Here’s why you should visit the USA in 2025

The USA is one of the most diverse countries on the planet and each new year brings the potential for a fresh raft of adventures. This year we’re celebrating major literary and musical anniversaries, looking forward to world-class festivals and anticipating the launch of exciting rail routes. We’re also planning trips to poignant Indigenous cultural centres and setting our sights on arty new attractions. Here’s why you should book a trip to the USA in 2025. 

Starting on the West Coast, California’s cities are putting their artistic foot forward in 2025. Last year, San Diego stepped into the spotlight as World Design Capital (twinned with Mexico’s Tijuana). This year the city’s cultural scene will be bolstered with the opening of The Joan and Irwin Jacobs Performing Arts Center, a new theatre hub in the burgeoning Liberty Station area. 

Farther north, the desert oasis of Palm Springs will mark 20 years of Modernism Week – a celebration of the region’s dazzling mid-century modern architecture, featuring tours and open houses. Meanwhile, locals in Los Angeles’ Crenshaw neighbourhood are working on what’s tipped as the largest open-air Black art project in the world. When finished, the al fresco exhibit will stretch for 2km, joining up works by more than 100 Black artists, from poignant murals to sculptures. 

Tucson – with its intricate missions and top-notch Sonoran cuisine – is another city to watch in 2025. It was founded 250 years ago, in 1775, when the Presidio San Agustin del Tucson was established (preceding the signing of the Declaration of Independence by one year). Special events will be held at the Spanish fort, celebrating the region’s Indigenous cultures (including the O’odham, Yaqui and Apache peoples) and including live mariachi performances. Meanwhile, the city’s Barrio Viejo neighbourhood, known for its Mexican heritage, is gearing up for National Historic Landmark status. Come to explore the area’s historic Sonoran row houses, which are now filled with coffee shops, galleries and cantinas, and pay a visit to the 1915-built Teatro Carmen, which is in the throes of a renovation and poised to reopen this year.

There’s a new World Heritage Center coming to the South Texas city of San Antonio, too. Slated to open in February, the centre will introduce the city’s 18th-century Spanish missions (which are collectively protected as a UNESCO World Heritage site) with cultural exhibitions and art. 

On the East Coast, all eyes will be on the country’s capital as it hosts World Pride 2025. It’s set to be a colourful celebration of love and unity featuring parades, pop concerts and street food galore. 

From state and national parks to wildlife preserves, the USA has no shortage of places where you can heed the call of the wild. 

In 2025, several national parks will celebrate landmark anniversaries. These include Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, which protects a wild, bear-filled pocket of southeastern Alaska. It first became a national monument 100 years ago and travellers should keep an eye on the NPS website for the announcement of special events. When planning a trip, eschew large cruise ships in favour of independent exploration. Stay at rustic Glacier Bay Lodge, which offers excursions into the park, and don’t miss the Huna Tribal House (Xunaa Shuká Hít) in Bartlett Cove. This Indigenous gathering space honours the Native Huna Łingít peoples. 

Minnesota’s underrated Voyageurs National Park is also celebrating a big birthday. This watery Midwestern wonderland – characterised by lakes, streams and more than 500 islands – will turn 50 this year, with special astronomy events, ranger talks and the opening of a brand new visitor centre at Crane Lake to mark the occasion. 

The Sunshine State has an eye to the wild too. The new REEF Ocean Exploration Center for Marine Conservation will open in the Florida Keys’ idyllic Key Largo on 8 June (World Ocean Day). Through exhibits and workshops, the venue will be dedicated to educating travellers on protecting the ocean and marine life – especially the Florida Reef, the only living barrier coral reef in the continental US. 

Meanwhile, in the neighbouring state of Georgia, the sprawling Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge is expected to be formally nominated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site this month. The giant wetland spreads over 353,981 acres, with kayaking adventures revealing alligator-filled waters, bird-filled skies (the refuge is home to endangered species including the red-cockaded woodpecker) and photogenic cypress swamps. 

More animal encounters await in Virginia, too. For 100 years, the annual ‘Pony Swim’ at Assateague Islands’ Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge has seen ‘Saltwater Cowboys’ (local firemen) herd the site’s majestic feral ponies across the Assateague Channel. The spectacle draws thousands of travellers each year and there’ll be an extra buzz about the centenary. 

The USA’s layered music culture is always worth travelling for – but this year a host of major anniversaries mean the spotlight shines even brighter. 

First up, it’s a milestone birthday for America’s greatest rock and roller. Elvis Presley would have entered his 90th year on 8 January 2025, and there will be on-the-day celebrations at his humble birthplace in Tupelo, Mississippi. Another of the state’s musical legends will be honoured in the Mississippi Delta: bluesman B.B. King was born in nearby Berclair on 16 September 1925 and Indianola’s B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center is poised for special 100th birthday events. 

The musical festivities continue across Mississippi’s northern border, in Tennessee. There’ll be more celebrations for Presley at his chosen home: the music-drenched city of Memphis, where the musician lived in his Graceland mansion from 1957 to 1977. If you’re in town in January, head to the estate for special tours and live performances – or time your trip for Elvis Week, an annual August celebration of the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll that’s sure to be extra special this year. 

