Macau surpassed 30 million visitor arrivals as of 11 am local time on Friday, September 11, reaching the mark 22 days earlier than in 2025.
May 2 was the record day for visitations, with 247,000 visitors. Meanwhile, daily arrivals averaged 119,000, an 8% year-on-year increase. At the same time, authorities are preparing for a new holiday travel rush, more specifically the Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day holidays.
Macau International Airport handled 5.21 million passengers and 38,000 flights between January and August this year, up 5.6% and 0.3%, respectively. Southeast Asia inbound and outbound flights grew 13%.
Eric Fong Hio Kin, Marketing Department Director of the airport’s concessionaire, expects flight and passenger volumes to maintain an upward trend in the fourth quarter. Fong said oil price fluctuations have led some airlines to adjust or cancel flights, urging them to give passengers advance notice of schedule changes.
Nevertheless, Macau's gross gaming revenue (GGR) declined slightly in August, with casinos generating MOP21.89bn (US$2.71bn), down 1.2% from MOP22.16bn in the same month last year.
Despite the modest monthly decline, the market remained ahead of last year's pace overall. Total GGR for the first eight months of 2026 reached MOP169.05bn, representing a 3.7% increase compared with MOP163.05bn during the same period in 2025.
The August result also marked an improvement from the sharper declines recorded in June and July, when monthly GGR fell 12.1% and 8.4%, respectively. Analysts have attributed the earlier weakness partly to the impact of the football World Cup, with gaming activity now showing signs of stabilising.
Macau's August GGR was the closest monthly result to 2025 levels since revenue declined in June
