The Best Places to Go in the US in 2025

16.12.2024 - 09:17 / cntraveler.com / Shannon Macmahon

To arrive at our list of the Best Places to Go in the US in 2025, we painted with the broadest strokes possible. Stretching from Alaska to Puerto Rico, there are so many reasons to explore the States this year—from nature explorations, to food and wine trails and cultural immersions.

In Alaska, where the much-loved Glacier Bay National Park celebrates 100 years as a national monument, Native-led adventures abound on Kodiak Island, allowing small groups of visitors to share space with the largest subspecies of brown bear in the world. In the Caribbean, San Juan’s rebirth following hurricanes and the pandemic is marked by an inaugural culinary festival, thanks to the very innovators who have aggrandized the tiny island’s bold flavors around the globe. There’s also the Space Coast, Florida, where you can claim your spot and witness historic rocket launches—or sample more earthly adventures, like kayaking through its bioluminescent waters. But it’s not all space travel and remote landscapes: Events, too, are carrying the torch for American cities like New Orleans and Washington, DC, which will both host major non-annual celebrations that draw travelers from all corners of the globe (the record-tying Super Bowl that’s evolving the former, and the US-hosted World Pride 2024 sweeping the latter). In the end, whatever catches your fancy, we hope that you’ll bookmark this list and use it to plan where you’ll visit in North America and the Caribbean in 2025. We can't wait to see you out there. —Shannon McMahon and Arati Menon

This is part of our global guide to the Best Places to Go in 2025—find more travel inspiration here.

Go for: the 100th anniversary of a beloved cultural tradition; Native-led wildlife viewing

It'll be another 34 years before Alaska as a state turns 100 years old. But some of its best-known events and attractions are hitting that milestone in 2025, like the Serum Run, a sled dog relay that brought lifesaving diphtheria antitoxins from Nenana to Nome in 1925. The event has been celebrated annually with the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, which enthralls visitors and locals who gather along its 1,000-mile course to watch top mushers and their dogs compete. To catch the start of the race, post up at the Wildbirch Hotel, Anchorage’s first new major lodging in 20 years. The boutique stay, with 252 design-forward guest rooms and partnerships with local artists, will open in early 2025 and offer unobstructed views of the Iditarod start line. Also turning 100 is the unrelentingly beautiful Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve (which became a national monument in 1925), filled with rugged mountains, wild coastline, and abundant wildlife. It is the ancestral land of the Huna Tlingit people, who in