The biggest travel flows on earth are not beach holidays — they are pilgrimages. Saudi Arabia counted 18.5 million foreign pilgrims for Hajj and Umrah in 2024 (GASTAT), roughly as many international visitors as Dubai and more than London. Iraq’s Arbaeen commemoration drew 21.5 million pilgrims to Karbala in a matter of days. And India’s 2025 Maha Kumbh Mela reported 660 million bathing visits over 45 days — a number that says as much about how attendance gets counted as about the event itself.
The numbers — and what they actually count
| Place / event | Country | Figure | Period | What is counted |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prayagraj (Maha Kumbh Mela) | India | 660 M visits | 45 days, Jan-Feb 2025 | cumulative bathing visits, NOT unique visitors – official UP government claim, widely questioned |
| Karbala (Arbaeen) | Iraq | 21.5 M pilgrims | days around Arbaeen 2024 | pilgrims counted by shrine authority |
| Mecca | Saudi Arabia | 18.5 M foreign pilgrims | full year 2024 | foreign Umrah (16.92 M) + foreign Hajj (1.61 M) |
| Medina | Saudi Arabia | 14.1 M visitors | full year 2024 | visitors to the city (GASTAT quarterly series: about two-thirds from abroad) |
| Mecca (Hajj week) | Saudi Arabia | 1.83 M pilgrims | ~1 week, June 2024 | total Hajj pilgrims (88% from abroad) |
Download: religious_travel_giants_2026.csv
Saudi Arabia: religious travel as industrial policy
- Foreign Umrah pilgrims more than doubled since 2019 — from 7.46 million to 16.92 million in 2024 (+127%), the fastest-growing large travel flow we track. Vision 2030 targets further expansion.
- Mecca hosts 7.7 foreign pilgrims per resident per year — the highest visitor pressure in our overtourism index — and during Hajj week, 1.8 million pilgrims arrive within days into a city of 2.4 million.
- Medina rides the same wave: 14.1 million visitors in 2024; GASTAT’s new quarterly series shows about two-thirds arriving from abroad.
Why the numbers are hard to compare — and why we show them anyway
Religious-travel statistics count different things: Saudi Arabia counts individual foreign pilgrims (visa-based, the cleanest metric here); Karbala’s shrine authority counts pilgrims present around one date; the Kumbh Mela’s 660 million counts bathing visits, where one devotee on several holy days is counted several times — analysts have questioned the total, and it should not be read as unique visitors. We publish each figure with its counting method rather than force them into a single ranking. Sources per row in the CSV; more: Methodology.
More TN Cities data stories
- Tourists per Resident — which cities carry the most tourism pressure.
- The Fastest-Growing City Destinations — year-on-year growth from official statistics.
- The Most Visited Cities Nobody Writes About — Johor, Zhuhai, Batam & Muğla — travel’s invisible giants.
- Asia vs. Europe: City Tourism Since 2019 — who passed pre-pandemic levels, and who did not.
- The World’s Most Visited Cities — the master table: official arrivals per city with metric, year and source.
Changelog
- 2026-09-01: First edition.