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Chinese tourism rises 30% in Barcelona and points to a new record
Barcelona is very quickly recovering one of the tourist markets that virtually disappeared during the pandemic. Between January and July 2026, 174,434 travellers from China stayed in the city’s hotels, 30.2% more than during the same period last year.
No other foreign nationality has grown as much in Barcelona hotels during the first seven months of the year. Chinese visitors already represent 3.25% of guests and occupy seventh place among international markets, still far behind the United States, which accounts for around 15%.
The current pace brings Barcelona closer to another record. Throughout 2025, 233,566 Chinese travellers stayed in its hotels, the highest figure in the series. Up to July this year, they have also already accumulated 407,020 overnight stays, so the data for the coming months will determine how far the recovery goes.
The jump is especially striking when looking back a few years. Barcelona received 181,366 Chinese tourists in hotels in 2019. With pandemic restrictions, the figure collapsed to only 13,748 in 2021. Since then, the return has been continuous, already clearly exceeding levels before covid.
One of the reasons lies at El Prat. Before the pandemic, Barcelona had two airlines and around 12 direct weekly frequencies with China and Hong Kong. This summer, peaks of 38 flights per week have been reached, more than triple, operated by Air China, Cathay Pacific, China Eastern and Shenzhen Airlines.
Direct connections currently make it possible to fly from Barcelona to Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Hong Kong. Aena estimates that China and Hong Kong have gone from representing around 47% of El Prat’s Asian traffic before the pandemic to 66% today.
Who gets off those planes has also changed. The Chinese visitor associated a decade ago with large organised groups and luxury shopping now coexists with couples, families, groups of friends and younger travellers. Shopping continues to matter, but gastronomy, culture and local experiences are gaining ground.
The Sagrada Família offers a clear example of this return. In 2025, Chinese visitors to the church increased by more than 60% and already represented 7.2% of its nearly 4.9 million entries, becoming its third market after the United States and Spain.
The next key moment will arrive in October. China’s Golden Week, scheduled from 1 to 8 October, is one of the country’s major holiday periods and some Barcelona venues are already preparing specific services. Palau de la Música will expand guided visits in Chinese and La Pedrera has also announced programming adapted for those days.
Interest also received an unexpected boost after the football World Cup. It was not because of the Chinese national team, which did not qualify for the tournament, but because of Spain’s victory: travel platform Qunar recorded that searches for flights between Shenzhen and Barcelona rose by as much as 33 times in the hours after Spain’s win.
Barcelona thus enters the final stretch of 2026 with a Chinese market much larger than just two years ago, more direct flights and a different visitor profile. The next indicator will come after Golden Week, when it will be possible to measure whether the increase observed up to July is also maintained outside Europe’s high season.