Half of All Tourists Coming to Russia During 2025 and the First Half of 2026 were from China, Russian Tour Operators Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 15 – Between January 1, 2025, and June 30, 2026, just over half of all the tourists coming to the Russian Federation were from the Peoples Republic of China. That share reflected declines in visits by citizens of other countries and the visa-free regime Moscow introduced in the third quarter of last year.

            Chinese tourism to Russia is still not back to pre-pandemic levels, Nezavisimaya Gazeta reports. In 2019, 1.82 million Chinese received visas to come to Russia, 1.49 million for tourism and 321,000 for business. By 2024, the combined figure had fallen to 1.18 million and continued to fall by six percent in 2025 (ng.ru/news/849108.html).

            Russia’s tour operators are hopeful that the visa-free regime will allow the Chinese numbers and share to recover and expand further in the coming years, yet another sign of Russia’s turn to the east, its isolation from the West, and Chinese interest in visiting the Russian Federation.