Seoul Tourism Guide: What Seoul Welcome Week Shows About Visiting the City in 2026

Seoul tourism in 2026 is being shaped by a clear city strategy: welcome foreign visitors at key arrival and downtown points, connect them with culture and services, and expand the city’s appeal beyond sightseeing alone. The clearest example was Seoul Welcome Week, officially operated from May 1 to 8, 2026, for foreign tourists by the Seoul Metropolitan Government and the Seoul Tourism Association.¹

Although the main Seoul Welcome Week program has already ended, it remains useful for understanding how Seoul is organizing visitor support in 2026. For travelers planning a trip after July 10, 2026, the practical takeaway is that Seoul is pairing hospitality services with cultural programming, business tourism, sustainable tourism discussions, and seasonal city-center events.

Seoul Tourism Through Seoul Welcome Week

Seoul Welcome Week was designed around the visitor journey from airport arrival to the city center. Its main visitor points were a hospitality center near Myeong-dong Station and a welcome booth at Yeouido Hangang Park, with concentrated operation from May 1 to 5, 2026.¹ For foreign travelers, those locations mattered because they connected two different kinds of Seoul tourism: a dense shopping and culture district in Myeong-dong, and a riverside public space at the Han River.

The Myeong-dong hospitality center offered several visitor-facing programs. These included a Seoul Styling Spot, an AI smart travel guide consultation area, K-pop cover dance performances, and K-beauty experiences.¹ The program was not framed only as a greeting campaign; it functioned as a practical orientation point where visitors could encounter current Seoul travel themes in one place.

Kim Myung-joo, director-general of Seoul’s Tourism and Sports Bureau, described the aim as operating “a close-knit hospitality system from the airport to the city center” and using the week to strengthen the appeal of Seoul tourism.¹ That statement is useful for travelers because it shows the city’s direction: Seoul wants arrivals, movement through the city, and destination experiences to feel connected rather than separate.

Seoul Welcome Week also took place during a period of rising inbound travel. Seoul reported that 1.56 million foreign tourists visited the city in April 2026, an 18.8% increase from the same month a year earlier.² From January through April 2026, cumulative foreign visitors reached 5.2 million, up 21.4% year on year.² The city also reported foreign card spending of 1.1532 trillion won in April, a 50.5% increase.²

For visitors, these figures point to a practical reality: major holiday periods and popular areas may be busy. Seoul linked continued tourism demand during the May golden holiday period, when Japan’s Golden Week and China’s Labor Day overlapped, with its response through Welcome Week operations.² Travelers planning around future peak periods should expect the city to use temporary visitor services, event booths, and themed programs to handle demand where crowds gather.

What Visitors Should Watch After Welcome Week

Seoul’s 2026 tourism calendar did not stop after Welcome Week. In June, the city hosted Explore Seoul with Connections 2026 from June 7 to 10, bringing premium tourism buyers from 11 countries together with 31 domestic tourism organizations.³ The program included Bukchon Hanok Village, traditional culture experiences, visits to luxury hotels, and one-on-one business meetings under a theme of harmony between tradition and modernity.³

This matters to regular travelers because premium tourism programs often highlight the experiences a city wants to develop and promote. In Seoul’s case, the source-backed themes are clear: traditional neighborhoods, cultural participation, hotel-based travel, and curated business-to-business connections. Kim Myung-joo called the event a premium tourism platform for presenting Seoul’s distinctive mix of tradition and modernity to the global market.³

Seoul also held the 2026 Seoul International Tourism Forum from July 1 to 2, 2026, at The Westin Josun Seoul, under the theme “Seoul, a Sustainable Global Tourism City.”⁴ The forum covered high-value tourism, sustainable tourism, Seoul medical tourism, and smart tourism.⁴ A July 2 city release said Mayor Oh Se-hoon attended the forum and shared a vision for qualitative growth and stronger future competitiveness in the Seoul tourism industry.⁵

For a traveler, the forum does not change a single itinerary by itself, but it clarifies where Seoul tourism is heading. The city is not only counting visitor numbers; it is discussing higher-value travel, medical tourism, smart tourism, and sustainability as future priorities. Mayor Oh also presented a direction to develop night tourism as a representative Seoul tourism brand.⁵ His quoted message was that citizens’ daily lives are “the strongest content of Seoul tourism” and a driving force for making Seoul a global Top 3 city.⁵

There is also a concrete upcoming event for summer visitors. Seoul Summer Beach 2026 is scheduled from July 20 to August 9, 2026, around Gwanghwamun Square and Sejongno Park, with the slogan “Wave Summer, Play Seoul.”⁶ The event expands from a Gwanghwamun Square-centered format to include Sejongno Park, and it is planned with water play facilities and sand play areas for citizens and tourists in central Seoul.⁶

That makes Gwanghwamun a useful area to watch for visitors arriving in late July or early August. Based on the available source material, the event is designed as an urban summer festival rather than a beach outside the city, so travelers should understand it as a downtown seasonal attraction.

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Patrick Choi

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