Travel in Azerbaijan: a destination built for its neighbours

Where Azerbaijan's visitors come from

The State Statistical Committee counted 2,570,200 foreigners and stateless persons arriving in Azerbaijan in 2025, from 189 countries, 2.1% more than in 2024. Its breakdown by citizenship, read in order, names the country's neighbours before it reaches anywhere else. Russia supplied 23.9% of arrivals in 2025, Türkiye 17.7%, Iran 8.1% and Georgia 4.3%. Of the five states with a land border on Azerbaijan, Armenia alone is missing from the list.

The next names lie further east and south. Indian citizens made up 6.5% of arrivals in 2025, Saudi citizens 4.1%, Kazakh citizens 4.0% and Pakistani citizens 3.5%. Israel accounted for 2.7% that year, China 2.5%, Uzbekistan 2.4% and the United Arab Emirates 1.7%. Ukraine sent 1.4% and Turkmenistan 1.3%. The United Kingdom supplied 1.0%, the same share as Belarus and Kuwait, and every other country together made up 12.9%.

Counted as blocs, the Commonwealth of Independent States sent 865,700 visitors in 2025, 8.2% more than a year earlier, and the member states of the European Union sent 120,100, up 7.0%. On the committee's own totals that puts the CIS at about 33.7% of arrivals in 2025 and the EU at about 4.7%.

The same release splits arrivals by sex. Men made up 67.0% of foreign visitors in 2025 and women 33.0%. The release gives no purpose of visit beside that figure, so it cannot be divided between business trips, family visits and holidays from this source alone.

How the visitor count has moved since Soviet times

Azerbaijan was a known tourist destination in the 1980s. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the First Nagorno-Karabakh War in the 1990s damaged the trade and the country's image as a destination, in the account given by the Wikipedia article on Azerbaijan, and recovery began in the 2000s. More than 1.4 million tourists visited in 2008. In 2017 the count reached 2,691,998 foreign citizens.

The two most recent years do not reconcile. The Wikipedia survey of tourism in Azerbaijan, citing the State Statistical Committee, gives about 2.63 million foreign visitors for 2024, 25.9% more than in 2023, of whom roughly 1.86 million came for tourism. AZERTAC's report of the committee's 2025 release gives 2,570,200 arrivals for 2025 and calls that a rise of 2.1%, which would put 2024 near 2.52 million. Neither source explains a gap of about 110,000, and this article prints both. On either reading the totals for 2024 and 2025 sit a little below the 2017 count.

The commercial guide published by the United States International Trade Administration on 12 January 2026 adds a quarterly figure: overall tourism rose by 9% in the first quarter of 2025.

Travel out of the country runs along the same lines. Azerbaijani citizens made 2,109,900 trips abroad in 2025, 2.3% fewer than in 2024. Of those travellers 41.2% went to Türkiye, 14.5% to Russia, 10.7% to Georgia and 9.7% to Iran, and 23.9% went somewhere else. The four neighbours that send the most visitors in are the four that Azerbaijanis visit most in return.

How visitors reach Azerbaijan by air and land

Of the foreigners who arrived in 2025, 75.8% came by air, 22.9% by rail and road and 1.3% by sea. Azerbaijani citizens leaving the country in 2025 split 69.6% by air, 28.5% by rail and road and 1.9% by sea. The country's international airport lies south-east of Baku, and by 2010 Azerbaijan had 35 airports and one heliport in all.

The land borders run to 2,648 kilometres, in the figures of the Wikipedia article on the country: 1,007 with Armenia, 756 with Iran, 480 with Georgia, 390 with Russia and 15 with Turkey. Armenia, with 1,007 kilometres of that line, does not appear in the committee's arrival table at all. The 15 kilometres with Turkey belong to the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, which is separated from the rest of Azerbaijan by a strip of Armenian territory, and the exclave's climate and its separate institutions are covered in Azerbaijan: geography and Azerbaijan: politics.

Rail is the other way in from the west. The Baku to Tbilisi and Kars line, under construction in 2012, connects the Caspian region with Turkey through Georgia. The broad-gauge network ran to 2,918 kilometres in 2010, of which 1,278 kilometres were electrified. Inside the capital, the Baku Metro is known for the decoration of its stations.

The sea route arrives at a sheltered harbour. Britannica describes the Bay of Baku as sheltered by the islands of the Baku Archipelago, with the Absheron Peninsula protecting it from northerly winds. Traffic drives on the right, and Azerbaijani vehicles carry the international code AZ.

