A tourism boom nobody predicted
Colombia has quietly become one of the fastest growing travel destinations in the region. Between August 2022 and December 2025, the country welcomed 22 million non-resident visitors, an increase of 134% compared to the same period under the previous administration. Air travel expanded just as fast, with air connectivity expanding significantly during this period, as a total of 138.8 million passengers traveled to and within Colombia, representing a 74% increase.
The money followed the visitors. Inbound tourism spending reached USD 14.6 billion in 2025, compared with USD 13.5 billion the previous year, and separate industry figures put total tourism revenue at over USD 21.6 billion in 2025, surpassing traditional sectors such as coffee, coal, and hydrocarbons. The World Travel and Tourism Council expects that momentum to continue, forecasting 5.7% growth in the country’s tourism GDP in 2026, above the expected global average of 3.2% for the sector.
Bogotá becomes the new gateway
For decades, Cartagena and Medellín dominated Colombia’s tourism image. That changed in 2025. Bogotá became the most visited city in Colombia, surpassing traditional destinations such as Cartagena and Medellin, welcoming more than 14 million tourists throughout the year. Foreign arrivals to the capital alone climbed to 1,734,681 foreign visitors between January and November 2025, representing a 2.8% increase compared to the same period in 2024.
The visitor profile tells its own story. The United States leads with 2,460,838 visitors, equal to 24.11% of the total, supported by strong air connectivity and cultural ties. Venezuela ranks second, reflecting deep cross border family ties, while newer markets such as El Salvador and Puerto Rico have posted triple digit growth rates that officials are watching closely.
Medellín and the long road to reinvention
Medellín’s shift from a city once defined by cartel violence to a magnet for global travelers remains one of the more remarkable turnarounds in modern urban history. Local tourism authorities report the city surpassed 2 million tourists in 2025, strengthening its position as a global destination. Neighborhood preferences have shifted too, with Laureles becoming the preferred area with a 70.1% occupancy rate, overtaking El Poblado as the traditional benchmark.
The nature of that tourism has also changed. Roughly seven in ten visitors now arrive purely for leisure rather than business travel or conferences, a shift that is reshaping hotel investment and neighborhood development across the city. Medellín remains best known for leisure travel, while Bogotá still pulls ahead on raw visitor numbers thanks to its role as the country’s commercial hub.
An economy caught between growth and strain
Colombia’s economy is expanding again after a rough patch, though not without friction. The country’s growth rose to 1.7 percent in 2024 and 2.6 percent in 2025, following a sharp slowdown to less than one percent in 2023. Forecasts for 2026 sit around the same range, with the BBVA Research team projecting 2.6% growth in 2026 and 2.1% in 2027, driven by private consumption.
Behind those numbers, though, are real pressure points. Core inflation re-accelerated to 5.5% in early 2026, prompting the central bank to raise its policy rate to 11.25%, while the fiscal picture has darkened after the government suspended its fiscal rule, pushing the deficit to roughly six percent of GDP and public debt above sixty percent. Investment remains the weak link in an otherwise steady recovery, held back by high borrowing costs and uncertainty tied to the election cycle.
The vote that will decide Colombia’s next chapter
President Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first leftist head of state, is constitutionally barred from seeking a second term, setting up one of the most closely watched elections in years. In the first round held on May 31, right wing political outsider Abelardo de la Espriella exceeded expectations, garnering 44% of the vote to finish ahead of left wing senator Iván Cepeda of the ruling Historic Pact with 41%. Election day itself passed calmly, as international observers deemed the process orderly and transparent, contradicting President Petro’s claims of fraud. Congressional results from earlier in the year already hinted at a divided legislature no matter who wins. Petro’s Historic Pact captured the most Senate and House seats, while the Democratic Center garnered the second largest number in both chambers. With a runoff held on June 21 between de la Espriella and Cepeda, whoever takes office on August 7 will need to build coalitions across a fractured Congress just to govern.
Old conflicts return to
Petro came into office promising a policy of total peace with the country’s remaining armed groups. That effort has largely stalled. Human Rights Watch documented that in January, the ELN started a campaign to regain control of much of the Catatumbo region, and the violence forced over 64,000 people to flee their homes, one of the largest mass displacements in Colombia in decades.
