Mellow Safaris · Nairobi, Kenya+254 707 820 948TOSK · TRA · AMREF Flying Doctors · Kenya Wildlife Service

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Elephant herd on the Kenyan plains

19 June – 17 July 2027

AFCON 2027 Safari Packages

You will have days between matches. Kenya is not a country to spend them in a hotel lobby.

Plan Your AFCON Safari →

Why this tournament

Three host countries, and two of them are ours

The 2027 Africa Cup of Nations is the first to be co-hosted by three nations — Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda — and the first held in East Africa in half a century. Kenyan matches are played in Nairobi, which is also the departure point for the Maasai Mara, Ol Pejeta, Samburu and Lake Naivasha. Each is a drive away, not a second flight.

Group stages leave three or four days between a team's matches. That is not enough time to fly home and too much to sit still — but it is exactly enough for a safari. We have run these routes since 2018, and for this tournament we build the dates around the fixture list rather than the other way round.

Where the football is played

Ten grounds, three countries

Bars show seating capacity. Kenya plays entirely in Nairobi, and Tanzania fields four grounds including two on Zanzibar.

Raila Odinga International Stadium, NairobiArtist's impression

Kenya

3 grounds

Nairobi

  • Raila Odinga International Stadium60,000

    Nairobi

  • Moi International Sports Centre55,000

    Kasarani

  • Nyayo National Stadium30,000

    Nairobi

Every Kenyan match is played in Nairobi, which is also where all four of our safari routes depart from. The Raila Odinga International Stadium, formerly Talanta Sports City, is a new 60,000-seat ground built for this tournament.

Benjamin Mkapa Stadium, Dar es Salaam, from the air

Tanzania

4 grounds

Dar es Salaam · Arusha · Zanzibar

  • Benjamin Mkapa Stadium60,000

    Dar es Salaam

  • Fumba Stadium35,000

    Zanzibar

  • Samia Suluhu Hassan Stadium30,000

    Arusha

  • Amaan Stadium15,000

    Zanzibar

Arusha is the gateway to the Serengeti and the Ngorongoro Crater. Zanzibar is a beach island with matches on it.

Mandela National Stadium, Kampala, from the air

Uganda

3 grounds

Kampala · Hoima · Lira

  • Mandela National Stadium64,125

    Kampala

  • Hoima City Stadium20,000

    Hoima

  • Akii Bua Stadium20,000

    Lira

Reachable overland from Nairobi, and covered by the same tourist visa as Kenya.

Venue allocation per match follows the draw. We update this page as CAF publishes the schedule.

The tournament

Seventy years of it, and never once here

The Africa Cup of Nations has been played since 1957. In 2027 it comes to East Africa for the first time in half a century, and to Kenya for the first time ever.

Most titles

  • 7Egypt1957, 1959, 1986, 1998, 2006, 2008, 2010
  • 5Cameroon1984, 1988, 2000, 2002, 2017
  • 4Ghana1963, 1965, 1978, 1982
  • 3Nigeria1980, 1994, 2013
  • 3Ivory Coast1992, 2015, 2023

The last three finals

2023 · Ivory Coast

Ivory Coast 2-1 Nigeria

The hosts lifted it after nearly going out in the group stage, having lost 4-0 to Equatorial Guinea and squeezed through as a best third-placed side.

2021 · Cameroon

Senegal 0-0 Egypt, 4-2 on penalties

Senegal's first title. Sadio Mane missed a penalty in the seventh minute, then scored the one that won the shootout.

2019 · Egypt

Algeria 1-0 Senegal

Baghdad Bounedjah scored inside two minutes with a deflection, and Algeria defended it for the remaining eighty-eight.

The 2025 title is contested. CAF's appeal board awarded it to Morocco in March 2026 after the final had been played; Senegal have appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, and the case was unresolved at the time of writing.

Included in every package

Your Nairobi days, handled

Whichever safari you choose, the days you are in the city are not wasted ones. Every package includes the four things worth doing in Nairobi, arranged around your match times.

