Nashville by the numbers: Recapping 2025 in stats
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios
In 2025, Nashville hotels saw their busiest tourism month ever. The zoo hit a high-water mark in its effort to restore the population of Puerto Rican crested toads. And Vanderbilt University Medical Center set a new world record for heart transplants.
The big picture: We were inspired by Spotify Wrapped to pull statistics that summed up different aspects of life in Nashville this year.
- Our findings are perfect conversation starters for all of the holiday parties and family dinners on your calendar.
📚 The Nashville Public Library logged more than 7 million book and e-book checkouts this year.
- Zoom in: The top fiction title was "Great Big Beautiful Life" by Emily Henry, while "The Let Them Theory" by Mel Robbins reigned supreme in nonfiction.
🧳 Tourism hit another peak, with 995,239 hotel room nights sold in October, according to Nashville Convention & Visitors Corp — the most in a single month in Nashville history.
🕯️ Thistle Farms team members poured a whopping 32,000 candles during their fiscal year, which ran July 2024-June 2025.
🐸 The Nashville Zoo produced and then released 6,681 endangered Puerto Rican crested toads back into the wild in Puerto Rico, the largest tally since the conservation program began.
🥕 Second Harvest of Middle Tennessee and its partners distributed 47,981,965 pounds of food through mid-December of this year. About a third of that was produce.
- Between the lines: The nonprofit was particularly busy this fall, when a lapse in SNAP benefits triggered a wave of intense need in Nashville and nationwide.
🌷 Gardeners at Cheekwood planted 152,690 seasonal plants throughout the year, including 100,000 tulips.
🩺 Vanderbilt University Medical Center's cardiac surgeons performed 200 heart transplants in 2025 — the largest total in history.
- Flashback: That eclipses the world record the Vanderbilt Transplant Center set last year with 174 adult and pediatric heart transplants.
🧺 Metro police are prepping to bring groceries and goodies to at least 235 families and 140 elderly residents through their Christmas Basket program. That includes toys for more than 1,000 kids.