Virunga National Park: Africa’s Oldest National Park, and Its Current Reality

Virunga National Park stretches along the eastern border of the Democratic Republic of Congo, from the glacier-capped peaks of the Rwenzori Mountains in the north, through dense equatorial rainforest and the open savannah of the Rwindi plains, down to the active volcanoes of Nyiragongo and Nyamulagira on the edge of Lake Kivu. Established in 1925 as Albert National Park, it is Africa’s oldest national park, and its 7,800 square kilometers protect one of the most extraordinary ranges of landscape and wildlife found anywhere on the continent — home to roughly a third of the world’s remaining mountain gorillas, alongside chimpanzees, okapi, elephants, lions, and a bird list that runs into the hundreds.

We want to be straightforward with you from the outset: as of our most recent information, Virunga National Park is not currently open for tourism, and government travel advisories continue to recommend against travel to this part of eastern DRC. Since the M23 rebel group’s escalation in the region and the takeover of Goma, the park’s management has suspended trekking and other visitor activities, and the security situation in North Kivu remains genuinely unstable. We are not going to write this page as though you can book a trip here next month, because you currently can’t, and we would not want you to. What follows is an honest picture of what Virunga is, why it matters, and — most importantly — what we recommend instead while the situation remains as it is.

What Makes Virunga Extraordinary

Virunga’s reputation rests on a combination of scale, age, and sheer diversity that few protected areas anywhere can match. The park spans the full length of the volcanic Virunga Massif on its southern end, where Mount Nyiragongo’s active lava lake glows visibly at night, and where Mount Nyamulagira remains one of Africa’s most frequently erupting volcanoes. To the north, the park climbs into the Rwenzori Mountains, where equatorial glaciers persist at altitude — the same “fire and ice” contrast that has made Virunga a subject of fascination for naturalists and filmmakers for nearly a century.

In between, the park holds dense lowland and montane forest home to mountain gorillas and eastern lowland gorillas both, alongside chimpanzees and the elusive okapi — the striped, giraffe-related forest antelope found almost nowhere else on earth. Further south, the Rwindi plains open into savannah grassland along the shores of Lake Edward, supporting elephants, buffalo, hippos, and lion populations in a landscape that looks, for a moment, more like East Africa’s classic game parks than anything else in the Congo Basin. It is this combination — volcanoes, glaciers, rainforest, savannah, and lake, all within a single contiguous protected area — that has long made Virunga unlike anywhere else.

The Current Situation: Why Virunga Is Not Currently Bookable

Virunga’s tourism programme has been interrupted repeatedly over the past decade by instability in North Kivu, but the escalation since 2025 represents the most serious and prolonged disruption in the park’s modern history. Following the M23 rebel group’s takeover of Goma — the city that serves as the gateway to the park and the location of its main tourism offices — Virunga’s management suspended gorilla trekking, Nyiragongo volcano hikes, chimpanzee tracking, and all other visitor activities. Periods of ceasefire and renewed fighting have alternated since, and as of our most recent information, the park remains closed to tourism for the foreseeable future.

Park rangers continue their conservation work under extraordinarily difficult conditions, and the Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature (ICCN), which manages the park, has stated its intention to reopen tourism once security conditions allow — but no reliable timeline exists for this, and the unpredictability of the region means even a reopening could be followed by sudden further closures. Government travel advisories from multiple countries continue to advise against travel to this part of eastern DRC. We monitor this situation continuously, and if and when it changes meaningfully, we will update this page — but we will not encourage travel here while the advice from official sources remains as serious as it currently is.

What Virunga Normally Offers, When Open

For context — and so that you understand what Virunga represents, even if it is not currently accessible — the park’s signature experiences under normal operating conditions include gorilla trekking to several habituated mountain gorilla families on the slopes of the Virunga Massif, hikes to the summit of Mount Nyiragongo to camp overnight beside its lava lake, chimpanzee tracking in the park’s forested sectors, and game drives across the Rwindi plains in search of lions, elephants, and the savannah wildlife of the Lake Edward shoreline. Under normal conditions, all activities are conducted with armed ranger escorts and coordinated security arrangements managed from the park’s tourism office at the Grande Barrière entrance near Goma.

Entry fees, when the park is operating, have historically been lower than the equivalent permits in Rwanda, and gorilla trekking in Virunga has often been described by those who have done it as a rawer, less polished experience than the more established programmes in Rwanda or Uganda — part of its appeal to a certain kind of traveller, and part of why its current inaccessibility is such a loss for the broader conservation tourism picture in the region.

