Japan’s second city just had its best year ever: 34.1 million passengers through Kansai Airport with international traffic at a record 27.5 million, a World Expo that moved 2.52 million people a day on the metro, and a luxury-hotel wave that finally matches the food.
Osaka has always been Japan’s merchant city — the kitchen of the nation, the comedy capital, the place Tokyo does business with. What changed in 2024–2025 is the hardware: Four Seasons, Waldorf Astoria and Patina landed within ten months of each other, Kansai Airport finished a once-in-fifty-years terminal rebuild lifting international capacity from 23 to 40 million, and Expo 2025 ran 184 days on Yumeshima island.
The visitor economy followed: Osaka recorded roughly 17.6 million visitors in 2025, foreign guest-nights hit 23.2 million — second only to Tokyo — and Expo-goers spent an average of ¥390,000 per trip, nearly double the national visitor average.
The Osaka dossier is complete — a tracker plus four urban readings: the air hub, the rail hub, the arrivals table and the money flow.
Subscribe to the digest and receive key market signals every two weeks.