If you have flown from Cardiff Airport this year, the chances are you had more choice than the year before: direct Toronto flights, a fourth TUI aircraft, and new routes to Faro, Fuerteventura, Hurghada, Salzburg, Turin and Kittilä.
That expansion is what has now put the airport on a global shortlist. It is one of five finalists in the under five million passengers category at the 2026 Routes World Awards, alongside Bratislava, Cork, Shannon and Halifax Stanfield in Canada, with the winner announced in Frankfurt on 22 October.
An award judged by the airlines an airport has to win over
The Routes awards are worth explaining, because they are not a passenger survey. They are run by the organisers of the Routes conferences, the trade events where airports pitch to airlines for new services, and the airport categories are shortlisted on votes from airlines and judged by a panel of airline network planners.
In practice they reward how good an airport is at persuading carriers to start routes and keep growing them. For passengers the prize matters only as far as that work shows up on the departures board. At Cardiff, over the past year, it has.
Cardiff’s only previous win came in 1998. Halifax took the same category last year and is back on the shortlist; Newcastle won it in 2023 and 2024.
What the past year added to the departures board
The biggest change was WestJet’s direct service to Toronto, which landed on 23 May and gave Wales its first link to Canada in almost 20 years, with onward connections across North America.
TUI based a fourth aircraft at Cardiff this summer, adding seats and flights to its holiday routes, and the airport says Ryanair is having its busiest season there yet.
Those additions helped the airport pass a million passengers in 12 months this spring for the first time since Covid, with official figures placing it as the UK’s second fastest-growing airport in the first quarter of 2026.
Jon Bridge, the airport’s chief executive, said the shortlist reflected “the strong relationships we have built” with airlines, adding: “Our last Routes Award win was back in 1998, so to be shortlisted again is particularly special.”
Still two thirds of the way back, with a court fight unresolved
The growth has limits. Before the pandemic the airport handled well over 1.6 million passengers a year, so a million leaves it roughly two thirds of the way back, and long-haul carrier Qatar Airways has not returned since Covid.
Andrew RT Davies, the Conservative Senedd member for the Vale of Glamorgan and Bridgend, has welcomed the growth but argued the airport will not become profitable without carriers of that scale.
The money behind the route push is also contested. The Welsh Government, which has owned the airport since 2013, awarded it £205.2m in April 2025 for route incentives, a hangar village and passenger facilities. Bristol Airport lost its challenge to that subsidy at the Competition Appeal Tribunal and was reported in June to be seeking permission from the Court of Appeal to fight on.
The airport says it supports thousands of jobs across south Wales and contributes more than £200m a year to the Welsh economy.
Its route team will be in Frankfurt in October for Routes World itself, the airport said, meeting airlines about further services. Whether or not it leaves with a trophy, that is the part passengers will feel.
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