How Myrtle Beach's Recreation Calendar Shifts Between a Massive Peak and a Real 2025-2026 Softening

A City of Under 50,000 Absorbing 18 to 20 Million Visitors a Year

The scale mismatch behind every seasonal swing here starts with two numbers that don't fully agree but both dwarf the resident population: the Post and Courier's 2025-dated reporting cites more than 18 million visitors to the Myrtle Beach area in 2024, while Wikipedia's Myrtle Beach page separately states over 20 million visitors a year. Neither figure is wrong so much as differently sourced and dated; treat the real number as somewhere in that 18-20 million-plus range rather than picking one. For context on how much that figure has grown, a dated 2014 golf-industry source put the area's annual visitor count at 14 million at that time — a real, multi-year growth trajectory in the underlying figure, not a static number repeated year after year.

Set against that visitor volume, the city's own year-round population is genuinely disputed across sources: Wikipedia cites the 2020 Census figure of 35,682; worldpopulationreview.com's 2026 estimate is 42,816; southcarolina-demographics.com's 2024 ACS-based estimate is 38,371; and USAFacts describes roughly 40,500 residents as of 2024. No two of those sources agree, and this page states that range honestly — roughly 35,700 to the low 40,000s depending on source and year — rather than inventing a single precise figure. Whichever number is closest to current reality, it's a small fraction of the millions of people passing through in a given year.

One concrete, dated indicator of that visitor volume: Myrtle Beach International Airport recorded 3,837,052 total passengers in 2024, a record year, up nearly 14% year-over-year, according to Horry County Director of Airports Judi Olmstead ("We are thrilled to celebrate this record-breaking year") and Horry County Administrator Barry Spivey. That's a real, named, dated number describing air travel specifically — a different and more precisely sourced figure than the broader 18-20 million visitor-count range above, and one more piece of evidence that the area's tourism volume has been climbing, not just holding steady.

The 2025-2026 Softening: A Real Counter-Trend to the Boom-Town Story

Every fact above points toward a market that keeps getting bigger, which makes a genuinely current counter-trend worth stating plainly rather than smoothing over. Per Post and Courier reporting on a February 9-10, 2026 tourism conference, Myrtle Beach's summer 2025 hotel occupancy fell roughly 3% year-over-year, with another 3% worst-case decline forecast for 2026. City council workshops held October 6, 2025 and February 3, 2026 reported accommodations-tax revenue down 10.8% in the third quarter of 2025 — from $5.6 million in 2024 to $4.99 million in 2025, a real dollar-figured decline, not a vague sentiment.

Visit Myrtle Beach President Stuart Butler attributed the softness to "four consecutive years of increased [summer] precipitation," reduced Canadian visitation amid trade tensions, and broader economic uncertainty. That reduced-Canadian-visitation detail connects directly to a specific piece of this area's tourism infrastructure: Can-Am Days, the annual festival built specifically around Canadian visitors (see below), sits squarely in the demographic Butler describes as pulling back. Notably, this softening is a coastal and international-visitor story, not a statewide one — South Carolina as a whole posted a record tourism year in 2025, led by the Upstate/Greenville region, which is less dependent on international and coastal-specific visitors than the Grand Strand.

Treat this as a real, current, honestly disclosed trend rather than a one-year blip that's already resolved: as of this research, it's an active, named, dollar-figured softening running alongside — not instead of — the area's much larger multi-decade growth story.

Renourishment on a Clock: $72 Million of Beach Construction That Doesn't Fully Clear Before Peak Season

A $72 million beach renourishment project, 100% federally funded through emergency authorization by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, is placing roughly 2 million cubic yards of sand across 26 miles of beach spanning North Myrtle Beach, Myrtle Beach, and the Surfside Beach/Garden City area. Contractor Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Company was awarded the contract in December 2024; construction began in spring 2025 on an approximately 18-month timeline, working 24/7 except holidays and severe weather. Per South Carolina Public Radio's June 4, 2026 reporting, work had resumed May 29, 2026 after a pause.

The segment-specific completion targets are the practical detail that matters for anyone planning a summer stay here: the Myrtle Beach segment is expected to wrap by early July 2026, while the Surfside Beach/Garden City segment isn't expected to finish until the end of August 2026. That's a genuinely different sequencing than this site has documented for Destin, Florida, where a comparable renourishment project was deliberately timed to finish before peak season ramped up. Here, at least one segment's completion target lands inside peak summer season itself, and the southern segment's target runs almost to Labor Day — meaning active construction and peak tourist crowds overlap for part of this 26-mile stretch rather than being sequenced apart from each other.

