Macau recorded 146,124 visitor arrivals on this year’s Chong Yeong Festival on Sunday, according to immigration statistics released by the Public Security Police Force (PSP) yesterday.
The Chong Yeong Festival, also known as the Double Ninth Festival, is a public holiday in Macau. Civil servants and bank employees were also on holiday yesterday as this year’s Chong Yeong Festival fell on a Sunday.
On this holiday, residents visit the graves of their ancestors to pay their respects.
The festival each day falls on the ninth day of the ninth month of the Chinese lunar calendar.
Last year, the Chong Yeong Festival fell on October 29, when Macau recorded 111,518 visitor arrivals, according to PSP immigration statistics at that time.
Consequently, this year’s Chong Yeong Festival visitor arrivals represented an increase of 31.0 percent from the Double Ninth Festival last year.
The Chong Yeong Festival is not a public holiday in the Chinese mainland. In Hong Kong, yesterday was a public holiday for the general public, not just, as in Macau, for civil servants and bank employees.
According to yesterday’s PSP immigration statistics, 54,602 visitors, or 37.4 percent of the total, entered Macau via the Barrier Gate checkpoint on the Chong Yeong Festival, followed by 41,001 via the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge’s (HZMB) Macau checkpoint and 26,129 via the Hengqin checkpoint, while 8,782 visitors entered Macau via the airport – only 6.0 percent of the total.
Macau recorded 40.069 million visitor arrivals in 2025, the highest annual number on record.
Macau’s previous record of visitor arrivals of 39.406 million was achieved in pre-pandemic 2019.
According to the latest available statistics, Macau recorded 4.478 million visitor arrivals in August, setting a new monthly record. The previous record stood at 4.219 million in August last year.
Residents and visitors alike walk in Largo do Senado, the city’s main square, yesterday. – Photo: Tony Wong
