Updated on:
by
Shaimaa Olwan
Shaimaa Olwan
Article Summary
What this article covers: How many people travel to Australia, where they come from, what they spend and how long they stay, tracked from 2019 to the latest official figures.
Who this is for: Travellers planning a trip to Australia, people researching the Irish and British connection to Australian travel, and anyone who needs citable tourism figures from official sources.
Key takeaway: Australia recorded 9,101,120 short-term visitor arrivals in the year to June 2026, its second highest total on record. British visitors were the only top-five market where most people came to see family rather than for a holiday.
Expert insight:
“The number that stopped us was the length of stay. British visitors average twenty days in Australia against a national median of twelve, and once you understand that most of them are visiting family rather than ticking off Sydney and the reef, the whole shape of that travel becomes clear.”
Ciaran Connolly, Founder of ConnollyCove
Quick facts:
- Short-term visitor arrivals to Australia reached 9,101,120 in the year to June 2026, an increase of 8.3% on the previous year (Australian Bureau of Statistics).
- International visitors spent A$40.9 billion inside Australia in the year to March 2026, up 20% year on year (Tourism Research Australia).
- At the 2021 Census, 2,410,833 people in Australia reported Irish ancestry, the third most common ancestry response after English and Australian.
Table of Contents
Australia’s visitor numbers have almost fully recovered from the border closures that began in early 2020. ConnollyCove tracks arrivals and spending across destinations, including Ireland’s own tourism figures, and Australia is one of the clearer recovery stories in that set. The year to June 2026 came within 2.6% of the pre-pandemic record.
That headline hides more interesting movement underneath. South Korean arrivals are running 45% above their 2018-19 level. Chinese arrivals are still a fifth below it. Western Australia, Tasmania and South Australia all set records while the Northern Territory went backwards.
This guide pulls the official figures together in one place, using the Australian Bureau of Statistics for arrivals and Tourism Research Australia for spending. ConnollyCove is an Ireland-based travel and culture platform covering destinations worldwide. That shapes the angle here. Alongside the national totals, we’ve looked at what the data says about British and Irish travel to Australia. We’ve kept the year-by-year history from 2019 intact, because the shape of the collapse and the recovery still explains how Australians and their visitors travel now.
Australia Travel Statistics at a Glance
Australia is close to a full recovery in visitor volume and comfortably past it in visitor spending. Arrivals sit just under the pre-pandemic record while spending has climbed well beyond it, which tells you people are paying more per trip than they were before 2020.
| Measure | Latest figure | Change on a year earlier |
|---|---|---|
| Short-term visitor arrivals (year to June 2026) | 9,101,120 | +8.3% |
| Largest source country | New Zealand, 1,422,790 visits | 15.6% of all arrivals |
| Most common reason for the trip | Holiday | 45.4% of arrivals |
| Median length of stay | 12 days | Unchanged for three years |
| Visitor spend inside Australia (year to March 2026) | A$40.9 billion | +20% |
| Total visitor spend including overseas costs | A$57.6 billion | +16% |
| Australian residents returning from overseas trips | 12,711,650 | +3.7%, a record |
All spending figures are Australian dollars. We’ve left currency conversions out deliberately: exchange rates move too fast for a page like this to stay accurate, so check a live rate before budgeting.
Tourism is a bigger part of the Australian economy than most visitors realise. Tourism Research Australia puts the sector’s direct contribution at A$81.1 billion in 2024-25, or 2.9% of national GDP, supporting 727,000 jobs as at March 2026.
How Visitor Numbers Changed from 2019
Australia lost roughly 98% of its inbound visitors within a year of closing its borders, then took four years to climb back. The recovery has been steady rather than dramatic, with arrivals rising in every financial year since restrictions lifted in February 2022.
| Year to June | Short-term visitor arrivals | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| 2018-19 | 9,343,990 | Pre-pandemic benchmark |
| 2019-20 | 6,740,000 | Borders closed from March 2020 |
| 2020-21 | 150,000 | The lowest full year since ABS records began |
| 2021-22 | 1,190,000 | Borders reopened February 2022 |
| 2022-23 | 5,860,000 | Recovery begins in earnest |
| 2023-24 | 7,970,000 | Back above 85% of pre-pandemic levels |
| 2024-25 | 8,402,400 | Steady growth continues |
| 2025-26 | 9,101,120 | Second highest year on record |
The 2019 baseline
Calendar year 2019 closed with about 9.5 million short-term visitor arrivals, the high water mark before the pandemic. China led with 1.44 million visits, New Zealand followed on 1.43 million, and the United States contributed 0.8 million. Australians themselves took 11.3 million short-term overseas trips that year, with New Zealand, Indonesia and the United States the three most popular destinations.
