Overseas travel to the US is down 1.4 million visitors from 2025 and still a fifth below 2019
September arrivals fell 4.3% from a year ago, the sixth straight monthly decline. Western Europe accounts for about three quarters of the drop, and the slide comes on top of a base that never recovered.
Overseas visitors made 2.7 million trips to the US in September, 4.3% fewer than a year earlier, according to preliminary data from the US National Travel and Tourism Office. For the first nine months of the year, arrivals are down 5.7% from 2025, to 24.1 million. “Overseas” here excludes Canada and Mexico.
Two comparisons matter. Arrivals have trailed the same month of 2025 in every month since April, and measured against 2019, the last full year before the pandemic, they are down 21%.
A base that never recovered
From January to September, 24.1 million overseas visitors arrived, 6.4 million fewer than in the same months of 2019. The gap ranged from 14% in March to 26% in April, and no month has come close to closing it.
Two regions account for most of the shortfall. Asia is 32% below 2019, 3.1 million fewer visitors, and Western Europe is 21% below, 2.3 million fewer. South America is only 5% short, while Central America (+15%) and India (+27%) are above 2019.
Even the World Cup did not bring more overseas visitors
The World Cup ran from June 11 to July 19. Overseas arrivals did not turn. June was down 1.8% from a year earlier and July down 7.0%. Across the two months arrivals were 4.7% below 2025, about the same as the 4.8% decline from January to May and milder than the 8.5% decline in August and September. Grouping the months this way also sets aside the Easter shift, which moved trips between March and April.
Markets with a team in the tournament did not move as a group. Of the 22 with at least 25,000 arrivals in June and July of last year, 12 did better than their earlier trend and 10 did worse. Norway gained the most relative to its own trend: arrivals rose 31% across the two months after falling 17% from January to May, about 17,000 visitors above the earlier trend, though from a small base. Panama, Austria and Australia also improved.
By volume the UK stood out: up 8%, about 55,000 more visitors than a year earlier and 69,000 above its earlier trend. Several of the largest markets went the other way. South Korea fell 31%, about 88,000 fewer visitors than a year earlier, and France, Brazil and Argentina did worse than before the tournament. Two months is a short window, and the data cannot say why a market moved.
September: Western Europe drove the drop
Arrivals were 122,000 lower than in September 2025. Western Europe, 35% of overseas arrivals, accounts for 89,000 of that, or 73%. Its arrivals fell 8.6% from a year ago and are 26% below September 2019.
France (−15%), the Netherlands (−13%), Ireland (−12%), Germany (−10%) and Italy (−10%) all fell by about a tenth or more. The UK, the largest source of overseas visitors, fell 6% but lost 22,000 visitors, more than any other Western European market.
The single largest loss was South Korea, down 34,000 visitors or 25%, a steeper fall than any Western European market. Central America lost 26,000 as a region (−19%), led by Honduras (−35%), El Salvador (−25%) and Costa Rica (−19%).
By percentage, 6 of the 20 largest overseas markets fell 10% or more, and 13 of the 20 declined.
What we can say about 2026 so far
Through September, overseas arrivals are 5.7% below last year, and the shape of the year matters. January and February were within 1.9% of 2025. From March to September arrivals ran 6.5% below, and every month since April has been lower than a year earlier. Easter moved from April 20 last year to April 5 this year, so March and April together (−6.3%) are the fairer comparison.
The decline is concentrated. Western Europe is 8.7% below last year and Asia 6.1% below, together about 85% of the 1.4 million fewer visitors. Germany (−15%) and France (−15%) are each down about 15% year to date, South Korea −20% and India −9%, although India is still 27% above 2019.
Several markets are holding up. South America is +4% year to date, led by Colombia (+14%) and Ecuador (+15%). Japan is +2%, and the UK is down only 1%. In September, China (+15%) and South America (+5%) together added 41,000 visitors, less than half of the 89,000 that Western Europe lost. Taiwan (+13%) also grew, but arrivals from Asia as a whole were flat (−0.3%) because of South Korea.
What we cannot say yet is why. NTTO counts arrivals by country of residence, not the reasons people travel, and the World Cup months showed no lift. Three things will show whether the pattern is settling: whether the monthly decline stays narrower than August’s 11.8%, whether South Korea’s drop persists, and whether the gap to 2019 holds near a fifth. September is advance data and may be revised.
For destinations that rely on overseas visitors, the benchmark that matters is no longer last year. It is 2019, and most world regions are still well short of it.
