Dublin Airport saw record passengers last year, with 36.4 million people travelling through both airport terminals in 2025.
It’s a 5.1 per cent increase on the number of people who passed through the airport in 2024. The figure means that since 2015, the number of travellers passing through Dublin Airport has increased by 46%.
December alone saw the airport welcome 2.7 million passengers, an increase of 13% on the previous year. DAA had said in early December that it predicted a record 1.8 million passengers to travel through the airport for Christmas, saying it was expecting its busiest one to date.
2025’s most travelled to locations were London Heathrow, Amsterdam, Manchester, London Stansted and London Gatwick.
Managing Director of Dublin Airport Gary McLean said today that last year was the “busiest year in our 85-year history”.
“Go back ten years and Dublin Airport had never handled more than 100,000 passengers in a single day. Fast forward to 2025 and 3 out of every 5 days saw 100,000+ passengers moving through our terminals,” Mr McLean said.
He added that 97 per cent of passengers passed through security in less than 20 minutes, aided by the roll-out of new security scanning technology across both terminal one and terminal two.
The number of people passing through the airport exceeds Dublin Airport’s planning cap of 32 million passengers annually, introduced in 2007 in a bid to manage noise and traffic. Dublin Airport wants the cap to be removed, and says that growing the airport to 40 million passengers a year is in line with national aviation policy, the National Planning Framework, the Fingal Development Plan and the Dublin Airport Local Area Plan.
It claims the current cap is impacting upon Ireland’s “economy, tourism, jobs and connectivity with the world.”
It was reported earlier this month that proposals by Minister for Transport Darragh O’Brien to scrap completely the passenger cap at Dublin Airport have “met strong resistance from senior civil servants.”
According to Managing Director Mr McLean, transatlantic activity was strong in 2025 with the numbers processed by the US pre-clearance facility in Terminal 2 surpassing two million in a 12-month period for the first time. He says the facility “has room to accommodate higher numbers of passengers in the years ahead”.
“It is essential that we soon start building new gates, stands and other infrastructure to set us up to meet the demand that’s coming over the coming decades,” he told RTE.