SPECIAL EDITION • WINTER 2026 • POWERED BY DATUM
Royal Commission
Density distribution
1 human/m²6
SAUDI
ARABIAMecca

global pilgrimage

What data shows about the Hajj and Umrah

A million people. One day. Seven circles around a single point. During the Hajj, the Kaaba becomes the centre of one of the most intense human flows on Earth.

The walkways around the Kaaba handle up to 107,000 pilgrims an hour. That single space absorbs surges of arrivals, national quota peaks and searing summer heat, yet still keeps people moving in slow, continuous circles from day into night.

pilgrims
1 m2

At peak moments, crowd density here can reach nine people per square metre, with pilgrims moving shoulder to shoulder. Here's what it takes to manage a gathering on this scale.

1.67MIn 2025, around 1.67 million people performed the Hajj.

Who gets to go on the Hajj?

Let's start with the basics. What is the Hajj? Simply put, it is a sacred duty for every Muslim who can afford the journey and is healthy enough to make it. For most pilgrims, it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and obligation.

1.67MIn 2025, around 1.67 million people performed the Hajj.

For Saudi authorities, it's a vast planning exercise repeated every year. Flights, visas, accommodation, transport, medical cover: every part is modelled, monitored and adjusted. And each year adds more data: satellite views of crowd density, real-time bus tracking, and even measurements of mobile network load. Look closely, and you see how faith and modern systems now work side by side.

A world map of Muslim communities

How Hajj quotas are distributed

Hajj participation in recent years

The scale of Umrah compared with the Hajj

171In total, pilgrims arrived from 171 countries, a reminder that the Hajj is a global movement stitched together by geography and logistics.

But with about two billion Muslims worldwide, how can Saudi Arabia, where all the holy places of Islam are located, welcome pilgrims from such a widely distributed population?

Math is the answer. The system runs on quotas: roughly one Hajj place for every thousand Muslims in a country. Indonesia offers the clearest example.

It is home to around 230 million Muslims, which gives it more than 230,000 Hajj places, the largest allocation in the world. Similar logic applies elsewhere, and a global map of quotas shows that the pilgrimage draws people from almost every region of the world.

In 2025, around 1.67 million people performed the Hajj. About 166,000 were domestic pilgrims from Saudi Arabia itself. Usually, domestic pilgrims make up around 10–12% of the total Hajj participants. Another 20% come from Arabic-speaking countries.

The largest single share, roughly 60%, arrives from non-Arab Asia: Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and the wider region. In 2025, this group totalled about 1.1 million people. Africa (excluding the Arab states) contributes about 15%. And just 3.5% travel from the United States, Europe, and other parts of the world.

Pilgrim numbers have been climbing back since the pandemic, when only Saudi residents were allowed to perform the Hajj. International travel returned in stages, and the totals began to rise again. The long-term record still stands at about 3.16 million pilgrims, reached in the mid-2010s. It probably won't take long to beat it.

Because the Hajj quota is roughly one place per 1,000 Muslims, most believers will never secure a spot. The smaller pilgrimage, the Umrah, offers another path. It can be performed almost any time of year, without strict quotas or seasonal pressure, giving far more people a chance to visit the holy sites. In 2023, around 27 million people performed the Umrah.

10xIn recent years, the Umrah has drawn around ten times as many pilgrims as the Hajj.

So what happens when the Umrah runs at this scale? How do you move millions through a small set of sites without turning every entrance into a queue? How do you keep the pace steady when arrivals peak, groups overlap, and the city keeps receiving new waves every day?

10xIn recent years, the Umrah has drawn around ten times as many pilgrims as the Hajj.

The answer lies in careful planning, attention to detail, and in treating the Umrah as a year-round system designed for continuous flow. It starts before pilgrims even land. Visas need to be processed, flights and airports coordinated, transport assigned, and accommodation matched to schedules. On the ground, the job is to keep routes clear and predictable, spread out arrivals, and avoid slowdowns at key points.

How the Makkah Route speeds up the pilgrimage

Participating cities
Joining in 2026

Hajj Pilgrims Using
the Makkah Route Initiative

2025
314 337
2024
322 901
2023
242 270

During the Hajj season, the Umrah pauses completely and the entire infrastructure shifts to support the main pilgrimage; for the rest of the year, routes are streamlined through digital visas, the Nusuk platform and smart crowd-management tools.

The Makkah Route Initiative, part of Saudi Vision 2030, extends this further by simplifying airport entry in several countries and smoothing the flow of visitors into the Kingdom. In effect, the Umrah has become a year-round system operating at an enormous scale.

