“Best countries to visit” lists are usually one writer’s opinion dressed up as a ranking. This one separates the two things people actually mean by the phrase: where the most people already go, and where travel editors think the moment is right to go next.
Where the most people actually go: UN Tourism’s 2024 arrivals
UN Tourism (the UN specialized agency for tourism statistics, formerly UNWTO) publishes the only globally standardized count of international arrivals by country. Full-year 2025 figures are still provisional as of this writing, so the confirmed ranking below is 2024 — the most recent finalized data:
- France — 102 million arrivals, the first country ever to cross 100 million in a single year
- Spain — 93.8 million
- United States — 72.4 million
- Turkey — 60.6 million
- Italy — 57.8 million
- Mexico — 45 million, the most-visited country in Latin America
- United Kingdom — 41.8 million
- Germany — 37.5 million
- Greece — around 36 million, a record year
- Austria — 32.2 million
Outside the top 10 by raw arrivals, three countries are worth naming because they lead their region: Japan (36.9 million, Asia’s most-visited country, up more than 47% year-on-year on a weak yen and full border reopening), Thailand (35.5 million, Southeast Asia’s leader), and Morocco (17.4 million, Africa’s most-visited country, running at 135% of 2019 levels).
Where editors are pointing for 2026
Raw arrivals measure where people already go, not where the travel-writing industry thinks the interesting story is next year. Lonely Planet’s Best in Travel 2026, published October 2025, is the most widely cited list of that second kind — 25 destinations picked by its editors for a mix of renewed interest and under-the-radar appeal. Selections include Finland, Botswana, Peru, Jeju-do in South Korea, Sardinia, Tunisia, Barbados, and Cádiz in Spain, grouped by best travel season rather than a single ranked order.
The two lists barely overlap on purpose: one counts people, the other bets on where attention is heading. Both are useful for different questions — “where does infrastructure and experience already exist at scale” versus “where might a trip feel less crowded before everyone else arrives.”
What this means for planning a trip
A country topping the arrivals list isn’t automatically the right pick for a specific trip — France’s 102 million visitors are not evenly spread across the country, and the same is true everywhere on this list. The arrivals data is a signal of scale and infrastructure (transport, hotel supply, English/multilingual services), not of fit for a particular traveler. Pair the “who actually goes here” list with a real look at the season, route, and budget for your dates before picking a country off either ranking.
For the two countries at the top of the arrivals list, our France trip planning guide and Spain trip planning guide split each country into regions and seasons, and Spain’s neighbour has its own Portugal trip planning guide. If you would rather start from a worked route than a country overview, the 12-day Provence and French Alps trip shows how a single scenic train leg links the south of France to Annecy, while the 10-day Portugal and northern Spain trip and the 10-day Europe itinerary through Lisbon, Porto, Madrid and Barcelona show what a multi-city Iberia route costs in days spent on trains.
Italy, fifth by arrivals, has an Italy trip planning guide, a shorter 7-day Italy itinerary and an 8-day Rome and Amalfi Coast trip. And if Germany or Austria is your pick for December, four of the six markets in our 2026 Christmas market dates for Nuremberg, Dresden, Munich, Cologne and Vienna are in Germany and one is in Vienna.
We’ve written dedicated top-places guides for forty-five countries from these lists — France, Spain, the United States, Turkey, Italy, Mexico, Japan, Thailand, Morocco, the United Kingdom, Germany, Greece, Austria, Portugal, Vietnam, India, Argentina, Australia, South Africa, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Iceland, Ireland, the Czech Republic, Jordan, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Malaysia, Colombia, Chile, Croatia, Poland, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Kenya, Tanzania, Finland, Tunisia, Indonesia, South Korea, Peru, Brazil, Costa Rica, Canada, and New Zealand — each with sources cited so you can check the numbers yourself.
We’ve since added guides for twenty-one more countries: the Bahamas, Belgium, Cambodia, Denmark, the Dominican Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Guatemala, Hungary, Jamaica, Laos, the Maldives, Malta, Namibia, Nepal, Norway, Oman, Slovenia, Sweden, Uruguay, and Uzbekistan. Each one cites its sources the same way.