This site's dedicated hurricane-risk page covers the storm damage (from Hurricanes Debby and Ian) that this project responds to; the point here is narrower and more practical — beach access and construction activity on specific segments should be confirmed directly against current Army Corps and Horry County updates before planning a summer visit or move near the active work zones.

Golf's Own Season: Roughly 100 Courses, a Peak-Year 4.2 Million Rounds, and a Late-Summer Championship

Myrtle Beach is widely branded the "Golf Capital of the World," with roughly 100 courses in the immediate area per the Myrtle Beach Chamber of Commerce, and the area has recorded a peak of 4.2 million rounds played in a single year historically. Golf in the Southeast generally runs a different seasonal pattern than beach tourism — spring and fall are conventionally the region's prime golf months, when temperatures are cooler and less humid than peak summer. That's a well-established general pattern worth noting as context; this research did not find a Myrtle Beach-specific, month-by-month breakdown of rounds played to confirm the exact shape of that curve here, so treat it as reasonable general context rather than a locally sourced statistic.

One named exception to that general spring/fall pattern is worth flagging directly: the Myrtle Beach World Amateur Handicap Championship, the area's marquee amateur golf event, runs its 2026 edition (the 43rd annual) August 31 through September 4 — squarely over Labor Day weekend, at the tail end of peak summer season rather than in the cooler shoulder months. A dated 2014 source put the event's typical draw at roughly 4,000 golfers annually; this research did not find a more recent, independently confirmed attendance figure for the current edition, so treat that participant count as historical rather than current-year confirmed.

A Canadian Spring Festival and Two Motorcycle Rallies: The Named Events Bookending the Year

Can-Am Days (Canadian-American Days) is a real, dated, long-running festival built specifically around Canadian visitors, timed for their March school break: the 2026 edition, billed the 65th annual, runs March 13-22, 2026, per Visit Myrtle Beach's own event page. That 65-year run implies roots reaching back to the early 1960s, though this research did not find a page stating the exact founding year outright — treat 1962 as an inference from the "65th annual" label, not an independently confirmed fact. Given Visit Myrtle Beach President Stuart Butler's own attribution of part of the 2025-2026 softening to reduced Canadian visitation amid trade tensions, Can-Am Days is a real, concrete example of tourism infrastructure built around exactly the visitor segment currently pulling back.

Myrtle Beach Bike Week's Spring Rally is the area's other major named spring event: the 2026 edition, billed the 87th annual, runs May 8-17, 2026, per the event's own site, spanning a stretch that has expanded over the past decade from North Myrtle Beach down to Georgetown. The organizers describe rides, vendor markets, and entertainment welcoming "everyone and all motorcycles," whether visitors stay the full ten days or just one.

A separate Fall Rally closes out the motorcycle-event calendar later in the year; its 2025 edition ran September 29 through October 5, 2025, under the name "Hurricane Alley Rally" — a name that is, if anything, geographically apt rather than just marketing color, since late September into early October falls inside the historically most active stretch of the Atlantic hurricane season. This research confirmed the 2025 dates directly but did not find confirmed 2026 Fall Rally dates at the time of this page's construction — confirm the current year's dates directly with the event organizers before planning travel around it.

The Practical Tradeoff: Off-Season vs. Peak Season for the People Who Actually Live Here

Put together, living in Myrtle Beach means planning around a real seasonal swing rather than a vague sense that "summer is busy." Off-season — roughly the stretch outside the June-through-August peak, Can-Am Days' March window, and the two Bike Week rallies — means easier tee times on a course system built to handle 4.2 million rounds in a peak year, less competition for Boardwalk parking and restaurant tables, and calmer traffic on the area's main corridors. It's also, per the 2025-2026 numbers above, the stretch where the area's own tourism leadership is actively watching occupancy and tax-revenue softening play out in real time — a genuinely current wrinkle on top of the usual quiet-season calculus.

Peak season means the fullest version of what Myrtle Beach is known for — the golf courses at capacity, the Boardwalk and Broadway at the Beach running full summer programming, the charter and fishing scene at its busiest — arriving at the same time as at least one segment of the active $72 million renourishment project is still finishing construction, and squarely inside the June-through-November Atlantic hurricane season. None of this is a reason to avoid any particular season; it's a genuine, sourced tradeoff worth planning around. Confirm current renourishment construction status directly with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers or Horry County, confirm event dates directly with each event's own organizers, and confirm current hotel/rental availability and pricing directly with local providers before planning a visit or a move around any specific month.