The 2020 collapse
December 2020 recorded roughly 35,100 arrival trips, a fall of 98.1% against December 2019. About 17,800 of those were Australian citizens coming home. Departures told the same story, down 97.8% year on year to around 49,900 trips. Border closures did what border closures do.
2021 to 2023: the climb back
Recovery started slowly. Through 2021 arrivals stayed close to the floor, with the rolling twelve-month total sitting at roughly 250,000 visitor arrivals by December. Once borders reopened in February 2022, the change was fast: the rolling total reached 3.69 million by December 2022 and 7.19 million by December 2023, nearly double the previous year.
By 2025-26, five of the top ten source countries had passed their pre-pandemic numbers. South Korea led that group at 145.2% of its 2018-19 level, followed by India at 117.1% and Indonesia at 113.7%. China lagged furthest behind on 78.7%.
Where Australia’s Visitors Come From
New Zealand and China supply more than a quarter of Australia’s international visitors between them, but the United Kingdom is the market that behaves differently from all the others.
| Country of residence | 2025-26 arrivals | Share of total | Compared with 2018-19 |
|---|---|---|---|
| New Zealand | 1,422,790 | 15.6% | 101.1% |
| China | 1,127,110 | 12.4% | 78.7% |
| United States | 755,500 | 8.3% | 93.0% |
| United Kingdom | 751,420 | 8.3% | 104.6% |
| Singapore | 448,310 | 4.9% | 96.4% |
| Japan | 447,590 | 4.9% | 92.4% |
| India | 435,570 | 4.8% | 117.1% |
| South Korea | 407,600 | 4.5% | 145.2% |
Why the UK is the outlier
British visitors are the only top-five market where the most common reason for the journey is visiting friends and relatives rather than a holiday. For New Zealand, China, the United States and Singapore, holiday travel comes first. For the UK, family comes first.
That single difference changes everything else about the trip. British visitors record a median stay of 20 days against a national median of 12. New Zealanders stay 7 days, Japanese visitors 6, Americans 10. Across all markets, people visiting friends and relatives stay a median of 17 days while holidaymakers stay 9.
It also explains why the UK held up better than almost any other long-haul market through the recovery. Family visits are less discretionary than holidays. When flights got expensive, people who were going to see relatives went anyway.
The Irish connection the arrivals data doesn’t capture
Ireland does not appear in the ABS top ten source countries, which makes the Irish presence in Australian travel easy to miss. Look at the residency and visa data instead and it becomes obvious.
At the 2021 Census, 2,410,833 people in Australia reported Irish ancestry, making it the third most common ancestry after English and Australian. A further 80,927 residents were born in Ireland. That’s a large standing population of people with relatives in Ireland, and relatives in Ireland who visit.
The Working Holiday Maker programme tells a similar story. The Department of Home Affairs recorded 206,187 Working Holiday Maker visa holders in Australia as at 30 June 2025, from 175,070 grants across 2024-25. The Republic of Ireland has consistently ranked among the top three citizenship countries for Working Holiday (subclass 417) grants, alongside the United Kingdom and France. For a country of roughly five million people, that’s a remarkable share.
You’ll hear the claim that a third of Australians have Irish ancestry. The Census figure of 2.4 million is closer to 9.5%, and the higher number comes from estimates that include people who record their ancestry simply as “Australian”. Both are defensible descriptions of a real connection, but they’re measuring different things, and it’s worth knowing which one you’re quoting.
“Irish travel to Australia has never really been holiday travel in the way the statistics categorise it. It’s a working year that turns into three, a sister in Perth, a wedding in Melbourne. That’s why the Irish presence shows up in visa records and census forms long before it shows up in arrival counts.”
Ciaran Connolly, Founder of ConnollyCove
Travelling in the other direction, the language of leaving still matters. ConnollyCove’s guide to traditional Irish proverbs and what they mean covers the sayings that surface at family send-offs.
For the words themselves, Irish farewell blessings and when they’re used is the closest thing to a departures-gate phrasebook. Ciaran Connolly founded ConnollyCove partly to document exactly this: the cultural detail that travel statistics record only as a number in a column.
