Strong December visitor numbers bolsters otherwise poor year for Irish tourism

Over the course of the full year, foreign visitor numbers declined by 3% to 6.4 million

Some 524,100 foreign visitors completed a trip to Ireland in December 2025, an increase of 34% or 133,400, when compared with December 2024.

A strong increase in tourists coming to Ireland during December provided a boost to what had been a difficult 2025 for visitor numbers ending the year just 3% down compared to 2024, new data from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) shows.

Throughout much of the year, monthly tourism statistics had been showing a consistent decline compared to 2024. The first half of 2025 saw a near 13% decline in overall tourism numbers, leading many tourism industry associations to question the figures being produced by the CSO.