Nairobi National Park
The only national park inside a capital city anywhere in the world. Rhino, lion, buffalo and giraffe with office towers on the skyline behind them.
Sheldrick Wildlife Trust
The elephant orphanage, open to visitors for one hour a day. Orphaned calves being hand-raised for eventual release back into Tsavo.
Giraffe Centre
Eye to eye with endangered Rothschild's giraffe from a raised feeding platform.
Nairobi city tour
The Karen Blixen Museum, the markets, and the parts of the city most visitors fly over.
Rothschild's giraffe at the Giraffe Centre in Nairobi

Where you would go

Five places, all of them a drive from the stadium

Honest drive times from Nairobi, so you can judge for yourself what fits between two matches.

Lion pride on a track in the Maasai Mara

Maasai Mara

5 to 6 hours, or 45 minutes by air

Kenya's most famous reserve, and the northern end of the same ecosystem as the Serengeti — the border is a line on a map, not on the ground. Around 1,510 square kilometres of open plain, riverine forest and rolling grassland.

  • The highest big-cat density in Kenya — lion, cheetah and leopard
  • Mara River crossings, usually July to October
  • Maasai communities on the conservancies that ring the reserve
  • Balloon flights at first light over the plains

Mara means spotted in the Maa language, for the way acacia and cloud shadow scatter across the grassland.

Elephants below Kilimanjaro in AmboseliAbout 4 hours

Amboseli

Dry lake bed and spring-fed swamps beneath Kilimanjaro, which stands just across the Tanzanian border. The meltwater is what holds the game here through the dry season.

  • Big-tusked elephants, among the largest left in Africa
  • Kilimanjaro at its clearest in the first hour after dawn
  • Swamps that concentrate game in June and July

Amboseli's elephants are the most studied on earth — continuous research on the same families has run here since 1972.

Lake shore walking safari near NaivashaAbout 2 hours

Lake Naivasha

A freshwater lake on the floor of the Rift Valley at around 1,880 metres, ringed by fever trees and flower farms. The closest real wildlife to Nairobi, which is why it fits between two matches.

  • Boat among the hippos and fish eagles
  • Crescent Island on foot — no predators, so you walk among zebra and giraffe
  • Hell's Gate nearby for cycling and the gorge walk

More than 400 bird species have been recorded around the lake.

White rhino beside a safari vehicle at Ol PejetaAbout 3 hours 30

Ol Pejeta Conservancy

Around 360 square kilometres on the Laikipia plateau, run as a working cattle ranch and a conservancy at the same time. Tarmac most of the way from Nairobi, via Nanyuki on the equator.

  • The largest black rhino population in East Africa
  • The only chimpanzees in Kenya, at the Sweetwaters sanctuary
  • Rhino tracking on foot with the conservancy rangers

Najin and Fatu, mother and daughter, live here under 24-hour armed guard. They are the last two northern white rhinos on earth.

Reticulated giraffe in SamburuAbout 3 hours from Ol Pejeta

Samburu

Arid, red-earth country along the Ewaso Nyiro river in Kenya's north. Completely different in look and in species from the Mara, and far quieter — you will share sightings with nobody.

  • The Samburu Special Five, found almost nowhere else in Kenya
  • Elephant families along the river through the afternoon
  • Samburu communities, distinct from the Maasai further south

The Special Five are Grevy's zebra, reticulated giraffe, gerenuk, Beisa oryx and Somali ostrich — all northern species you will not see in the Mara.

On the way

The drive is part of it

Every road out of Nairobi drops down the wall of the Rift Valley. The Mara turns west at Mai Mahiu; Naivasha and Nakuru carry on north. Either way, the first hour is the best driving in Kenya, and we stop.

  1. 1

    The escarpment viewpoint

    40 minutes out of Nairobi

    The road climbs out of the city, tops a ridge, and the whole Rift Valley drops away below you — Longonot on one side, Suswa on the other, the floor a thousand metres down. Curio stalls line the lay-by and everybody stops.

    The Great Rift Valley runs some 6,000 kilometres from the Middle East to Mozambique, and is one of the few landforms on earth unmistakable from space. Below the viewpoint at Mai Mahiu stands a tiny stone chapel built in 1942 by Italian prisoners of war, the men who cut the road down the escarpment. It seats about twenty.

  2. 2

    Mount Longonot

    On the Naivasha road

    A dormant volcano standing 2,776 metres, with a crater two kilometres across and its own forest growing on the floor. You can climb to the rim in under two hours, or walk the full circuit in four or five with the valley turning below you the whole way.

    Longonot last erupted in the 1860s. Its name comes from the Maasai Oloonong'ot — mountains of many spurs.