The toll on civilians, especially children, has been severe. The Ombudsperson’s Office reported 625 cases of child recruitment by armed groups in 2024, an 81 percent increase compared to the 342 cases documented in 2023. The June 2025 killing of a sitting senator running for president added another layer of concern, with analysts warning that the assassination raised fears of political violence at a national level ahead of the 2026 general elections.
Coffee country rides a record wave
Colombia just lived through one of its best coffee years in a generation, though the story is turning. Production for the 2024/2025 cycle hit some 14.87 million 60 kilogram bags, a rise of 17% over the prior cycle, the country’s most productive stretch in more than three decades. Prices climbed alongside output, with farmgate prices reaching a record 3.12 million Colombian pesos, about US$756, per 125 kilogram bag in February 2025, roughly 70% higher than in January 2024. That surge is now cooling. USDA analysts project the 2025/2026 harvest at 13.8 million bags green bean equivalent, 10 percent higher than the previous year’s revised figure, attributed to favorable climate conditions and ongoing coffee tree renewal, though heavy rain has since dented flowering. American trade policy adds another wrinkle, since the 10% baseline U.S. tariff introduced in April 2025 briefly raised the cost of Colombian coffee, although a 50% tariff on Brazilian goods provided Colombia with a competitive advantage for U.S. sales.
A biodiversity superpower hiding in plain sight
Set aside the politics and the price charts for a moment, and Colombia’s natural wealth is genuinely staggering. The country ranks as the second most biodiverse country in the world, just behind Brazil, hosting an incredible 10% of all species on Earth. Its landscapes range from Caribbean coastline to Andean cloud forest to Amazon rainforest, often within a single day’s drive.
Birdwatchers in particular have taken notice. Colombia is the top country for bird diversity and ranks high for plants, fish, amphibians, reptiles and mammals, a fact that tourism officials have leaned into heavily as part of their push to diversify beyond beaches and colonial architecture. Nature tourism, birdwatching circuits, and gastronomic routes now sit alongside historic centers as core selling points for the country’s international campaigns.
Washington and Bogotá under strain
Colombia’s relationship with the United States, long one of the closest security partnerships in the hemisphere, has grown noticeably tense. Congressional researchers note that U.S. Colombian relations have been strained under the second Trump Administration, with drug policy changes, foreign assistance cuts and tariffs, and Colombia’s decision to sign a cooperation plan with China on the Belt and Road Initiative contributing to tensions. Matters escalated further in the fall of 2025, when President Trump determined that Colombia had failed to meet its counternarcotics commitments, the State Department revoked Petro’s visa, and the Treasury Department sanctioned Petro under counternarcotics authorities. That friction has real consequences beyond diplomacy. Congress has already reduced foreign assistance to Colombia and placed additional conditions on that assistance, a shift that will shape whatever security cooperation the next Colombian government tries to negotiate with Washington.
Life along the Venezuelan border
Colombia’s border with Venezuela remains one of the most consequential and least understood parts of the country’s story. Millions of Venezuelans have settled in Colombia over the past decade, and that population is now woven into everyday economic life, including coffee harvests, where seasonal labor shortages have drawn migrants back into the fields. Trade researchers note that the arrival of thousands of Venezuelans returning from the US as deportation threats grew has meant Venezuelans have resumed picking coffee as they did a few years ago. The border region is also where Colombia’s security problems are most acute. Armed groups have used the porous frontier to their advantage for years, and in departments like Norte de Santander and Cesar, the ELN displaced the Popular Liberation Army and became one of the most powerful armed actors in the area. Venezuela itself remains a major source market for Colombian tourism as well, with cross border family visits accounting for a significant share of arrivals in cities like Bogotá.
What comes next for Colombia
Colombia’s next president takes office on August 7, inheriting a legislature split roughly between the outgoing Historic Pact coalition and center right parties led by the Democratic Center. Whoever wins the runoff will face an economy growing modestly but weighed down by a wide fiscal deficit, a coffee sector adjusting to a smaller harvest after a historic peak, and an unresolved conflict with the ELN in Catatumbo that has already displaced tens of thousands of people this year. Tourism officials are meanwhile pressing ahead with plans tied to the country’s 2022 to 2026 sector strategy, while coffee exporters are preparing for the European Union’s deforestation regulation, now set to take effect in December 2026. Each of these threads, the vote, the economy, the conflict, the harvest, will keep shaping Colombia long after this election cycle fades from .