Money, honestly

What a visit to Queen Elizabeth actually costs

Name: Queen Elizabeth National Park
Address: Uganda

Two of you, a Ugandan-registered 4x4, three nights camping and the Kazinga Channel cruise: about $660 all in at 2026 rates. This page shows where every dollar of that goes, then prices the same three nights at a lodge inside the park and at the fly-in top end in Ishasha.

If you only want the answer

A standard day here costs $48 in park fees, which puts Queen Elizabeth at number 9 on our own fee index and makes it one of the cheaper parks we price. For two people self-driving a Ugandan-registered 4x4, three nights camping plus the Kazinga cruise comes to roughly $660: $240 in park entry, about $24 in vehicle fees, $30 in self-drive game-viewing fees, about $62 in camping at a public site, $60 for the cruise and about $242 in diesel from Kampala. The same three nights run to about $1,080 at Queen Elizabeth Bush Lodge with chimpanzee tracking added, and about $2,400 before flights at Ishasha Wilderness Camp. Two things can wreck the arithmetic. A foreign-registered 4x4 pays $150 per 24 hours where the same vehicle on Ugandan plates pays UGX 30,000, around $8, so driving your own car in from Kenya or Rwanda roughly triples the daily budget. And the ticket runs 24 hours from the moment you pass the gate rather than by calendar day, so a trip that starts at midday and ends at 16:00 two days later is billed as three days.

Budget one: self-drive camping, the trip most people take

About $660 for two people over three nights. Queen Elizabeth is a Category A park in UWA's tariff, which puts a foreign non-resident adult at $40 for every 24 hours in the park, the same band as Kidepo, Bwindi, Mgahinga, Kibale and Lake Mburo, and one tier below Murchison Falls. On top of that comes the vehicle. A Ugandan-registered 4x4, the kind every Kampala rental company hires out, pays UGX 30,000 a day, about $8 at the September 2026 rate we use across our fee index. Camping is the cheapest tier UWA publishes, a Category C public site at UGX 40,000 per person per night, and the two-hour launch cruise on the Kazinga Channel is $30 per person. Note what that shilling figure means: the tariff prices Category C only in Uganda shillings and never states a dollar rate for it, so the conversion in the table below is ours rather than UWA's, and it is the one line on this page that could be argued at the gate.

One line people forget: driving yourself around the tracks without a UWA guide carries its own fee of $10 per vehicle per day, separate from both the entrance and the vehicle charge. Take a UWA guide into your own vehicle instead and a day game drive is $25 per guide, which is a fixed cost for the whole car rather than a per-person one, so a full vehicle makes the guide close to free.

We count three fee days for three nights, and that only works if you watch the clock. See the section below on the 24-hour rule, because getting it wrong adds $80 for two people.

Line item	Per day (2 people)	3 nights (2 people)
Park entrance, foreign non-resident (2 × $40, 2026 tariff)	$80	$240
Vehicle entry, Ugandan-registered 4x4 (UGX 30,000/day, ≈$8)	≈$8	≈$24
Self-drive game-viewing fee, per vehicle with no guide	$10	$30
Public campsite, Category C (2 × UGX 40,000; no dollar rate published)	≈$21	≈$62
Kazinga Channel launch cruise (2 × $30, one-time)	n/a	$60
Diesel, Kampala round trip plus park loops, ≈1,000 km	≈$81	≈$242
Total	≈$200	≈$660

Camp at the Category B private site instead, at a published $30 per person per night, and the same three nights come to about $780 with no conversion to argue about. Food, drinking water and getting yourself to Kampala are on top. Since 1 March 2026 UWA no longer holds a reservation for a week while you decide, so the campsite has to be booked and paid in full in one go through reservations@wildlife.go.ug or 0800 100 960.

Budget two: a lodge inside the park, with the chimpanzees added

About $1,080 for two people over three nights, chimpanzee tracking included. Queen Elizabeth Bush Lodge sits in the Katunguru area on the Kazinga Channel and publishes a full 2026 rate card, which is reason enough to use it as the mid-range example. A Heritage Safari Tent is $95 per tent per night for two on bed and breakfast, with Explorer's Tents at $80 double and Signature Bandas at $165. The lodge states plainly that park entry is excluded and that activities are billed separately, so the fee stack from budget one stays exactly as it is.

