Indian Outbound Travel 2026: How Many Go, Where, and What They Spend

Ask how many Indians travel abroad and you will get a number between 14 million and 33 million, depending on who you ask and what they are counting. Ask what they spend and the answer runs from US$16 billion to US$35 billion. Every one of those figures is published by a government or an international agency, and none of them is wrong. This report sets out what the official data actually says about Indian outbound travel in 2026 — how many trips, to where, by whom, when, and at what cost — and says plainly which number answers which question.

1. How many Indians travel abroad: three different counts

The headline figure comes from the Bureau of Immigration, which records every Indian national who leaves the country, and is published by the Ministry of Tourism. For 2025 its provisional count is 3,27,05,326 departures — 32.7 million — up 5.89 per cent from 3,08,85,048 in 2024.^[2] The ministry’s data portal now shows a revised 32.83 million, up 6.3 per cent.^[3]

Three things about that number matter. It counts departures, not people, so a frequent flyer is counted every time. It counts Indian nationals, not Indian residents, so an Indian who lives in Dubai and flies back after a family visit is in it. And it counts every purpose. In 2025, 34.1 per cent of departures were classified as “Indian diaspora” travel and 43.5 per cent as leisure.^[2] Applied to the total, leisure is roughly 14.2 million trips — this report’s multiplication, not a ministry figure.

A third count comes from the destination side. VisitBritain’s market profile puts Indian outbound visits at 20.3 million in 2025.^[13] That is close to what you get by stripping the diaspora share out of the Bureau of Immigration total (about 21.6 million, derived), which is the most plausible reason the two differ. The honest answer to “how many Indians travel abroad” is therefore: about 33 million departures by Indian nationals, of which around two thirds are trips by people who live in India, and a little over two fifths are holidays.

2. Thirty years of growth, and the 2026 shock

Departures rose from 1.94 million in 1991 to 26.92 million in 2019, a compound rate of 8.74 per cent a year over the whole 1991-2024 span.^[1] The pandemic cut 2020 to 7.29 million, a fall of 72.9 per cent; 2022 rebounded 152.62 per cent, and 2023, at 27.88 million, passed the 2019 level.^[1] The 2025 total is 21.5 per cent above 2019.^[2]

2026 has not followed the line. January was strong — 29.33 lakh departures, up 9.06 per cent — with Thailand up and the United States already down on the month (2.17 lakh against 1.69 lakh, and 1.62 lakh against 2.11 lakh, on the ministry’s January chart).^[4] Then the West Asia conflict closed airspace over the Gulf, and provisional ministry data show April departures of 22.34 lakh, down 22.5 per cent year on year.^[5] In May the Prime Minister asked Indians to hold weddings and holidays at home to conserve foreign exchange.^[21]

The money data show the dip and then a recovery. Travel remittances under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme were US$1,282.63 million in May 2026, 7.6 per cent below May 2025.^[22] By June they were US$1,366.81 million against US$1,235.17 million a year earlier — up about 10.7 per cent (derived, this report’s arithmetic on the RBI table).^[6] Mint reported that Thailand had already recorded 1.19 million Indian arrivals in 2026 at the time of writing.^[20]

3. Where they go

The United Arab Emirates dominates. In 2024 it received 77,87,496 Indian departures, 25.21 per cent of the total, up from 6.39 million in 2019; its share was 26.3 per cent in 2025.^[1][2] Saudi Arabia is a steady second at 10-11 per cent, followed by the United States (2.14 million), Thailand (1.91 million) and Singapore (1.53 million). The top ten took 71.16 per cent of all departures and the top fifteen 80.59 per cent.^[1]

By region, the Middle East took 14.68 million departures, 47.53 per cent. Asia and the Pacific took 8.38 million, with South-East Asia up 25.35 per cent in a year to 5.24 million. Europe reached 3.88 million, 37.89 per cent above 2019, and the Americas took 10.29 per cent.^[1]

Destination statistics do not always agree with India’s own. Japan counted 233,061 Indian visitors in 2024 against 1,81,029 Bureau of Immigration departures to Japan; Vietnam counted 501,427 against 3,98,673. ^[17][19][1] The departure count records one declared destination per trip, so multi-country itineraries, and Indians travelling from third countries, show up in the destination figures and not in India’s. Sri Lanka runs the other way — 416,974 Indian arrivals in its 2024 count against 4,30,492 departures.^[14][1] Neither side is the “true” number; they are counting at different borders.

