Passenger traffic remains at a high level with 10.1 million passengers despite difficult conditions.
Cologne/Bonn maintains its role as a central logistics location.
Another double-digit million landing: in 2025, more than 10 million travellers used Cologne Bonn Airport. After the airport slightly exceeded this mark in 2024, the number of passengers rose to a total of 10.1 million in 2025. This once again underlined Cologne/Bonn's importance as a central transport hub for the region. Travel to tourist destinations in holiday regions and to family and friends abroad was particularly popular.
‘People enjoy travelling, and the desire for mobility, holidays and personal encounters is firmly anchored in their everyday lives,’ says Thilo Schmid, Chairman of the Management Board of Flughafen Köln/Bonn GmbH. ‘The fact that we were able to welcome more than 10 million passengers again in 2025, exceeding the 2024 figure, is a success – for our airport and our airline partners.’
After 9.8 million passengers in 2023 and 10.0 million travellers in 2024, the positive trend in passenger development continued last year. Among the most popular travel destinations from Cologne/Bonn were Turkey and Spain. Destinations such as Antalya, Palma de Mallorca, Istanbul and London were in particularly high demand. The holiday segment continued to grow thanks to the expansion of European and non-European holiday destinations.
At the same time, it became apparent that the high government location costs in Germany were slowing down an even more positive development. ‘These costs have led airlines to not fully implement their planned programmes and to deploy aircraft to more competitive locations in Europe,’ said Schmid. Added to this is the continuing decline in domestic German traffic, which fell significantly again in 2025 and further limited traffic growth. Compared to the pre-coronavirus year of 2019, there was therefore still a shortfall of more than 2 million travellers.
Very high level in the cargo business consolidated once again
In the cargo business, the airport was able to maintain its outstanding position as one of the most important air cargo hubs in Germany and Europe in 2025. As in 2024, a total of 840,000 tonnes of cargo were handled. Despite a weakening global economy and ongoing geopolitical wars and conflicts, freight volumes thus remained stable at a very high level. ‘As a central logistics location, we are a reliable partner for business and industry,’ says airport CEO Schmid. ‘The results in the freight sector also show that we are highly efficient even under challenging conditions.’
The airport expects to exceed the 10 million mark in passenger traffic again in 2026 and to further increase the number of travellers. In the cargo business, the very high level is expected to be confirmed and consolidated in the current year.
