Alton Towers surges as Europe’s theme parks reveal their visitor numbers

The latest global theme park attendance report has just been released, revealing how many visits the world’s biggest attractions received during 2025. And there’s some particularly good news for Alton Towers, which has enjoyed a bumper year.

But before we get into the numbers, a little explanation.

Who counts the visitors?

The figures come from the 2025 TEA Global Experience Index, an annual report produced by the Themed Entertainment Association (TEA), an international organisation representing the themed entertainment industry.

It’s one of the most widely recognised attendance reports in the attractions business, bringing together information from park operators, industry research and professional estimates to build a picture of the world’s busiest theme parks.

The research is produced with partners Entertainment + Culture Advisors (ECA) and The Park Database (TPDB), with Storyland Studios as presenting partner.

There’s one important thing to understand: these are visits, not individual people. If you visit Alton Towers five times in a year, you contribute five visits to its attendance figure.

And there’s another small catch for anyone reading this in November 2026: the report is one year behind. The figures just released cover the 2025 season, not the summer we’ve just enjoyed. We’ll have to wait for the 2026 report to discover how this year has shaped up.

Europe’s biggest theme parks – 2025 attendance

So, how does Britain compare with the rest of Europe? Here’s the full top 20.

So, what stands out?

First up, Disneyland Paris is in a league of its own. Its main Disneyland Park attracted 10.8 million visits, almost four times the attendance of Alton Towers.

And remember, that’s just one of the two Disney parks in Paris. Walt Disney Studios Park attracted another 5.919 million visits, meaning the two parks combined welcomed more than 16.7 million visits.

Germany’s Europa-Park takes second place with 6.25 million, while the Netherlands’ Efteling is not far behind with 5.78 million.

For UK enthusiasts, however, the biggest talking point is Alton Towers.

With 2.825 million visits, it has climbed into Europe’s top ten, recording a massive 13% increase on 2024. That’s approximately 325,000 additional visits in a single year.

It’s also worth noting that Alton Towers is now ahead of some very established European names, including Liseberg in Sweden and Parque Warner Madrid.

LEGOLAND Windsor tells a rather different story. Its attendance dropped by 7%, with approximately 158,000 fewer visits than the previous year.

Where are the other UK parks?

You might be wondering why Thorpe Park, Chessington, Paultons Park, Drayton Manor, Blackpool Pleasure Beach and Flamingo Land aren’t in the table.

The simple answer is that the TEA European ranking only publishes the 20 leading parks in its regional attendance table. Not every park makes the cut, and absence from the list doesn’t mean a park isn’t performing well.

Thorpe Park, for example, appeared in the previous year’s European top 20, recording 1.575 million visits in 2024. It doesn’t appear in the latest 2025 top 20.

We don’t have an equivalent published 2025 figure for all the other UK parks, so rather than inventing numbers, we’ll leave them out of the comparison.

Could 2026 be an even bigger year for Britain?

Here’s where things get interesting.

While these figures give us a fascinating insight into the 2025 season, the UK theme park calendar has been looking particularly busy as we head towards the end of 2026.

We’ve had a fantastic summer, followed by another packed autumn season, with Halloween events bringing plenty of visitors through the gates.

From Fright Nights at Thorpe Park to Scarefest at Alton Towers, the big parks have continued to give enthusiasts plenty of reasons to return, while the wider industry has enjoyed another busy period.

At Theme Park Daily, we’d certainly expect the UK’s overall theme park attendance to show an increase when the 2026 figures are eventually released.

Of course, we’ll have to wait for the official numbers before declaring a winner, but Alton Towers will be particularly interesting to watch after its impressive 2025 performance.

And with Universal’s proposed UK theme park development still on the horizon, the competition for our leisure time could become even more interesting over the next few years.

For now, though, congratulations to Alton Towers. Europe’s tenth busiest theme park is a pretty impressive title to have!