Macao’s number of visitor arrivals last year broke the 40-million benchmark for the first time, the special administrative region's Public Security Police (PSP) said on Sunday.

A PSP statement released on its WeChat account Sunday night said that the Macao SAR recorded 40.06 million visitor arrivals in 2025, the highest annual number on record, representing a 1.66 percent increase from the previous record of 39.406 million in 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Last year’s number of visitor arrivals rose 14.7 percent from the 34.93 million recorded in 2024.

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In 2025, travelers from the Chinese mainland accounted for 72.4 percent of all visitor arrivals, while Hong Kong residents accounted for 18.2 percent and visitors from Taiwan for 2.5 percent. Foreign nationals accounted for the remaining 6.9 percent.

The PSP data on visitor arrivals in 2025 announced yesterday are set to be slightly adjusted by the SAR’s official Statistics and Census Bureau (DSEC), which is scheduled to announce Macao’s 2025 data on visitor arrivals and their composition on Jan 23.

Record 235m cross-border trips

Moreover, the PSP statement also announced that Macao recorded 235 million entries and exits in 2025, up 9.8 percent year-on-year and also the highest annual number on record.

According to previous PSP announcements, Macao’s total number of cross-border trips in 2024 stood at around 210 million. In pre-pandemic 2019, some 190 million entries and exits were recorded at Macao’s border checkpoints.

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The cross-border trips include those made by local residents, visitors, non-resident workers, non-local students enrolled in Macao, and all others with a special permit to stay in the SAR.

In 2025, according to last night’s PSP statement, local residents accounted for 36.4 percent of the total number of border crossings at all checkpoints, while visitors accounted for 33.9 percent, non-resident workers and their family members for 26.2 percent, and non-local students enrolled in Macao for 3.2 percent.

According to the statement, the Barrier Gate checkpoint recorded 124 million entries and exits last year, representing 52.7 percent of the total number of border crossings at all checkpoints, while the Qingmao checkpoint, the Hengqin checkpoint, and the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge’s (HZMB) Macao checkpoint recorded 36.36 million, 30.35 million, and 27.96 million entries and exits, accounting for 15.4 percent, 12.9 percent and 11.8 percent of the total, respectively.

The police also said that in addition to the highest annual number of entries and exits at all checkpoints on record, the city’s 2025 border-crossing figures also broke different types of records.

On May 2, 2025, Macao recorded 837,000 entries and exits at its border checkpoints, then setting a record in terms of the daily number, according to the statement.

The record was again broken on New Year’s Day last week, when 866,000 entries and exits were recorded.

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And on May 2, 2025, the Hengqin checkpoint recorded 128,000 entries and exits, then setting a record in terms of the daily number. This record was also broken again on Thursday last week, when 147,000 entries and exits were made, according to the statement.

Meanwhile, a PSP statement on Friday said that Macao recorded 188,000 visitor arrivals on Thursday, the highest number ever recorded on a New Year’s Day. 

The Macau Post Daily is a media partner of China Daily.