The Turkish government announced on December 31, 2025 a visa exemption scheme for ordinary Chinese visa holders from January 2, 2026.
The policy allows Chinese nationals to enter Türkiye for tourism or transit, allowing a visa-free stay in Türkiye of up to 90 days within each 180-day period.
The move is expected to provide a great boost to the country’s tourism industry, which accounts for about 12 percent of Turkish GDP.
Chinese media cited data from Qunar, a leading Chinese tourism booking platform, as saying that by 10 am on January 1, searches related to Turkish tourism had increased 1.3 times compared to the previous week, and searches for Izmir, Türkiye’s third-largest city, had doubled. Experts predict that the number of Chinese tourists will continue to rise as the country’s most important festival, the Chinese New Year, is approaching.
Türkiye received about 410,000 Chinese tourists in 2024, 65.1 percent more than in 2023, although there is still much room for growth as Türkiye welcomes some 60 million foreign tourists annually, according to Türkiye’s official data.
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