What happens when the Hajj falls on the hottest months?

Lightweight shade canopies now line key routes during the Hajj, reducing heat stress for millions of pilgrims.

tent

In some years, the Hajj falls in the hottest weeks of the year, with temperatures in Mecca reaching 45–48 °C. This happens because the Hajj follows the Islamic lunar calendar, which is about 10–11 days shorter than the solar year. As a result, the pilgrimage dates shift earlier each year and complete a full circuit through all four seasons every 33 years. One cycle takes the Hajj into midsummer, the next pulls it back into spring or winter, and then the pattern repeats.

Lightweight shade canopies now line key routes during the Hajj, reducing heat stress for millions of pilgrims.

tent

Hajj nights have become 5-6°C
hotter over the past 30 years

66 years ago
33 years ago
Now
+42°CDayNight+24°C

Let's explain this with our 3D model. The Hajj always falls on the same dates in the Islamic lunar calendar, the 8th to the 13th of Dhu al-Hijjah, but the lunar year is 11 days shorter than the solar year used in the Gregorian calendar. As a result, the Hajj shifts earlier each year, steadily moving through the seasons.

In 2025, it fell on 4–9 June; in 2024, it was 14–19 June. The same pattern repeats as you look further back or ahead: each year, the dates slide about 11 days earlier.

It takes about 33 years to complete a full cycle. The last time the Hajj fell in early June was 1992, and before that, 1960. Each return brings the same dates, but rarely the same conditions.

Sixty-six years ago, the heat was already severe, with temperatures reaching 42–45°C on peak days in Mecca. But in today’s summer months, the temperature risk has grown even further.

Peak temperatures may still hover around 44–45°C, but minimum temperatures now sit above 30°C: roughly 5–6°C higher than they were 33 or 66 years ago. Nights no longer cool.

Hajj nights have become 5-6°C
hotter over the past 30 years

66 years ago
33 years ago
Now
+42°CDayNight+24°C

And climate models suggest the coming cycles of the Hajj will be even hotter.

By 2100, parts of the Arabian Peninsula could warm by up to 9°C.

So what do you do when the weather refuses to ease up? You stop treating heat as background and start treating it as a design constraint. Routes are planned with shade in mind. Surfaces are chosen for what they do under direct sunlight. Waiting areas, tents and walkways are built around the basic question of how long people will be exposed and how much relief you can provide along the way.

By 2100, parts of the Arabian Peninsula could warm by up to 9°C.

That is the logic behind the cooling measures now spread across the sites. They're not add-ons or nice-to-haves. They are part of how the Hajj is engineered: small interventions, repeated at scale, to make the environment more manageable for millions of people moving through it.

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To cope with extreme heat, Saudi authorities have built cooling into almost every aspect of the Hajj. Across the sites, misting systems, shade structures and air-conditioned tents reduce heat stress, while more than 84,000 square metres of roads in Arafat are now paved with light-reflective materials that bounce back up to 40% more sunlight and lower surface temperatures by around 12°C.

Transport has been redesigned with the same logic. The Mashaer Metro links Arafat, Muzdalifah and Mina along an 18-kilometre line, supported by more than 400 desert coolers at stations. In 2025, it carried 1.87 million passengers during the Hajj, with trains reaching speeds of up to 80 km/h and cutting the Mina–Arafat journey to about 20 minutes.

Shuttle buses and shaded walkways fill the gaps. Beyond the holy sites, the Haramain high-speed railway connects Mecca with Madinah, Jeddah and King Abdullah Economic City over 450 kilometres, with station interiors kept at 28°C and platforms cooled by large fans and misting devices.

What's the larger story behind the Hajj and Umrah?

We'll continue exploring the Hajj journey in our next instalment, where we'll walk through 3D models of the pilgrimage sites and explain the rituals behind them.

Centuries ago, pilgrims crossed deserts in slow caravans. Today, millions move through Mecca as if part of a single organism. The Hajj and Umrah are still spiritual journeys, but they also operate as vast modern systems, with digital corridors and careful engineering of time and space.

The numbers still tell a remarkable story. Look closely at the flow, the precise timing, and the choreography of people. Behind what seems like an ancient ritual is a living pattern of humanity learning how to move together.

We'll continue exploring the Hajj journey in our next instalment, where we'll walk through 3D models of the pilgrimage sites and explain the rituals behind them.

Mecca Schema
Mecca
Jamarat
Mina
Muzdalifah
Arafat