What Azerbaijan's entry rules ask of foreign visitors

Azerbaijan introduced its electronic visa in January 2017, for a single-entry visit of up to 30 days, and the Wikipedia survey of the country's tourism lists it as available to tourists from 93 countries. The United States commercial guide of January 2026 describes the same system under the name ASAN Visa, issuing electronic visas within three days, or within three hours for an expedited application, to eligible nationalities including United States citizens. Visas can also be obtained from an Azerbaijani embassy.

Citizens of the Commonwealth of Independent States need no visa for a visit of up to 90 days, with two exceptions: Turkmenistan and Armenia. That rule sits behind the bloc figures above. The CIS sent 865,700 visitors in 2025, more than seven times the EU total.

The second exception is wider than a visa rule. The Wikipedia survey of Azerbaijani tourism records that the government bars entry to citizens of Armenia and to citizens of any other country who are of Armenian descent, a ban it attributes to the state of war between the two countries. The history behind that is in Azerbaijan: history.

One more rule is aimed at shoppers. A tax-free shopping system was introduced in 2016, under which goods qualify for a tax refund if bought no more than 90 days before they leave the country.

Which seasons suit which parts of Azerbaijan

Nine of the eleven climate zones in the classification the Wikipedia article uses occur inside Azerbaijan. The Greater Caucasus shields the plains from the coldest northern air, which is why most of the foothills and lowlands have a subtropical climate.

Baku averages 4 °C in January and 25 °C in July. The dry subtropical centre and east of the country have a mild winter and a summer of four to five months, averaging about 27 °C, with maxima reaching 43 °C, in Britannica's description. The Absheron Peninsula around the capital receives 200 to 350 millimetres of rain a year.

The south-east is the wet corner. Britannica gives it 1,200 to 1,400 millimetres a year, most of it falling in the cold months, while the Wikipedia article on the country's geography puts the figure at Lankaran at 1,600 to 1,800 millimetres. The two sources give different ranges and this article prints both. Britannica adds that mild winters draw many birds to the Caspian coast.

Nakhchivan has a dry continental climate, with a cold winter and a dry, hot summer, at altitudes of 700 to 1,000 metres. Both of the country's temperature extremes were recorded there, in Julfa and Ordubad: −33 °C and 46 °C.

In the mountains the forest zone is moderately cold and the high ground above it is upland tundra. The two mountain resorts at Shahdag and Tufandag, built for skiing, sit at altitudes between 2,500 and 3,000 metres, and the Wikipedia survey of tourism describes mountain tourism as popular particularly in winter.

What Baku keeps inside its walled city

Baku had 2,300,500 people on 1 January 2021. The core of the city is the old town, Icheri-Shekher, whose walls were strengthened after the Russian conquest of 1806 and mostly survive. UNESCO inscribed the Walled City of Baku with the Shirvanshah's Palace and Maiden Tower on its World Heritage List in December 2000.

What stands inside the old walls

Britannica describes the old town as a maze of narrow alleys. Inside it stand the Palace of the Shirvanshahs, now a museum, whose oldest part dates from the 11th century, and the Synyk-Kala minaret and mosque of 1078 to 1079.

The Maiden Tower is where the sources part company. Britannica gives it as 27 metres high and dates it to the 12th century. The Wikipedia survey of tourism gives a total height of 29.7 metres, says the tower was built in two stages, and names Masud ibn Davud, a 12th-century architect, as its builder, while reporting a much older date for its lower 13.7 metres.

Newer buildings and events sit outside the walls. The white Heydar Aliyev Center was designed by Zaha Hadid. A Formula One circuit was built in 2012, the first Grand Prix was held in 2016, and the Azerbaijan Grand Prix has run since 2017.

What lies within a day of Baku

The Ateshgah fire temple stands at Surakhany on the Absheron Peninsula, 30 kilometres from Baku. Hindu, Sikh and Parsi traders from the Indian subcontinent built it in the 17th and 18th centuries around a shrine set on a pocket of natural gas. The present structure dates from about 1713, the central shrine was paid for by the merchant Kanchanagaran in 1810, and the complex became a museum in 1975. It has been on Azerbaijan's tentative list for World Heritage since 1998.

South-west of the capital, the Gobustan reserve was established in 1966. Its rock art landscape covers 537 hectares and holds more than 6,000 engravings, among them animals, dancers, boats with armed oarsmen and camel caravans, and UNESCO inscribed it in 2007. The same stretch of coast has mud volcanoes, and the Lok-Batan mud cone has been on the tentative list since 1998.

