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Chad — hero

Africa

Chad

Where the Sahara meets the savannah and true wild Africa begins. Chad rewards the intrepid family with raw Saharan dunes, ancient rock art, and some of the continent's most dramatic wildlife recoveries.

Currency
Central African Cfa Franc (XAF)
Language
Arabic, French
Best time
December – January
Visa
Visa required in advance from a Chadian embassy (nearest in Belgium or France; none in the UK)

Still current at: 13 November 2026 Updated: 4 November 2026

See which areas are affected
Official FCDO travel advice map for Chad
FCDO (TA) 010 Edition 4 © Crown Copyright

FCDO's detailed advisory map (PDF) FCDO (TA) 010 Edition 4 © Crown Copyright

Source: UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office — the definitive source. Check it close to your travel dates.

Flight cancelled or delayed because of this? Your rights under UK261 / EU261 →

Why visit

Why Chad

Where the Sahara meets the savannah and true wild Africa begins. Chad rewards the intrepid family with raw Saharan dunes, ancient rock art, and some of the continent's most dramatic wildlife recoveries.

  • The Ennedi Massif (UNESCO) — sandstone arches and the camel-lined Guelta d'Archei (note: FCDO all-travel zone)
  • The Lakes of Ounianga (UNESCO), vivid Saharan lakes in the Ennedi desert (also an all-travel zone)
  • Zakouma National Park in the south-east, a conservation success with big elephant herds
  • Lake Chad and the Sahelian markets and culture of N'Djamena
Read more

Chad is Africa's best-kept secret for soft adventure and experiential travel — a vast, staggeringly beautiful country where the Sahara dissolves into the Sahel and extraordinary landscapes unfold at every turn. The sculpted sandstone pinnacles of the Ennedi Massif, a UNESCO World Heritage site, rival anything in Jordan or Utah, yet you'll share them with almost no one.

For wildlife lovers, Zakouma National Park is a genuine conservation triumph — elephant herds have rebounded dramatically under community-led protection, and lion, buffalo and shoebill stork roam freely. This is regenerative tourism making a visible, measurable difference.

Chad demands commitment — logistics are real, infrastructure is limited — but that is precisely the point. Families seeking a journey that is genuinely untouched and profoundly memorable will find few destinations on earth that deliver quite like this.

A pillar, not a footnote

Eat your way through Chad

The single reason many travellers come back — the food culture worth reshaping a trip around, and the dishes to seek out region by region.

Chad

Sahelian to the core: millet boule torn by hand into okra-peanut stew, grilled camel, and sweet hibiscus tea.

Chad eats from the Sahel. The daily meal is la boule, a stiff mound of millet or sorghum you tear off with your right hand and dip into sauce — most characteristically daraba, a thick okra-and-vegetable stew bound with peanut butter, everyone reaching into the same shared bowl. Breakfast is la bouille, a thin, almost liquid millet-and-peanut porridge sharpened with lemon.

The country divides on the plate. The arid Muslim north lives on millet, dates, grilled camel and lamb and glasses of tea, with little alcohol; the greener south adds river capitaine and Nile perch, sorghum and home-brewed millet beer. Millet, sorghum and groundnut are the pantry; sweet-tart hibiscus karkanji the drink to seek out. It's plain, communal food, shaped entirely by a hard and beautiful landscape.

Dishes to seek out
  • La boule (stiff millet or sorghum staple)
  • Daraba (okra and peanut-butter stew)
  • La bouille (thin millet-peanut porridge)
  • Grilled camel or lamb (spit-grilled Sahelian meat)
  • Capitaine (grilled river Nile perch)
  • Sharmouta (sun-dried meat)
  • Karkanji (spiced hibiscus drink)
Plan your own trip to Chad
When to go

Weather & timing in Chad Right now RIGHT NOW 20°C partly cloudy

Best Mar, Jun, Oct · Shoulder Jan, Apr–May

Units

Next 7 days

Forecast · Met Office · Powered by Met Office data

Typical · climate data

Best time to visit

December – January

Best for
  • Culture
  • Cuisine
  • Landscape
  • History
At a glance
Sunshine 10.1 hr/day
Rainfall 52 mm/mo
Wettest August · 275.9mm
Driest January · 0mm
Part of Sahel →
By season

Units

Spring (Mar–May)

What to expect — Daytime highs average about 41°C with overnight lows near 27°C, and it stays largely dry.

What's best — Peak heat.

Summer (Jun–Aug)

What to expect — Daytime highs average about 34°C with overnight lows near 25°C — the wettest stretch of the year.

What's best — Peak heat, then Wet season, then Monsoon.

Autumn (Sep–Nov)

What to expect — Daytime highs average about 34°C with overnight lows near 23°C.

What's best — Wet season, then Peak heat.

Winter (Dec–Feb)

What to expect — Daytime highs average about 34°C with overnight lows near 19°C, and it stays largely dry.

What's best — Dry season. Jan is among the best months here (dry season, sunny).

Live forecast map · Windy.com · temperature with wind, °C and km/h
A little context

A little history

To read what you're looking at — the empires and eras that shaped Chad's food, art and streets.

The Kanem-Bornu Empire around Lake Chad (roughly 9th–19th centuries) controlled trans-Saharan trade — spreading Islam and a trade-oriented culture across the north — reinforced by the Baguirmi and Ouaddaï sultanates — conquered by France from around 1900 and governed within French Equatorial Africa, which made French official and grafted a southern Christian-animist core onto a Muslim north — independent on 11 August 1960 with that north-south fault line unresolved — and since marked by decades of civil war and rebellion, with oil from 2003 now dominating the economy while chronic insecurity in the north and Lake Chad basin still shapes travel.
Before you book

Know before you go

The practical back-matter — safety, drones and the essentials, in one place.

Safety

FCDO advisory in force — see above FCDO advice →

Official UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office guidance is the definitive source — check it close to your travel dates.

Drone rules (sub-250g)

  • Chad
    Treat it as off-limits. Chad's published rules are sparse and there's no clear tourist authorisation, but it's a heavily militarised state with restricted borders, so flying a drone as a foreigner invites detention or seizure. Clear anything with ADAC and local authorities first. ⚠ Avoid all military and government sites, the Lake Chad basin and the northern Tibesti/Ennedi/Borkou and border zones — all FCDO advise-against-all-travel areas. Note that Chad's most photogenic sights, the Ennedi arches and the Lakes of Ounianga, sit inside those no-go zones. Rules checked: Jul 2026

National parks, protected sites and religious/heritage venues often have their own rules and permits — always check the specific site before you fly.

The essentials

Plug & voltage Type C/D/E/F · 220V
Daily budget Expensive
Region Middle Africa