530,987 pilgrims: 2025 breaks the Camino's record

Updated on 28 September 2026. The route breakdown was corrected on 25 August 2026: we had the Camino Primitivo «tied» with the Camino del Norte at 4.05%, and the Pilgrim's Office panel gives 27,873 pilgrims to the Primitivo (5.25%) against 21,521 to the Norte (4.05%).

The Pilgrim's Office closed 2025 with 530,987 Compostelas issued, up 6% on 2024 and the highest figure since systematic records began — the full series, by year, by route and by month, is in how many pilgrims arrive in Santiago. It is not an isolated number: it confirms several years of sustained growth, and that growth has direct effects on what walking the Camino feels like today, above all on the final stretches.

How many pilgrims arrived in Santiago in 2025

530,987 — that is the closed annual figure, from the Pilgrim's Office press release of January 2026. The dashboard total read on 25 August 2026 is slightly lower, 530,844, because the Office keeps cleaning records for months after the year ends. If what you want is yesterday's arrivals rather than the year's, that number is live on the pilgrim statistics page, straight from the official dashboard: this piece is about the year, not the day.

Who walks to Santiago now

The profile has shifted noticeably. For the first time this clearly, the majority came from outside Spain: 228,527 pilgrims were Spanish, 43% of the total, which leaves 302,460 — 57% — arriving from abroad. That second number is our own subtraction: the press coverage says «more than 297,000 foreigners», right as a floor but it does not add up to the total. The balance between the sexes has flipped too: in 2025, 53.45% of those who completed the Camino were women, against 46.55% men. The stated motive is still mostly spiritual — 44% declare it strictly religious, and another large group mixes faith with cultural reasons — alongside those who walk for sporting or cultural reasons alone.

The Camino Francés still leads, but less and less alone

The Camino Francés is still by a distance the most walked route: 45.6% of 2025's pilgrims. But it no longer has the monopoly it held for decades. The Camino Portugués, adding its central variant (19.0%) and the coastal one (16.9%), is approaching more than a third of the total, and has gained ground steadily in recent years. The rest splits between the Inglés (5.7%), the Primitivo (5.25%), the Norte (4.05%), the Vía de la Plata (1.7%), the Invierno (0.5%) and Muxía-Fisterra (0.4%).

Route breakdown from the official Pilgrim's Office panel, consulted on 25 August 2026; percentages are calculated on that panel's total, 530,844. The 530,987 headline is the one from the January 2026 press release: the Office keeps cleaning records for months after the year closes, so the exact figure moves depending on the day you look. More context in our Camino figures.

The busiest month is not July: it is September

It is the most repeated belief about the Camino and the official panel does not support it. In 2025 the month with the most arrivals was September, with 81,546 Compostelas, ahead of May (78,657) and August (77,110); July came fifth, with 67,063, behind even June. What July does have is a one-day peak, the 25th, and the overlap with Spanish school holidays. The month-by-month split, and the two short waves where the crowding really concentrates — the first two weeks of May and the first two of September — are in when to walk the Camino. The practical consequence shows up on the final stretches of every route, above all between Sarria and Santiago on the Francés, where people walking only the minimum kilometres for a Compostela fill albergues and services.

A rule change that went almost unnoticed, and gets retold wrong

Alongside the rise in pilgrim numbers, 2025 brought a change to the rules for the Compostela: you no longer have to walk the Camino in one go, or from its starting point. It can be completed in phases, across separate trips, which helps anyone who cannot set aside consecutive weeks of holiday.

What did not change, and this is where almost everyone gets tangled, is the 100 km. The Pilgrim's Office still asks, word for word, for «100 km continuos en dirección a Santiago en un mismo camino» — 100 continuous kilometres towards Santiago on one single route — with the last stage completing those kilometres being «at least the one immediately before arriving at the Cathedral». And if you walk only the minimum, the stages have to be «ordered chronologically and geographically», stamped at the start and end of each one «so that it can be seen that the pilgrim resumed the Camino in the same place where they had left it». In practice: walking 89 km from Saint-Jean, taking a bus and then doing the last 20 km does not earn the Compostela, even though it adds up to more than a hundred. What does work is going back to the exact point you stopped at and walking on to the Cathedral.

With these numbers as the baseline, and 2027 looming as the next Holy Year, the upward trend shows no sign of stopping. If you are planning the Camino, factoring it into your dates and your bookings is the difference between enjoying the walk and spending it chasing a free bed.