From rock and roll to country – 2025 rings in the 100th anniversary of the Grand Ole Opry, a country music radio show that’s become a Nashville institution. The Opry 100 celebrations will see country mega stars descend on Music City throughout the year, with special broadcasts at venues including the Ryman Auditorium, a former home of the show. 

There’ll be brand new museums to hear about the USA’s music-soaked culture, too. Stay tuned for the Louisiana Music Museum: opening in Lafayette at the end of 2025, it’ll dive into the sounds of the Pelican State, dissecting everything from jazz to Cajun music to zydeco. Then there’s the hotly anticipated Hip-Hop Museum opening in the Bronx, New York City, where the genre was born. 

Across the USA, Indigenous peoples are reclaiming their narratives with poignant Native-led museums and attractions. Among them is the Santa Ynez Chumash Museum and Cultural Center, in California’s Santa Ynez Valley, which will explore the ancient heritage and contemporary culture of the Indigenous Chumash peoples. Highlights will include a living village and a garden filled with plants used in traditional crafts and foods. 

Autumn 2024 also saw the soft launch of the Tekαkαpimək Contact Station in Maine’s Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument, a vast wilderness that sits on the ancestral homelands of the Penobscot Nation. The new visitor centre tells the story of the land from an Indigenous perspective, with thoughtful exhibits revealing the importance of the Penobscot River and retelling traditional Penobscot stories. Following an autumn preview, the centre is due to open in spring 2025. 

Georgia is ever closer to gaining its first ever national park too. Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park – which should be redesignated with full national park status this year – unfolds upon the traditional homelands of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. It’s characterised by sacred mounds that are thought to have been built between 900 and 1100 AD. Explore it on a ranger-led tour. 

Autumn 2024 saw two devastating hurricanes make landfall in the Southern USA: Hurricane Helene in September, affecting Florida’s Big Bend, East Tennessee and Western North Carolina, and Hurricane Milton in October, hitting a western swathe of Florida, including Fort Myers, Sarasota and St Petersburg. 

Around three months later, most of the affected destinations – many of which rely on tourism – are ready for and actively welcoming travellers back. And in some cases, planning a trip could actively aid recovery. 

That’s true of the Bradenton area, an idyllic bolthole on Florida’s western coast, known for its manatee-rich waters, snow-white beaches and free-spirited artists’ community. You can check the tourist board website for updates on reopened businesses and beaches. 

Meanwhile, western North Carolina’s mountain-stitched state parks and scenic byways are gradually reopening too. Check the tourist board website for updates and plan an intentional trip to this bucolic slice of the South, with its artsy mountain towns, lookout-studded drives and rich musical tradition. Quirky Downtown Asheville, packed with galleries and brewpubs, is also inviting the return of travellers, and so is the glittering Biltmore Estate, one-time summer home of Washington Vanderbilt II.

This year marks 200 years since the world’s first passenger rail service (launched in England in 1825). Fittingly, there’ll be new rail journeys to enjoy Stateside too. 

The hotly anticipated Gulf Coast Amtrak Route will run from Mobile, Alabama to New Orleans, Louisiana, scooping up a great swathe of Coastal Mississippi along the way. It’s poised to relaunch in spring, and it’ll be the first time the passenger route has operated since Hurricane Katrina (in 2005). Ride the rails to discover Mobile’s rich African-American history (don’t miss a visit to poignant Africatown Heritage House, which tells the story of America’s last known slave ship), discover quaint Mississippi beach towns such as Bay St Louis, and lose yourself in New Orleans’ fabled music scene. 

Other routes we’re excited about include Amtrak’s new Borealis Train. It whizzes between skyscraper-filled Chicago, Illinois and underrated Minnesota state capital, St Paul, known for its glittering winter carnival. A slew of new high-speed rail routes are in the works too: these include a fast service from Dallas to Houston, though dates are still to be announced. 

It’s been a century since F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby was first published, in April 1925 – yet love for this novel (which follows a lovesick and newly rich Jay Gatsby in his quest to win the heart of socialite Daisy Buchanan during the Roaring Twenties) shows no sign of abating. 

The best way to celebrate is to head to the real-life locations that inspired the novel. In New York, Long Island’s North Shore has become affectionately known as “the Gold Coast” due to its dazzling mansions and historic wealth. Today, estates such as Oheka Castle (one of the area’s so-called “Gatsby mansions”) keep the spirit of the Jazz Age alive with guided tours and Gatsby-themed events. 

You can discover more Fitzgerald jewels in the South, too. Montgomery, Alabama was the childhood home of Zelda Fitzgerald (F. Scott Fitzgerald’s wife) and you can stay in the historic apartment they later shared in the 1930s. Meanwhile, Louisville, Kentucky is the birthplace of fictional Daisy Buchanan and the sumptuous Seelbach Hotel served as inspiration for the Buchanans’ wedding venue.