Who travels to Kazakhstan: arrivals by country, 2024–2026

Foreign citizens entered Kazakhstan 15,740,539 times in 2025, a 3.1% rise on 2024. That headline mixes two very different flows. Citizens of 14 former Soviet states made 13.92 million of those crossings and barely grew (+0.6%). Everyone else made 1.82 million crossings and grew 27.5%. We merged the Bureau of National Statistics (BNS) border tables for 2024, 2025 and January–September 2026 and recalculated them country by country.

Key numbers

• 15.74 million foreign arrivals in 2025. These count border crossings, so a frequent commuter is counted many times.
• Long-haul arrivals: 1.43 million to 1.82 million, +27.5%, now 11.6% of the total.
• China: 961,627 arrivals, +46.8%, more than half of all non-Soviet arrivals.
• Fastest growth among countries with 5,000+ arrivals: Singapore +80.7%, Australia +47.4%, China +46.8%, the Philippines +46.4%.
• Only 2.1% of crossings are filed as “tourism”. 85.6% are filed as “private”.
• Seven countries had already beaten their 2025 total by September 2026, led by Thailand at 2.7 times last year’s figure.

The top 20 countries outside the former USSR

China dominates: 961,627 arrivals, more than India, Türkiye, Germany and the next sixteen countries put together. After that comes a long tail of countries sending 9,000 to 160,000 arrivals a year, and that tail is where growth is fastest.

For a traveller from these countries, the numbers say one practical thing: you will not meet many compatriots. 24,292 British arrivals a year is about 65 a day for the whole country. How people fly in, and through which airports, is covered in our study of direct flights to Kazakhstan.

Who is growing fastest

Of the 28 non-Soviet countries with at least 5,000 arrivals in 2025, Singapore grew fastest, from 3,530 to 6,379. Australia, China, the Philippines and Vietnam all grew by 41–47%. Germany (+3.4%), Mongolia (+2.3%) and Oman (+4.5%) barely moved.

Under the rules in force in November 2026 (Resolution No. 890), citizens of Singapore, Australia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, South Korea, Japan, the EU, the UK, the USA and the Gulf states can stay up to 30 days without a visa; Indian citizens can stay up to 14 days per entry. These tables cannot prove that visa rules caused the growth: they have no monthly series before and after each change. Country-by-country entry rules are on our Kazakhstan visa page.

Why “tourism” in the official data is not a tourist count

Every crossing is tagged with a purpose of travel. In 2025, 13,468,768 crossings (85.6%) were tagged “private”, 1,478,074 (9.4%) “transport crew”, 337,304 (2.1%) “transit” and 334,607 (2.1%) “tourism”. Business, official trips and study together made up under 1%.

German holidaymakers are filed as “tourism” in only 3.2% of cases, Americans in 4.6%, Indians in 3.3%. The exception is China, at 25.9%, which supplies three quarters of every “tourism” entry in the country. If you read that “Kazakhstan received 334,000 tourists”, the figure describes how the form is filled in, not what visitors did.

How long people stay

Length of stay says more about the kind of trip. BNS publishes it for every country.

Across former Soviet countries 64.4% of crossings end within two days; for the rest of the world the figure is 39.8%. Holiday-length stays of 3–15 days make up 41.4% of long-haul arrivals and 20.5% of neighbours’ arrivals.

2026 so far: who has already overtaken 2025

January–September 2026 brought 11,735,527 arrivals, 74.6% of the 2025 total. Thailand (19,231 against 7,204 in all of 2025), Indonesia, Australia, Poland, Japan, Singapore and the Netherlands had passed their full-year 2025 figures by the end of September. India, the UAE and Saudi Arabia are running below the overall pace; whether they catch up depends on October–December, which is not yet published.

The quarterly split (we derived it from cumulative totals) shows when each market travels. For South Korea and Germany, the second and third quarters supply 88–89% of the nine-month total, so summer is the main season. For the Philippines the first quarter was the strongest of the three.

What it means if you are planning a trip

Long-haul visitors are still a small group in Kazakhstan, even after fast growth. What foreign visitors actually spend, and on what, is analysed in our study of visitor spending in Kazakhstan. What foreigners search for online is a separate dataset, covered in what foreigners search for in Kazakhstan.

Methodology

1. We downloaded the BNS “Inbound visitors” workbook for 2024–2025 (sheets by purpose, length of stay, transport and checkpoint) and the January–September 2026 workbook by citizenship.
2. We merged the sheets by country and harmonised country names.
3. Growth is 2025 divided by 2024, minus one. Shares are each column divided by the country’s total crossings.
4. “Former USSR” means 14 countries: Russia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.
5. 2026 quarters were obtained by subtracting cumulative totals.

Our general approach to sources is described in the methodology.

What we don’t know

Sheet totals in the source differ slightly (15,740,539 by purpose, 15,740,099 by transport). We left them as published.

How to cite

Suggested credit: “charyn.kz calculation based on Bureau of National Statistics of Kazakhstan (Border Service) data, 2024–2026”. Example: “Arrivals in Kazakhstan from countries outside the former USSR rose 27.5% to 1.82 million in 2025 (charyn.kz, based on BNS data).”

The full table for every country, including growth, the “tourism” share, air share, length of stay and 2026 figures, is available as a CSV file under CC BY 4.0. More datasets are on our open data page.