Where Azerbaijan's mountain villages and resorts lie

The ski resorts lie in the Greater Caucasus. Shahdag Mountain Resort lies about 32 kilometres from Qusar, and Tufandag about 4 kilometres from Gabala, with a cable car and a hotel. The village of Laza stands at the foot of Mount Shahdagh, which rises to 4,243 metres. A Mountain Sports Club founded in 1999 has run expeditions to the peak.

Lahij sits on the southern side of the same range at about 1,505 metres. Its copper craftsmanship is inscribed on UNESCO's intangible heritage lists, and the village is known for its forests, waterfalls and historic buildings.

Shaki lies 246 kilometres from Baku. The Palace of Shaki Khans, a summer residence of the Shaki Khanate, is dated to the 18th century, with its exterior tiled in dark blue, turquoise and ochre in geometric patterns and its tempera murals drawn from the poetry of Nizami Ganjavi. The Historic Centre of Sheki with the Khan's Palace was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2019.

The Cultural Landscape of Khinalig People and Köç Yolu Transhumance Route was inscribed in 2023. It joins the high village of Khinalig and its summer pastures to winter grazing in the central lowland by a seasonal route 200 kilometres long, along which the Khinalig people still move their herds, as the geography article describes.

Ganja and Nakhchivan appear on the same list of resort areas. The Wikipedia survey notes Nakhchivan's salt mines and mausoleums, and the mausoleum of Nakhichevan has been on the World Heritage tentative list since 1998.

Which national parks Azerbaijan has set aside

Gobustan aside, Azerbaijan has eight national parks. Shahdag National Park, created in 2006 in the north on the borders with Russia and Georgia, was financed in 2007 by a World Bank loan of 17 million dollars and a grant of 8 million, with a further 8 million dollars from the government of Japan. Göygöl National Park was created in 2008, and Zangezur National Park in Nakhchivan, formerly the Ordubad park, was renamed and expanded in 2009.

The lowland parks are wetland and semi-desert. Shirvan National Park holds a lake of about 40 square kilometres. Ag-Gel National Park, on the Mil plain of the Kura-Aras lowland, records more than 140 bird species, 89 of them nesting, including spoonbill, swan and bustard, and it is on the Ramsar list of wetlands of international importance. Absheron National Park grew out of a state nature preserve created in July 1969.

In the far south-east, Hirkan National Park covers part of the Lankaran lowland and the Talysh Mountains, and Altyaghach National Park is 90.5% broadleaf forest. The Hyrcanian Forests, inscribed by UNESCO in 2019 and extended in 2023, include components in the Lenkoran and Astara districts. UNESCO's description dates the forest's lineage to 25 to 50 million years ago and lists the Persian leopard among the mammals recorded in the region.

Hunting is permitted for species including the Dagestan goat, wild boar, partridge and chamois, and prohibited in protected areas, on the Caspian islands and in the Aghdam, Khanlar, Goranboy, Dashkasan, Gadabay and Ter Ter regions.

Who Azerbaijan's hotels were built for

Azerbaijan had 320 hotels in 2007, 452 in 2009 and 514 in 2012. The United States commercial guide of January 2026 describes the hospitality trade as dominated by a few large holding companies focused on luxury and business travel in Baku, and as oriented to business travellers and conference attendees. Event tourism fits the same pattern: the guide names the COP29 climate conference and the Formula One Grand Prix among the events Baku has hosted.

The guide's account of what comes next names the gaps. A tourism strategy for 2023 to 2026 prioritises quality, accessibility and environmental responsibility, and the country is working to add boutique hotels, eco-lodges, family resorts and two- and three-star hotels, and to send travellers to regions outside the capital. The guide also records that Azerbaijan is marketing itself to Central Asia, which matches the Kazakh and Uzbek shares in the arrival figures.

Older policy statements point the same way. In March 2018 the tourism department of the Ministry of Culture said it wanted to develop halal tourism, and the Wikipedia survey quotes an expectation of a large flow of visitors from the Arab countries, Iran, Russia and Kazakhstan and only a small one from Europe. The arrival table for 2025 bears that expectation out.

The same guide refers to the reintegration of what it calls the newly returned territories into the tourism system. The Susha historical and architectural reserve has been on Azerbaijan's World Heritage tentative list since 2001, and how the districts around it changed hands is set out in Azerbaijan: history.

In money, tourism services brought Azerbaijan about 2 billion dollars in foreign exchange in 2025, and the value added of tourism-related activities approached 7 billion manats that year, about 5.4% of the economy. The State Statistical Committee put gross domestic product for 2025 at 129.1 billion manats, and the oil economy around it is the subject of Azerbaijan: economy.