The chimpanzee permit for Kyambura Gorge is the line that moves this budget. It costs $100 for a foreign non-resident, and unlike Kibale the park entrance fee is not included, so two people add $200 on top of the entry they are already paying. The permit covers the guide and a nature walk on the day you track. Foreign non-residents can only book it through a licensed tour operator, so this is not a gate purchase.

Two nights before you commit to the permit: the group in the gorge is small and isolated, and the tracking itself runs two to five hours from the park headquarters. Read our wildlife page before you decide whether the gorge is worth $100 to you.

Line item	Per day (2 people)	3 nights (2 people)
Park entrance, foreign non-resident (2 × $40, 2026 tariff)	$80	$240
Vehicle entry, Ugandan-registered 4x4 (UGX 30,000/day, ≈$8)	≈$8	≈$24
Self-drive game-viewing fee, per vehicle with no guide	$10	$30
Queen Elizabeth Bush Lodge, Heritage Safari Tent, B&B (2026 card)	$95	$285
Kazinga Channel launch cruise (2 × $30, one-time)	n/a	$60
Chimpanzee tracking, Kyambura Gorge (2 × $100, entry excluded)	n/a	$200
Diesel, same round trip, ≈1,000 km	≈$81	≈$242
Total	≈$274	≈$1,080

Swap the chimpanzees for UWA's experiential lion tracking and the same three nights cost more, not less: that permit is $200 per person plus a $10 community fee per person and your own vehicle costs. It runs on the Kasenyi plains in the north, so it is no route to the tree-climbing lions in the south.

Budget three: fly-in and top-end in Ishasha

About $2,400 for two people over three nights before flights and road transfers, built on Ishasha Wilderness Camp. It is the only camp that describes itself as inside the park in the southern sector, and its published low-season rate is $350 per adult per night sharing, covering full board with three courses a day, all hot drinks, bar snacks, house drinks, one massage per stay and laundry from two nights. High season is January, February, July, August, September and December, and the camp prices those months higher.

Three things sit outside that rate. Park entry is excluded, so two people still pay $40 each per 24 hours. There is a compulsory Future Generations Trust levy of $10 per person per night. And road transfers, premium drinks and optional activities are all billed separately, with no published figures for any of them.

If you are flying, go to Kihihi rather than Kasese. Kihihi is roughly 15 km from Ishasha and the camp puts the transfer at about 45 minutes, against four to five hours by road from Kasese via Mweya. Aerolink serves both airstrips daily, though it publishes no fare for either route, so ask reservations directly. In March, April, May and November the schedule thins out to a single flight each way per day.

Line item	Per day (2 people)	3 nights (2 people)
Ishasha Wilderness Camp, full board, low season (2 × $350)	$700	$2,100
Future Generations Trust levy (2 × $10 per night)	$20	$60
Park entrance, foreign non-resident (2 × $40, 2026 tariff)	$80	$240
Flights, Entebbe to Kihihi, and road transfer to camp	Not published	On request
Total before flights and transfers	≈$800	≈$2,400

The Kazinga cruise does not belong in this budget. Mweya is about 107 km of murram from Ishasha, so a cruise from a base in the south means most of a day in the car each way. Mweya Safari Lodge, the best-known address in the park, publishes no room rate anywhere, so we cannot price a Mweya version of this budget without inventing a figure.

The 24-hour clock, and the day it quietly adds

The tariff is explicit: a day ticket is valid for twenty four hours from the time of entrance. It does not expire at midnight and it does not run by calendar day. Drive in at 14:00 on Monday and you are covered until 14:00 on Tuesday, and the moment you pass that mark UWA counts another full day.

This is where a two-day plan turns into a three-day bill. Enter at noon on day one and leave at 16:00 on day three and you have used 52 hours, which is three 24-hour blocks, so two people pay $240 rather than the $160 they had budgeted. The fix costs nothing: note the hour on your receipt, plan the exit before that hour, and keep every receipt because rangers check them.