4. The new destinations

The growth is outside the traditional list. Measured against 2019, departures to Vietnam rose 324.48 per cent, Georgia 320.24 per cent, Azerbaijan 283.32 per cent and Kazakhstan 210.13 per cent.^[1] These are short-haul, visa-easy, leisure-heavy destinations: 94.58 per cent of departures to Azerbaijan and 91.60 per cent to Vietnam were for leisure.^[1] Japan grew 37.44 per cent in 2024 on India’s count and reached a record 315,100 Indian visitors in 2025 on its own, 35.2 per cent up.^[1][17]

Among the established holiday markets, Thailand’s own count put Indian arrivals up 16.82 per cent to 2.49 million in 2025, making India its third-largest market.^[18] Sri Lanka received 531,511 Indians, up 27.47 per cent and its largest market by a wide margin.^[14] Singapore recorded 1.2 million, one of its top five.^[15][16] The Maldives went the other way: departures fell 28.10 per cent in 2024.^[1]

5. Why they go: the diaspora is a third of the count

Leisure is the largest single purpose, at 42.52 per cent of 2024 departures and 43.5 per cent of 2025. Diaspora travel is 34.69 and 34.1 per cent, business 14.92 and 14.6 per cent, pilgrimage 3.99 and 3.7 per cent, and education 2.45 per cent in 2024.^[1][2]

The mix varies enormously by destination, which is why the headline ranking misleads anyone who wants to know where Indians go on holiday. The UAE is 52.74 per cent diaspora and 37.28 per cent leisure. Saudi Arabia’s traffic is 34.73 per cent pilgrimage. Thailand is 92.93 per cent leisure, Indonesia 91.46 per cent, Switzerland 76.78 per cent, the Maldives 60.62 per cent. The United Kingdom, by contrast, is 46.04 per cent diaspora.^[1] On a leisure-only basis, Thailand is India’s biggest holiday destination.

6. Who travels: age, gender and cities

Outbound travel is concentrated in working age. In 2024 the 25-34 band made up 27.46 per cent of departures and 35-44 another 24.57 per cent; 15-24 was 10.85 per cent, children under 15 were 8.31 per cent and those over 65 were 5.17 per cent.^[1] In 2025 the 25-44 band was 52.3 per cent.^[2] The age profile shifts by route: one third of Indian visitors to Britain in 2024 were 55 or older.^[13]

Women made up 34.15 per cent of departures in 2024. That average hides very different routes: women were 48.22 per cent of departures to Oceania, 45.80 per cent to North America and 46.58 per cent to Northern Europe, but only 26.02 per cent to Africa, and departures to the Middle East were 69.69 per cent male.^[1] Leisure routes to the West are close to gender-balanced; work and diaspora routes to the Gulf are not.

There is no official count of departures by home city, but the port of exit is a proxy. Delhi handled 7.40 million departures in 2024 (23.97 per cent), Mumbai 6.23 million (20.16 per cent) and Kochi 2.31 million (7.48 per cent); the top ten airports handled 86.70 per cent.^[1] Gulf traffic is the most dispersed: Kochi (10.99 per cent), Kozhikode (10.09 per cent) and Thiruvananthapuram (6.01 per cent) together handled more departures to the Middle East than Mumbai (19.38 per cent).^[1] Destination surveys are more direct: 25 per cent of Indian visitors to Britain live in Mumbai and 23 per cent in the Delhi National Capital Region.^[13]

7. When they travel

Outbound demand is flatter across the year than the holiday calendar suggests. May is the peak month — 9.53 per cent of 2024 departures and again the highest in 2025 — followed by August, September and December. February is the lowest at 7.51 per cent. By quarter, April-June took 25.86 per cent in 2024 and no quarter fell below 23 per cent.^[1][2]

Each destination has its own season. The United States and Singapore peak in May, with the school holidays; the United Kingdom peaks in September at 12.28 per cent of its annual Indian traffic; Thailand peaks in December at 10.18 per cent; the UAE and Saudi Arabia peak in August and are leanest in June; Canada peaks in April and Australia in February.^[1] Average stays differ just as widely: 21.51 days for South-East Asia against 62.48 days for the Middle East, where diaspora and work trips dominate.^[1] The overall 2024 average was 50.71 days; the data portal shows 39.7 days for 2025.^[1][3]

8. What India spends abroad

There are two official measures of spend, and they differ by a factor of two.

The broad one is UN Tourism’s international tourism expenditure, a balance-of-payments measure of what residents spend on travel abroad. It puts India at US$35.0 billion in 2024, up from US$22.9 billion in 2019 and US$33.3 billion in 2023, and ranks India tenth in the world — up from fourteenth in 2019. For scale, China spent US$250.6 billion and the United States US$177.8 billion.^[12]

The narrow one is the Reserve Bank’s record of money resident individuals send abroad for travel under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme. It was US$16.44 billion in 2025-26, 56.7 per cent (derived) of all LRS outflows of US$28.98 billion.^[6] That is down 3.1 per cent (derived) from US$16.96 billion in 2024-25 and below the 2023-24 peak of US$17.01 billion — itself up about 24.5 per cent (derived) on 2022-23’s US$13.66 billion. ^[7][8][9] Before the pandemic, in 2019-20, the travel line was US$6.95 billion.^[11] The shares and changes are this report’s arithmetic on the RBI tables.

