The May Day and National Day holidays are China’s golden tourism festivals with favorable climate conditions in most regions. However, the sudden and destructive feature of tourism-related meteorological disasters, combined with the concentrated travel of people during these periods, may have a serious impact on the tourism industry. In this study, daily observation data from national meteorological stations and information of landfall tropical cyclones in China since 1961 are used to reveal the spatio-temporal patterns of tourism-related meteorological disasters during the May Day and National Day holidays. Moreover, the disasters’ long-term variation trends are analyzed. The results indicate that the number of me-teorological disaster days during the National Day holiday is generally less than that during the May Day holiday. Except for fog, cold wave events and tropical cyclones, all types of tourism-related meteorological disasters exert weaker impacts in the National Day holiday than in the May Day holiday. The number of meteorological disaster days decreases in the later stages of both the May Day and National Day holidays, which is favorable for tourism. There are obvious spatial differences in tourism-related meteorological disasters across China. Northern China is primarily impacted by strong wind, sand-dust and cold wave events. Southwest China is greatly affected by severe convection and fog. Tourism-related meteorological disasters in South China are mainly dominated by torrential rains and high temperature. The number of national-average meteorological disaster days during the two holidays shows a significant decreasing trend, and the downward trends in strong winds and sand-dust days are especially notable. However, the number of high temperature days shows a significant increasing trend. Overall, the occurrence probability of tourism-related meteorological disasters is higher in northeastern Xizang, southern Qinghai, northwestern Sichuan and southern Yunnan than in Northeast China, North China, Huang-Huai Region, the southeastern part of Northwest China, and northern Xinjiang. From 1961 to 2024, there were a total of 18 tropical cyclones having made landfall in China during the National Day holiday with the highest landfall frequency in Guangdong Province. Under the background of global climate warming, more attention should be paid to the impact of high temperature and landfall tropical cyclones during the May Day and National Day holidays.