Data & insight · Updated
France Tourism Statistics
How many people visit France, what they spend and where they go — the latest official figures for the world’s most-visited country, compiled from official statistics — full sources are listed at the bottom of the page. Headline numbers are for 2025, the most recent full year. Note that France’s arrivals are counted at the border and include some visitors in transit, so they overstate the number who actually stay — see the methodology.
Inbound visitors
International visitors to France
France remained the world’s most-visited country in 2025, with a record 102 million international arrivals — its second record in a row, after first passing 100 million in 2024. These are border arrivals, which include some visitors passing through to other countries, so they overstate genuine staying tourism (see methodology).
Frontier-arrivals basis, which includes visitors in transit; 2024 and 2025 were successive records. The 2020–2023 figures are approximate secondary compilations and are not strictly comparable with the official 2024–2025 counts.
Visitor spending
What international visitors spend
International tourism receipts reached a record €77.5 billion in 2025, up 9% on 2024, lifting France’s tourism trade surplus to €20.1 billion. Notably, Spain earns more from tourism than France despite welcoming fewer visitors — closing that gap is an explicit French goal. Figures are nominal.
Official “Travel” receipts (balance of payments). No reliable figure is published for 2020, so that year is omitted; 2021 is approximate. A broader visitor-spending measure (€72.5bn for 2024) uses a different definition.
Seasonality
When they visit
Summer is the clear high point: the July–September quarter accounts for about 30% of the year’s hotel nights. The figures below are hotel nights by quarter — a better guide to when people actually stay than border arrivals.
Hotel nights (resident + non-resident) by quarter, 2024. France drew 261.2 million commercial-accommodation nights across all of 2025 (+7.5%).
Attractions
France's most-visited attractions
Disneyland Paris is Europe’s most-visited attraction, far ahead of the Louvre — the world’s busiest museum. Notre-Dame de Paris reopened in December 2024 and drew about 11 million visitors in its first year, which would place it near the top. Figures are 2024 visitor counts; ticketed sites and free monuments are counted differently.
Economic impact
Tourism in France's economy
Travel and tourism is one of France’s largest sectors. The figures below use a broader economic-contribution measure (9.1% of GDP); the government’s narrower direct tourism-consumption measure puts it at more than 7% of GDP.
The economic-contribution measure splits 2024 tourism spending into €72.5bn from international visitors and €142.1bn from domestic travellers. France’s 2030 ambition is framed around receipts (€100bn) and sustainability, since it already leads the world on arrivals.
At a glance
Fast facts
- €77.5bn Tourism receipts (2025, record)
- +€20.1bn Tourism trade surplus (2025)
- 261.2m Commercial-accommodation nights (2025)
- ≈11m Notre-Dame visitors in its first year (to Dec 2025)
- 76% Share of overnight stays from Europe (2025)
- #1 World's most-visited country (by international arrivals)
Questions
Frequently asked questions
How many tourists visit France each year?
France recorded a record 102 million international arrivals in 2025 — more than any other country. But that is a border count that includes some visitors in transit, so it overstates genuine staying tourism; a better measure is the 261 million nights spent in commercial accommodation.
How much do tourists spend in France?
International tourism receipts reached a record €77.5 billion in 2025, up 9%. Even so, Spain earns more from tourism than France despite welcoming fewer visitors — a gap France aims to close.
Is France really the most-visited country in the world?
Yes — by international arrivals France has long ranked #1, ahead of Spain and the United States, though that ranking uses the frontier-arrivals measure.
What is France's most-visited attraction?
Disneyland Paris, with about 15.8 million visitors in 2024. Among monuments, the reopened Notre-Dame drew roughly 11 million in its first year, ahead of the Louvre (8.7 million) and the Palace of Versailles (8.4 million).
When is France's peak tourist season?
Summer. The July–September quarter is the clear high point for hotel nights, with a strong presence on the Mediterranean coast and in Paris.
Using these figures?
Cite this page
Journalists, researchers and bloggers are welcome to use the statistics on this page. Please credit France Tourism Statistics and link to this page.
France Tourism Statistics (2026). Visitors, spending and trends — updated October 2026. https://www.francetourismstatistics.online/
<a href="https://www.francetourismstatistics.online/">France Tourism Statistics</a> Notes & sources
Methodology & sources
This page compiles publicly available official statistics; the sources for every figure are listed below. Key caveats:
- Latest data. Arrivals and receipts are for 2025 (provisional, presented February 2026). Attraction counts are 2024, and Notre-Dame’s figure covers its first year after reopening (December 2024 to December 2025). Each chart is labelled with its year.
- Arrivals basis. France’s headline “arrivals” are counted at the border and historically include visitors in transit to other countries, so they overstate the number who actually stay. Hotel nights and receipts are better measures of real staying tourism.
- Earlier years. The 2020–2023 arrivals and the 2021 receipts are approximate secondary compilations; 2020 receipts are omitted for lack of a reliable figure. Figures are nominal (not inflation-adjusted).
- Receipts source. Receipts are from the Banque de France (the authoritative source). The WTTC’s larger “economic contribution” figure uses a different, broader methodology.
- Gaps. France publishes no current leisure-versus-business split or average length of stay, and no clean ranked table of source countries, so those sections are omitted rather than estimated.
Primary sources
- DGE / Atout France — International arrivals (frontier count), 2024 and 2025 records (2025 provisional, presented Feb 2026).
- Banque de France — International tourism receipts (Travel balance of payments), 2025.
- INSEE — Hotel and commercial-accommodation nights, 2024–2025.
- TEA/AECOM & official operators — Disneyland Paris (TEA/AECOM 2024), Louvre, Château de Versailles, SETE (Eiffel Tower), Musée d’Orsay and Centre Pompidou, 2024 figures.
- WTTC — Economic Impact Research — France travel & tourism GDP and employment, 2024.
- UN Tourism — World Tourism Barometer — international arrivals ranking (France #1).