The LRS travel line is not all holiday money. The RBI’s tables now split it, starting with March 2026: of US$1,094.60 million in travel remittances that month, US$623.05 million was “other travel”, which covers holiday trips and settlement of international card transactions, and US$450.16 million was travel for education, including fees and hostel costs.^[7] On that single month, about 57 per cent of the travel line was holiday and card spending and 41 per cent education (derived). Travel was already more than 58 per cent of LRS outflows in 2025-26 up to February.^[23]

One projection circulates widely: Bernstein’s 2024 estimate that Indian outbound travel spend will reach US$89 billion by 2027, as reported by Condé Nast Traveller India.^[28] It is a broker’s projection on an undisclosed definition, and it is several times any official series; treat it as a view of the market’s ambition, not a measurement.

9. Spend per trip, seen from the destination

No Indian source publishes spend per trip. Dividing UN Tourism’s US$35.0 billion by 30.89 million departures gives roughly US$1,130 per departure in 2024, but that average mixes students paying fees, business travellers, diaspora visits and holidays, and should be read as a ceiling on a blended average rather than what a holidaymaker spends.^[12][1]

Destination data are sharper. Indian visitors to Britain spent a record £806.4 million across 603,000 visits in 2024, or £1,338 per visit, and business visitors contributed 36 per cent of that spend.^[13] Singapore recorded S$1.17 billion in receipts from Indian visitors in the first nine months of 2025, up 5 per cent.^[16] Sri Lanka, at the short-haul end, records Indian stays of 4.3 to 5.5 days depending on the month, the shortest of any major market — quick breaks rather than long holidays.^[14]

Visa demand is a leading indicator of long-haul spend. Consulates in India received 1.15 million Schengen visa applications in 2025, the third-highest of any country after China and Turkey.^[24]

10. Honeymoons, weddings and shopping

Occasion travel is where outbound spend meets the wedding economy. WedMeGood’s 2025-26 survey found that 38 per cent of couples take a pre-wedding trip and that honeymoon spend averages ₹3.41 lakh, with 6.90 per cent spending more than ₹10 lakh.^[25] The same survey found that 89 per cent of destination weddings are held within India — so overseas weddings, for all their visibility, are a small minority.^[25] There is no official count of Indian weddings held abroad; the Prime Minister’s May 2026 appeal named them specifically, but did not quantify them.^[21]

Shopping is a stated motive, though no official series isolates it. American Express’s 2025 survey found 81 per cent of Indian travellers prioritise buying high-quality local goods on a trip, 92 per cent look for one-of-a-kind goods, and 50 per cent were planning an international trip specifically to buy a luxury or investment piece.^[26] An earlier YouGov profile found 32 per cent of Indian “shopping tourists” spent more than ₹40,000 per person on their latest trip, and that the Maldives and Dubai (44 per cent each), Singapore (39 per cent), Switzerland (35 per cent) and Bali (34 per cent) topped their consideration lists.^[27]

What none of these sources measures is spend on clothing for a trip — before departure or at the destination. Survey intentions are not spending, and this report does not convert them into a rupee figure.

11. Where this data is weakest

Departures are not tourists. The Bureau of Immigration count includes Indians who live abroad returning home and counts every trip separately. Use the leisure share when the question is holidays.^[1][2]

2025 figures are provisional. The annual snapshot’s 32.71 million and the portal’s 32.83 million differ because the second is a later revision; 2026 monthly figures are provisional too.^[2][3][5]

The two spend measures are not interchangeable. LRS travel covers remittances by resident individuals through banks, includes education travel, and runs on the April-March financial year. UN Tourism’s expenditure is a calendar-year balance-of-payments measure. Per-trip figures in this report divide calendar-year spend by calendar-year departures and are labelled derived.^[6][12]

Destination and origin counts disagree for structural reasons — multi-country trips, third-country departures and differing definitions of a visitor — and the gap is not constant across countries.^{[1][17][19][14]}

Shopping and clothing spend is unmeasured. Survey intentions are reported as such. No figure here converts them into money.^[26][27]

12. Frequently Asked Questions

Related research: Destination Weddings in India 2026 · Resort Wear Market in India 2026 · NRI Indian Fashion Shopping 2026