  3. 3

    Hell's Gate

    At Naivasha

    One of the very few parks in Kenya you are allowed to walk or cycle through, because there are no elephants and virtually no large predators. You ride between Fischer's Tower and the cliffs with zebra and giraffe alongside, then walk down into Ol Njorowa gorge on foot.

    Beneath the park sits Olkaria, the largest geothermal complex in Africa. Around forty per cent of Kenya's electricity is generated from steam under this valley — you see the pipes threading through the park as you cycle.

  4. 4

    Lake Nakuru

    About 2 hours 30 from Nairobi

    A fenced sanctuary holding both black and white rhino, along with Rothschild's giraffe and big herds of buffalo. The view from Baboon Cliff over the whole lake is one of the great Rift Valley pictures.

    You will read that Nakuru means a million flamingos. It did once. The lake rose sharply from around 2010, diluting the alkaline water the algae need, and the flocks moved on — some return when levels fall. Come for the rhino and treat flamingos as a bonus, and you will not be disappointed.

The safaris

Four ways to use the days between matches

All budget and mid-range, all built to slot around a fixture list. Tell us which team you are following and we will tell you which of these fits.

Lion cub in the Maasai Mara

2 days

Maasai Mara

The shortest way to see the Mara properly. Big cat densities here are among the highest in Africa, and two days of game drives is genuinely enough to find lion, cheetah and elephant.

  • Day 1 — Early departure from Nairobi, arrive Mara for lunch, afternoon game drive.
  • Day 2 — Full morning game drive, lunch, return to Nairobi by evening.

Fits a single gap between two group-stage matches in Nairobi.

Ask about this trip →
Boat ride on Lake Naivasha

3 days

Maasai Mara & Lake Naivasha

The Mara, then Naivasha on the way home. The Naivasha day is the one people remember — a boat among hippos, then Crescent Island, where there are no predators so you walk on foot among zebra, giraffe and wildebeest.

  • Day 1 — Nairobi to the Mara, afternoon game drive.
  • Day 2 — Full day in the Mara, evening transfer to Naivasha.
  • Day 3 — Boat ride and Crescent Island walking safari, back in Nairobi by late afternoon.

Runs on different dates to the two-day trip, so you can pick whichever gap your fixtures leave you.

Ask about this trip →
Grevy's zebra in Samburu

3 days

Ol Pejeta & Samburu

A night at Ol Pejeta and a night in Samburu. Ol Pejeta holds the largest black rhino population in East Africa. Samburu has species found almost nowhere else — Grevy's zebra, reticulated giraffe, gerenuk, Beisa oryx and the Somali ostrich.

  • Day 1 — Nairobi to Ol Pejeta via Nanyuki, afternoon game drive and rhino tracking.
  • Day 2 — Morning drive, transfer north to Samburu, afternoon along the Ewaso Nyiro river.
  • Day 3 — Morning game drive, return to Nairobi.

For anyone who has already done the Mara, or wants something other than the obvious.

Ask about this trip →
Zebra on the plains

Built around the fixture list

Maasai Mara, Serengeti & Ngorongoro

Follow the tournament across the border. The Mara and the Serengeti are one ecosystem divided by a national boundary — the animals do not recognise it and neither does this trip. You take in a knockout match in Tanzania on the way through.

  • Kenya leg — Maasai Mara game drives from Nairobi.
  • Crossing — south into Tanzania, Serengeti plains.
  • Ngorongoro — down into the crater floor, a contained ecosystem with resident lion, elephant and black rhino.
  • Football — a knockout fixture in Arusha, Dar es Salaam or Zanzibar depending on the draw.

For fans staying through the group stage into the knockout rounds.

Ask about this trip →

What we do

We handle everything but the result

You are travelling a long way for a tournament spread across three countries. The football is the reason you came; the logistics are our job.

Where you sleep

Three ways to do it, and you can mix them — a hotel on match nights, canvas in the park, an apartment if the group is big enough.

City hotels

Nairobi has good budget and mid-range hotels within reach of all three grounds. We book them, we confirm them, and if a kick-off time moves we move the booking with it. We will not push you upmarket to pad a margin — tell us your ceiling and we work under it.

Airbnbs and apartments

Travelling as a group of four or more? An apartment usually costs less than separate rooms, and gives you a kitchen and somewhere to sit up arguing about the match afterwards. Already booked one yourself? Keep it — we collect you from the door. Or we will find one and check it over before you commit.

