İstanbul Airport guide

Istanbul Airport officially opened on 29 October 2018 and began commercial flights the same week, replacing the outgrown Atatürk Airport as Istanbul's primary international gateway. Turkish Airlines completed the transfer of its entire scheduled operation from Atatürk to the new site in a single 41-hour move on 6 April 2019, one of the largest airport transfers ever carried out.

The airport sits in the Arnavutköy district on Istanbul's European side, near the Black Sea coast and about 35 km from the city centre. Its terminal building covers 1.44 million square metres, the world's third-largest airport terminal structure. A planned capacity of 150 million annual passengers is targeted by 2027 as further runways and phases are completed.

Turkish Airlines operates its global hub from Istanbul Airport, supported by Turkish Cargo's freight operations, which moved to the site in February 2022. The airport handled 84.5 million passengers in 2025, of which 66.6 million were international travellers, across roughly 549,000 aircraft movements. A wide network of foreign carriers connects Istanbul to destinations across Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas alongside Turkish Airlines' domestic and regional partners.