The 20 busiest airports in Latin America and the Caribbean handled 440.4 million passengers in 2025, as São Paulo/Guarulhos overtook Bogotá and Mexico City to become the region’s largest passenger airport.
According to consolidated results released by Airports Council International Latin America and the Caribbean, the top 20 recorded 5% passenger growth, 1.8% growth in air cargo and 3% growth in aircraft movements. Together, they accounted for 55.4% of regional passenger traffic, 76.6% of air cargo and 40.5% of aircraft movements.
The results reveal more than a change at the top of the passenger ranking. They point to an increasingly divided form of airport leadership, in which passenger scale, operational intensity and logistics strength are no longer concentrated at a single hub.
GRU moves ahead as regional traffic outpaces global growth
São Paulo/Guarulhos International Airport handled 47.1 million passengers in 2025, an increase of 8.3% over the previous year. After moving up two positions, GRU finished ahead of Bogotá’s El Dorado International Airport, with 45.4 million passengers, and Mexico City’s Benito Juárez International Airport, with 44.6 million. Both Bogotá and Mexico City recorded slight declines.
The top 20’s collective growth also exceeded the global pace. ACI World reported that worldwide passenger traffic reached 9.8 billion in 2025, up 3.7%, compared with the 5% increase recorded by the region’s leading airports. The comparison involves different statistical scopes—the regional top 20 versus the entire global airport system—but it nevertheless shows that the largest Latin American and Caribbean platforms expanded faster than the overall market.
The final figures also confirm the stronger-than-expected performance already visible during the year. In November 2025, ACI-LAC reported that regional passenger traffic had grown 5.43% between January and September, above its initial full-year forecast of 4.1%. Argentina, Brazil, Panama and Peru were among the strongest national performers during that period.
Brazil and Mexico remain central to this growth landscape. Six of the 20 largest passenger airports are located in Brazil and five in Mexico, meaning the two countries host more than half of the region’s leading platforms. Their importance is supported not only by major international gateways but also by large domestic aviation markets and multi-airport systems. ACI-LAC does not provide aggregate country totals in its release, however, so the respective weight of the two markets cannot be directly compared from the ranking alone.
Regional leadership is now divided between São Paulo and Bogotá
A year earlier, Bogotá-El Dorado occupied the leading regional position across all three principal categories. In 2024, the airport handled more than 45 million passengers, 809,021 tonnes of cargo and 360,044 aircraft movements.
The 2025 results have changed that picture. São Paulo now leads passenger traffic, but Bogotá remains the region’s largest airport for both air cargo and aircraft movements.
El Dorado processed 828,600 tonnes of cargo, well ahead of São Paulo/Guarulhos at 529,600 tonnes. It also recorded 362,400 aircraft movements, compared with 313,400 at Mexico City, the second-busiest airport for operations.
Compared with its published 2024 results, Bogotá’s cargo volume rose by approximately 2.4%, while aircraft movements increased by less than 1%. These are relatively modest gains, but they were sufficient to preserve its leadership in two strategically important activities.
This distinction matters for airport operators and investors. Passenger volume measures market scale, but movements reveal operational intensity, while cargo reflects an airport’s role in supply chains, high-value trade and time-sensitive logistics. By those measures, Bogotá remains arguably the region’s most diversified major hub, even after losing the passenger crown.
The fastest growth is occurring outside the top three
The ranking also highlights a second group of airports whose growth rates are considerably higher than the regional average.
Rio de Janeiro/Galeão recorded the largest passenger increase among the top 20, rising 23.6%. Buenos Aires/Jorge Newbery followed with 19.3%, ahead of Monterrey at 15.6% and Brasília at 11.9%.
Monterrey and Jorge Newbery also stood out for aircraft movements, which increased by 18% and 15.2%, respectively. This simultaneous expansion in passengers and operations suggests that their growth was supported by additional flight activity rather than solely by higher load factors or changes in aircraft size, although the ACI-LAC release does not provide enough detail to identify the precise drivers.
For airlines and airport operators, these figures help separate established scale from emerging momentum. GRU, BOG and MEX remain the largest platforms, but airports such as GIG, AEP, MTY and BSB may provide a clearer indication of where network development, terminal utilisation and commercial opportunities are accelerating.
Cargo remains concentrated around a limited number of gateways
The most significant structural insight comes from the difference between the three market shares reported by ACI-LAC.
The top 20 airports accounted for just over half of regional passengers and 40.5% of aircraft movements, but they handled more than three-quarters of all air cargo. The cargo market is therefore considerably more concentrated around a small number of logistics gateways than passenger traffic or flight operations.
This concentration is also high when placed in a global context. ACI World reported that the world’s 20 largest cargo airports handled nearly 41% of global volumes in 2025, compared with 76.6% for the leading 20 in Latin America and the Caribbean. The two rankings cover different geographical markets and airport networks, but the gap points to the region’s particularly strong reliance on a limited group of cargo hubs.
That reliance creates scale efficiencies for airlines, freight forwarders and handlers, but it also raises questions around capacity, route diversification and operational resilience. Lima/Jorge Chávez and Recife, where cargo increased by 16.7% and 16.4%, may therefore be important platforms to watch as the region looks beyond its dominant gateways.
For Caribbean airports, the results underline the difficulty of competing with continental hubs on volume alone. ACI-LAC’s summary does not identify any Caribbean platform among its highlighted airports, although the absence of the full ranking prevents broader conclusions. Their strongest opportunities are more likely to lie in specialised roles—tourism connectivity, regional transfers, express freight, perishables and reliable links to larger hubs—rather than in replicating the scale of São Paulo, Bogotá or Mexico City.
The next challenge will be converting growth into sustainable capacity. ACI World forecasts global passenger traffic of 10.2 billion in 2026 and 18.8 billion by 2045, while warning that infrastructure limitations, aircraft delivery constraints and operational complexity could create bottlenecks.
The 2025 results show that Latin America and the Caribbean have entered this next growth cycle with several strong hubs rather than a single dominant airport. São Paulo now leads in passengers, Bogotá retains the operational and logistics advantage, and a group of faster-growing platforms is beginning to reshape the regional map.
