taking over half of all foreign hotel stays in the country.
Moscow’s arrivals table reads like a customs ledger of the new corridors: China first by an order of magnitude, India compounding at 27%, Oman doubling in a single year. What the table does not show is the domestic machine underneath — 23.7 million Russians, more than half of them repeat visitors, which is the real foundation of the record. The city has effectively built a two-market system: a vast internal circuit that pays the bills year-round, and an eastern international layer that grows precisely because the western one closed.
Next in this file
Subscribe to the digest and receive key market signals every two weeks.