What International Visitors Actually Spend
International visitors spent A$40.9 billion inside Australia in the year to March 2026, a 20% rise on the previous year, from 8.5 million trips and 321.9 million visitor nights. Total spend, which adds airfares, stopovers and pre-trip costs bought outside Australia, came to A$57.6 billion.
| Reason for travel | Trips | Spend in Australia | Change in spend |
|---|---|---|---|
| Holiday | 3.7 million | A$13.5 billion | +22% |
| Visiting friends and relatives | 2.8 million | A$5.5 billion | +10% |
| Business | 776,000 | A$2.0 billion | +3% |
| Education | 554,000 | A$15.3 billion | +23% |
Read that table twice. Education accounts for about 6.5% of trips and the single largest spending category, more than holiday travel. Long stays and tuition fees do that. It also means headline “tourist spend” numbers are heavily shaped by international students, which is worth remembering whenever you see an average spend per visitor quoted without qualification.
Dividing total in-Australia spend by trips gives roughly A$4,800 per visit. That average is doing a lot of work, though. It covers both a fortnight in a Brisbane spare room and a year of study in Melbourne, so treat it as a rough anchor rather than a budget.
Beyond the East Coast: State by State
New South Wales still takes the largest share of international arrivals at 37.7%, but the growth story of 2025-26 sat in the west and the south.
Western Australia recorded its highest visitor numbers on record, reaching 113.4% of its 2018-19 level, the strongest recovery of any state or territory. Tasmania and South Australia also hit record highs. The Northern Territory went the other way, sitting at 85.7% of pre-pandemic levels, and the Australian Capital Territory was the only jurisdiction to record fewer visitors than the year before.
The mix of source countries shifts by state too. China was the largest source market for New South Wales, Victoria and the ACT. New Zealand led in Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania. Singapore was the top source for Western Australia, and the United States for the Northern Territory.
For travellers, the practical reading is straightforward. If you want scale and air connections, the east coast delivers. If you want the places where visitor growth is running ahead of infrastructure strain, Perth, Adelaide and Hobart are where the numbers point. ConnollyCove publishes destination data alongside cultural guides, and more travel figures by country sit in our travel statistics hub.
Practical Planning Data for Travellers
December is Australia’s busiest month for international arrivals and June is its quietest, which makes the Australian winter the obvious window for anyone who cares more about space than sunshine.
| Month (2025-26) | Visitor arrivals |
|---|---|
| December | 1,040,000 |
| February | 940,000 |
| November | 830,000 |
| March | 820,000 |
| August | 750,000 |
| July | 740,000 |
| October | 740,000 |
| January | 720,000 |
| September | 700,000 |
| April | 640,000 |
| May | 610,000 |
| June | 570,000 |
The December peak is driven by the southern summer and the Christmas period, when visiting-family travel and holiday travel land in the same four weeks. February stays high partly because of Lunar New Year travel from China. The April to June trough is the cheapest and quietest stretch of the year in most of the country, though it’s also cool and wet in the southern states.
How long people stay
The national median stay is 12 days, but that varies more by nationality than by anything else. Indian visitors record a median of 61 days, the longest of the top ten markets. Japanese visitors stay 6 days, the shortest. British visitors sit at 20 days.
Reason for travel matters just as much. Median stays run 9 days for holidays, 17 days for visiting friends and relatives, 122 days for education and 141 days for employment.
Who travels
The median age of visitors to Australia is 41 for both men and women. The single largest group is people aged 25 to 29, and China is the top source country for that age band. Women have outnumbered men among visitors to Australia every year since 2014-15, with 4,779,250 female visits against 4,321,870 male visits in 2025-26.
Current Conditions and Seasonal Information
Australia’s peak visitor season runs from November to February and its quiet season from April to June, a pattern that has held steady across the whole post-pandemic recovery. Book accommodation for the December period several months ahead, particularly in Sydney, Cairns and along the Great Ocean Road.
Weather runs opposite to the northern hemisphere. December to February is summer across the south and wet season across the tropical north, where Cairns and Darwin see heavy rain, humidity and some road closures. May to September is dry season in the north and the better window for the Top End, while the southern cities are cool and often wet.
School holiday periods create domestic demand surges that overlap with international peaks, especially over Christmas and in early July. Prices for domestic flights and coastal accommodation rise sharply in those windows.
Visa requirements, entry conditions and biosecurity rules change with policy rather than season. Check the Australian Bureau of Statistics release calendar for current arrival data and the Australian Government’s own immigration guidance for entry requirements before you book. Nothing on this page replaces official pre-travel advice.
