Month by month
Queen Elizabeth in July
July is the second driest month of the year and the coldest, which is an odd pairing for a park that sits on the equator. It is also the month the high season starts.
If you only want the answer
July averages 24 mm over one rain day and has the coolest nights on the record at 18.4 degrees, alongside the second lowest daytime average at 26.9. The tracks are as good as June's. What changes is the price: July is the first month of the high season at the camps that publish one, and European holiday traffic starts arriving.
Queen Elizabeth weather in July: the coolest nights on the record
At 18.4 degrees, July has the lowest average night-time minimum of the twelve months, a degree and a half below the warmest nights in March at 19.9. Daytime averages 26.9 degrees, second only to November's 26.6. None of that is dramatic by African standards, and it is enough to catch out visitors who assume that an equatorial park cannot produce a genuinely cool pre-dawn start.
The park sits at around 1,300 metres on average, rising to about 1,350 at the Katwe explosion craters and dropping to 910 at Lake Edward, which is why the altitude does real work on the temperature. Pack a proper layer for a 06:00 departure across Kasenyi, and expect the middle of the day to be comfortable rather than punishing.
Second driest, and everything that depends on dry
Twenty-four millimetres over one rain day puts July just behind June and well clear of everything else. The activities that are effectively rain-gated are all in play: the northern crater route, which UWA itself says draws fewer visitors due to poor roads in this section of the park; the Ishasha circuits in the south; and cycling, at $30 per person, which is the one activity where a firm surface changes the experience rather than merely the timing.
The Kyambura Gorge chimpanzee trek also sits easier in a dry month. The walk runs two to five hours from the park headquarters, the treks start at 08:00 and 14:00, and Mweya to the gorge is roughly 35 km and one to one and a half hours, so an early start is required in any case. The permit is $100 for a foreign non-resident, with park entry charged separately, rising to $200 from 1 January 2027.
The month the price turns
July is the first month of high season at Ishasha Wilderness Camp, which counts January, February, July, August, September and December, and at Elephant Plains, whose high season is July, August, September and December at $600 per person full board against $350 in low season. Kyambura Gorge Lodge charges $1,570 per person for a standard banda in high season 2026 against $950 in low, plus a $50 community fee per guest per night.
So June and July are almost identical on the weather and quite different on the bill. If the dates are yours to choose and the rain is what you care about, June gives you the same tracks for less. If July is fixed by school holidays, book early, because the supply that was wide open in May starts filling from this month onwards.