Vehicles run on the same clock. Concessionaire vehicles belonging to a lodge inside the park are the one exception and pay once per trip. A self-driver camping or staying outside the boundary is not a concessionaire, so the vehicle fee falls due for every day inside.

The registration gap, and the $150 line

Read the vehicle table twice before you plan a cross-border drive. A foreign-registered tour vehicle or 4x4 pays $150 per 24 hours at Queen Elizabeth. The identical vehicle on Ugandan plates pays UGX 30,000, around $8, the same as a minibus. Over three days that is $450 against about $24, which is more than the entire camping budget in budget one.

The gap runs through the whole table. A foreign-registered saloon pays $40 against UGX 20,000 on Ugandan plates, a minibus or pick-up $50 against UGX 30,000, an overlander $150 against UGX 100,000 and a bus or lorry $200 against UGX 200,000. Anyone bringing their own vehicle from Kenya, Rwanda or Tanzania should budget the dollar column and watch the daily total roughly triple. Renting inside Uganda is the single biggest cost decision at this park, and it has nothing to do with which lodge you pick.

One piece of good news specific to Queen Elizabeth: the extra $10 vehicle surcharge that applies at Murchison Falls does not apply here.

The fuel maths, dated

GlobalPetrolPrices had Uganda's diesel at UGX 6,647 a litre on 7 September 2026, which is about $1.75 at the UGX 3,844 to the dollar rate we use across our fee index.

Our estimate assumes roughly 1,000 km of driving: 410 km from Kampala to the park by UWA's own figure, the same back, plus about 180 km of game tracks over three days. A loaded diesel 4x4 on a mix of tarmac and murram burns around 14 litres per 100 km, which is about 140 litres, or roughly $242 at the September price. That consumption figure is our working assumption rather than a measured one.

The whole Kampala approach is tarmac, whether you come south through Mbarara and Bushenyi or north through Fort Portal and Kasese. Inside the park the tracks are murram. Fill up in Kasese, Mbarara or Bushenyi rather than counting on anything inside the boundary.

Paying, and when the money is due

Assume the gate is cashless. UWA's tariff lists mobile money through MTN MoMo Pay and Airtel Money Pay, POS card machines, bank transfer and an online portal, and never mentions cash in any currency. UWA's own Queen Elizabeth brochure, on the same website, still says you can pay in shillings, dollars, pounds, euros or by Visa, and also describes a prepaid Wildlife Card loaded at Katunguru or the Queen's Pavilion. The tariff is the newer document, so take a working card and a funded mobile money line and treat cash as a fallback that may be refused.

Since 1 March 2026 the seven-day reservation window has been suspended, so nothing is held for you. A booking exists once it is paid in full. Chimpanzee permits for foreign non-residents and Rest of Africa visitors can only be bought through a licensed tour operator; everything else can be paid at the reservations office or at the gates. UWA's payment portal at pay.ugandawildlife.org refused connections when we checked on 18 September 2026, so budget time for email and phone rather than assuming you can settle it online.

Where the money surprises people

A foreign-registered 4x4 costs $150 a day against about $8 for the same vehicle on Ugandan plates. Renting in Uganda saves more than anything else on this page.
The entrance ticket runs 24 hours from the hour you drive in, so a midday start and a late-afternoon finish two days later is billed as three days.
Chimpanzee tracking at Kyambura is $100 and the park entrance is not included, which is the opposite of the arrangement at Kibale.
Driving yourself without a guide carries a separate $10 per vehicle per day fee on top of the vehicle entrance charge.
A guided day game drive is $25 per guide rather than per person, so it costs the same for one passenger or five.
UWA's experiential lion tracking is $200 per person plus a $10 community fee, and it rises to $500 for foreign non-residents on 1 January 2027.
Ishasha costs nothing extra, though reaching it from Mweya and back is most of two days of driving.
Cash is absent from the tariff's list of payment methods, and full payment is due the moment you book.
The tariff booklet expired on 30 June 2026 and no successor has been published, so every figure here is the last rate UWA put in print.