A Brief History of Africa’s First National Park

Virunga’s establishment in 1925, as Albert National Park, predates every other national park on the continent, and at the time it encompassed not only the present-day Congolese park but also the area that is now Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park — the two were only separated administratively after Belgian colonial rule gave way to independent Rwanda and the Congo. This shared history is part of why the mountain gorilla population of the Virunga Massif is often discussed as a single population spread across three national parks and three countries — Virunga in the DRC, Volcanoes in Rwanda, and Mgahinga in Uganda — even though, in practice, each country’s sector now operates entirely independently, with very different levels of accessibility and stability.

The Congolese sector has, over the decades, faced the most significant operational challenges of the three, from the regional conflicts of the 1990s and 2000s through to the present instability. Despite this, Virunga’s rangers — among the most celebrated and, tragically, among the most frequently killed conservation personnel anywhere in the world — have continued to protect the park’s gorilla population through extraordinary circumstances, and the resilience of this population, even as access for tourists has been repeatedly interrupted, is itself part of the Virunga story.

What We Recommend Instead

If a Virunga visit was part of how you were picturing your gorilla trekking or Albertine Rift experience, there is genuinely good news: every one of the experiences Virunga is known for has a safe, accessible, and well-established equivalent elsewhere in the region, and in most cases more than one.

For mountain gorilla trekking, Bwindi Impenetrable Forest and Mgahinga Gorilla National Park in Uganda, and Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda, all protect populations that are part of the same Virunga Massif ecosystem, with well-organised, secure trekking programmes that have operated reliably for years. For eastern lowland gorilla trekking — Virunga’s other gorilla subspecies — Kahuzi-Biega National Park, also in the DRC but accessed via Rwanda and Bukavu rather than Goma, remains open and has been consistently described by recent visitors as a safe and rewarding alternative, even while Virunga itself is closed. For volcano experiences, Mount Bisoke and Mount Karisimbi in Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park, and the three volcanic peaks of Mgahinga in Uganda, offer comparable high-altitude hiking within the same volcanic chain. For chimpanzee trekking, Nyungwe Forest National Park in Rwanda and Kibale Forest National Park in Uganda are both world-class, secure alternatives.

We can build any of these into an itinerary that captures the spirit of what drew you to the Virunga region in the first place — the volcanic landscapes, the great apes, the sense of the Albertine Rift as a single, connected wilderness — without the uncertainty that currently surrounds Virunga itself.

Tchegera Island: A Note on What Remains Accessible

For travellers already in Goma for other reasons, some visitors have reported that Tchegera Island, a small island retreat on Lake Kivu managed by Virunga’s tourism arm, has remained accessible even during periods when the main park activities have been suspended, offering a lake-based experience away from the park’s gorilla sectors. We mention this only for completeness — any visit to Goma itself, even for an experience as seemingly removed as a lake island, needs to be weighed against the same travel advisories that apply to the wider region, and should only be considered with current, on-the-ground guidance from an operator who can confirm conditions at the time of travel.

Conservation Amid Conflict: Virunga’s Rangers

Whatever the state of tourism, Virunga’s rangers have continued their work protecting the park’s gorillas, elephants, and other wildlife through years of extraordinary difficulty, often at enormous personal risk. The park has, over the past two decades, lost more rangers in the line of duty than almost any other protected area on earth, and the continued survival of its mountain gorilla population — even as the human conflict around it has waxed and waned — is a testament to their commitment.

If you want your travel to support Virunga’s conservation mission without travelling to the park itself, the Virunga Foundation has historically accepted direct donations supporting ranger welfare and park operations, and is worth researching independently if this is something you would like to contribute to. We are not in a position to facilitate donations ourselves, but we are always happy to point interested travellers toward current, verified information.

Let’s Talk About Your Options

We know Virunga represents something significant — Africa’s oldest park, a landscape of volcanoes and glaciers and gorillas that exists almost nowhere else in this combination, and a name that carries real weight for anyone interested in the Albertine Rift. We also know that the responsible thing, right now, is to be honest that it is not somewhere we can send you.

If you’d like to talk through what a Rwanda, Uganda, or combined itinerary could look like instead — one that includes mountain gorilla trekking, volcano hikes, chimpanzee tracking, or even, if it appeals, the eastern lowland gorillas of Kahuzi-Biega — get in touch with our Travel Experts and we’ll build something that captures everything you were hoping for, in places where we can confidently say: yes, this is ready to book, and yes, it’s safe to go.