What the Numbers Suggest Next
Australia will almost certainly pass its 2018-19 arrivals record within the next two years if current growth holds, with the gap now down to 2.6%. Two things could change that. Chinese arrivals remain a fifth below pre-pandemic levels, and closing that gap alone would push the total past the record. Long-haul European markets, meanwhile, are under pressure from airfare costs.
The clearer trend is in spending rather than volume. Visitors are spending more per trip than they were before 2020, and Tourism Research Australia forecasts international visitor spend in Australia reaching A$46 billion. Travellers exploring this region should plan for higher costs than older guidance suggests. Based on how ConnollyCove has watched this pattern play out across other recovering destinations, the regional markets are where the growth goes once the gateway cities fill up.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many tourists visit Australia each year?
Australia recorded 9,101,120 short-term visitor arrivals in the year to June 2026, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. That was an increase of 8.3% on the 8,402,400 arrivals recorded the previous year, and the second highest annual total on record. The all-time high remains 9,343,990 arrivals in 2018-19, which means Australia is now within 2.6% of its pre-pandemic peak. These figures count border crossings rather than individual people, so a visitor who enters twice in a year is counted twice.
How many people from the UK and Ireland visit Australia?
The United Kingdom sent 751,420 visitors to Australia in the year to June 2026, making it the fourth largest source market. It was also one of only five top-ten markets running above pre-pandemic levels, at 104.6% of its 2018-19 total. Ireland is not reported separately in the ABS top ten. The Irish connection shows up instead in visa and census data. The Republic of Ireland is consistently a top-three source of Working Holiday visa grants, and 2,410,833 Australian residents reported Irish ancestry at the 2021 Census.
What is the most visited city in Australia?
Sydney, in New South Wales, which takes the largest share of international arrivals of any state or territory at 37.7%. New South Wales recorded 3.43 million short-term visitor arrivals in 2025-26, ahead of Victoria on 2.32 million and Queensland on 1.87 million. Melbourne and Brisbane follow Sydney as the next most visited cities. Western Australia, which includes Perth, recorded its highest visitor numbers on record and the strongest recovery of any state relative to 2018-19.
What does the average international visitor spend in Australia?
International visitors spent A$40.9 billion inside Australia in the year to March 2026 across 8.5 million trips, which works out at roughly A$4,800 per visit. That average is skewed by international students, whose long stays and tuition fees make education the largest single spending category at A$15.3 billion, ahead of holiday travel at A$13.5 billion. A typical two-week holiday will sit well below the average. Total spend including airfares and overseas costs reached A$57.6 billion.
Which month has the fewest tourist arrivals in Australia?
June, with roughly 570,000 short-term visitor arrivals in 2025-26, followed by May and April. The Australian winter is the quietest window for international arrivals across most of the country, which usually means lower airfares and easier bookings. It’s also dry season in the tropical north, making May to September the better period for Darwin, Cairns and the Kimberley. December is the busiest month by a wide margin at around 1.04 million arrivals.
How long do British and Irish travellers stay in Australia?
British visitors record a median stay of 20 days, well above the national median of 12 days and roughly triple the New Zealand median of 7 days. The main reason is purpose of travel: British visitors are the only top-five market where visiting friends and relatives outranks holidays as the most common reason for the trip. Across all markets, visits to friends and relatives run a median of 17 days against 9 days for holidays. Irish travellers frequently arrive on Working Holiday visas, which allow far longer stays again.
Is tourism in Australia increasing or decreasing?
Increasing, though the pace has eased. Visitor arrivals have risen in every financial year since border restrictions lifted in February 2022, reaching 9,101,120 in 2025-26. Spending is growing faster than volume: international visitor spend rose 20% in the year to March 2026 while trip numbers rose 10%. The final months of 2025-26 did show arrivals slipping back below their 2019 equivalents, so the growth has not been uniform across the year.
What is ancestry tourism in the Australian context?
Ancestry tourism describes travel motivated by family history rather than sightseeing, and it runs in both directions between Australia and Ireland. Australians with Irish roots travel to trace family records, and Irish families travel to visit relatives who emigrated. The Australian data captures the second flow within the visiting friends and relatives category, which accounted for 32.1% of all arrivals in 2025-26. Sites connected to nineteenth-century Irish migration, including the Australian Monument to the Great Irish Famine in Sydney, are common stops on these trips.