Tented camps

This is where you sleep on safari, and it is not roughing it. Proper beds, hot water, meals cooked for you, and the bush going on outside the canvas all night. Most people who arrive doubtful about the tent leave saying it was the best night of the trip.

What is taken care of

Booked, confirmed and paid for before you land.

Match tickets

Tell us the fixtures you want and we apply the moment CAF opens sales — you will not be refreshing a ticketing site at three in the morning from another time zone, or working out how to pay from abroad. If a fixture genuinely sells out we tell you the same day and you pay nothing for it. We would rather lose the booking than take money for a seat we cannot put you in.

Your own vehicle and driver

One vehicle and one driver for the whole trip. Airport on arrival, hotel to the stadium and back after the final whistle, out to the parks and home again. No negotiating with a taxi outside Kasarani at midnight, no guessing which matatu goes where, no surge pricing on a match night.

Full board or half board

Your choice in Nairobi — and we would gently suggest half board, because the city's restaurants are half the reason to be there. In the parks it is full board by necessity, since there is nowhere else to eat. Tell us about allergies or dietary requirements once and we carry it through every camp and every kitchen.

One person, start to finish

The same specialist from your first message to the day you fly home — same name, same number, reachable on the ground in Kenya while you are actually here. Not a ticket queue in another country, and not a different agent each time you write.

Dates, and the draw

Exact departure dates follow the fixture list, which follows the draw. Get in touch now with the team you are following and we will hold provisional dates around their likely group matches, then confirm the moment the schedule is published.

Mara camps and Nairobi hotels sell out for June and July in an ordinary year. With a continental tournament running through both months, booking early is not caution — it is the only way to get the beds and the seats.

Before you travel

Questions fans actually ask

Do I need a visa for Kenya?+

Kenya replaced visas with an Electronic Travel Authorisation in January 2024. Most visitors apply online before travelling and receive approval electronically, and since 2025 most African nationals are exempt from the eTA altogether. Rules do change, so check the official Kenyan government portal close to your travel date rather than relying on any tour operator page, including this one.

Can one visa cover Kenya and Uganda?+

Yes. The East Africa Tourist Visa is a 90-day multiple-entry visa covering Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda for around 100 US dollars. If you are following a team across the Kenyan and Ugandan legs of the tournament, that is the one to get. It must first be used to enter whichever of the three countries issued it.

Does that visa cover Tanzania too?+

No, and this catches people out. Tanzania is not part of the East Africa Tourist Visa scheme and requires its own separate visa. If your plans include matches in Arusha, Dar es Salaam or Zanzibar, budget for two separate entry permissions.

Can you actually get me match tickets?+

We apply for the fixtures you name as soon as CAF opens sales, and we handle the payment and collection. What we will not do is promise a seat before allocations exist. If a match sells out we tell you immediately and you are charged nothing for it, and we will offer you the next best fixture in the same window.

How far is the Maasai Mara from Nairobi?+

Around five to six hours by road, or about 45 minutes by light aircraft from Wilson Airport. Lake Naivasha is roughly two hours and Ol Pejeta about three and a half, which is why the shorter trips are built around those two.

Will I see the Great Migration during AFCON?+

Possibly, towards the end of the tournament, but nobody can promise it. The herds move on rainfall, not on a calendar. The first Mara River crossings can begin as early as June, the main crossings usually run through July and August, and the bulk of the herd settles in the Mara from September. The tournament closes on 17 July, so its later stages fall at the front edge of crossing season. Treat a crossing as a bonus rather than the reason you came.

What is the weather like in June and July?+

This is Kenya's dry season and the best game viewing of the year. Grass is short and animals concentrate around water, which makes them easier to find. It is also the coolest period — warm days and genuinely cold early mornings on game drives, so bring a fleece. Nairobi sits at 1,795 metres and mornings there are chilly.

When will you confirm exact dates?+

Departure dates follow the fixture list, which follows the draw. Get in touch now and we will hold provisional dates around your team's likely match days, then confirm as soon as the schedule is published. Mara camps and Nairobi hotels sell out for June and July in an ordinary year, so holding early matters more than usual.

Tell us who you are following

Send us your team and your travel dates. We will come back with the safaris that fit the gaps in their fixture list, the tickets we can get you, and a price.

Plan Your AFCON Safari →