The monthly volume of tourists visiting Australia has broken through the one million barrier for the first time since before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Figures released by the Bureau of Statistics this week show that there were 1,036,660 short term visitors to Australia in December 2025.
This was the first monthly figure over a million since November 2019.
Queensland had a particularly strong growth year in 2025 with an increase of 15.9 percent in tourists to the state.
This was second only to South Australia at 17.5 percent.
NSW still had more tourists with 389,290 short-term visitors in December, 2025, compared with 281,540 in Victoria and 204,310 in Queensland.
The Queensland December figure was well up on the 176,290 recorded in the same month in 2024 but still short of the 212,050 in 2019.
Of all the states, only NSW and SA have managed to return their December tourist numbers to pre-COVID levels.
Nationally, the largest group of tourists in December came from New Zealand (142,420), followed by the UK (138,610), the US (102,590) and China (83,120).
