Yellow Fever Certificate no longer mandatory for traveling to Uganda: What safari travelers need to know

If you have booked a Uganda gorilla trek or any other safari and you are worrying about whether your yellow fever certificate would be checked at Entebbe, you can exhale. After several years of having a yellow fever vaccination certificate as mandatory for travellers into Uganda, Uganda has finally removed the yellow fever certificate as a mandatory entry requirement into the country.

This declaration was made by the Directorate of Citizenship and Immigration Control under the Ministry of Internal Affairs, as stated in a document issued on 27 August 2026 and as a result, the yellow fever certificate is no longer listed as a requirement on the Uganda’s electronic visa application portal or the National citizenship and immigration control website.

This declaration simplifies entry requirements for travelers visiting Uganda since for most of the travellers this was not a question or whether they needed the vaccine but rather what was required of them.

However, if you are on a combined East African safari and your itinerary continues on to, Kenya or Tanzania, or if you are flying home to a country with its own rules, the yellow card in your passport wallet may still matter a great deal.

Does no longer mandatory mean no longer needed? What is the Yellow Fever risk in Uganda?

No. Removing the certificate requirement is an immigration decision, not a statement that yellow fever has gone away. Yellow fever is a mosquito-borne viral disease, and Uganda is on the World Health Organization’s list of countries with risk of transmission, and Uganda has had documented outbreaks, including the northern Uganda outbreak that began in late 2010 and another outbreak declared in May 2019 affecting the northern and central regions of Uganda. Severe yellow fever carries a fatality rate of roughly 30 to 60 percent, and there is no specific antiviral cure for this disease however a single vaccine dose protects most people for life.

Uganda’s decision to drop the yellow fever certificate requirement is a real improvement for travelers. It removes a document, a deadline and for some people, a medical dilemma from the pre-trip checklist for many. However, it does not remove the disease, the risk of mosquitoes, the entry rules to Kenya and Tanzania, or the re-entry rules for some countries such as India.

So, a correct approach to this information as you plan your Uganda safari would be; confirm your entry paperwork against official sources, speak to a travel clinic about the vaccine on its health merits, carry your certificate if you have one, and build your additional health plan around malaria prevention and mosquito bite avoidance.