Nearly half a million pilgrims visited Santiago de Compostela in 2024, marking a new record for the popular pilgrimage site in northwestern Spain.
The local pilgrims’ office, which is run by Santiago de Compostela Cathedral, announced that it recorded 499,239 pilgrims in 2024, up from 446,035 pilgrims the previous year.
Last year’s numbers had also marked a record-high year for pilgrims at the famous pilgrimage site, which continues to enjoy a resurgence following the COVID pandemic, which saw only 54,143 pilgrims registered in 2020.
Pilgrims to the site travel mainly on foot along ancient routes known as the Camino de Santiago, or Way of St. James. The routes converge on Santiago de Compostela Cathedral, the traditional burial place of St. James the Great, one of Jesus’ Twelve Apostles.
Along the routes, pilgrims collect stamps on a document known as the Credencial del Peregrino, or pilgrim passport. When they arrive in Santiago de Compostela, they visit the pilgrims’ reception office, where they present the document and receive a “Compostela,” or certificate confirming that they have completed the pilgrimage.
Pilgrims flocked to Santiago de Compostela from all over the world last year, but Spain accounted for by far the largest share, with 208,378 visitors, or 44% of total pilgrims.
The United States saw the next largest contingent of pilgrims, with 38,052, or 8% of the total. The U.S. was followed by Italy, Germany, Portugal, the U.K., and France.
The vast majority of visitors - 425,043 – travelled on foot, according to the pilgrims’ office. Another 20,776 made the voyage by bicycle. Smaller numbers of pilgrims chose more unusual means of travel: 591 people came on horseback and 272 on boat.
The number of Camino pilgrims has risen steadily over the past three decades, with spikes in years that are designated as Jacobean Holy Years, which occur when the July 25 feast of St. James falls on a Sunday. The last Compostela Holy Year was in 2021–2022 (extended due to the pandemic) and the next will be in 2027.
In the 1990s, the Camino attracted tens of thousands of pilgrims per year, but it began to draw more than 100,000 people regularly after 2006. It passed the 200,000 mark in 2013 and 300,000 in 2017.
The Way of St. James is the not the only pilgrimage site to attract large numbers of visitors as international travel picks up following the COVID pandemic.
The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes in southwestern France, the Shrine of Fátima in Portugal, and the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City have also seen strong pilgrim numbers in recent years.
National Geographic magazine predicted in 2021 that pilgrimages could be “the next post-COVID travel trend.”
