The Nyungwe canopy walk costs USD 40 per international visitor, guide included, in groups of two to eight. Park entry is charged separately on top — and it is a cumulative total for your stay, not a nightly rate. Chimpanzee tracking is a separate USD 150 permit.
The Nyungwe canopy walkway is a guided walk along a suspended walkway through the forest crown, and it costs USD 40 per international or African visitor, with a guide included and groups of between two and eight people. Park entry is charged separately on top. International visitors resident in Rwanda or the EAC pay USD 20; Rwandan and EAC citizens pay RWF 5,000. Those rates are set by Nyungwe Management Company, which runs the park with the Rwanda Development Board.
That is the short answer. The longer answer is that the canopy walk is one of the cheaper things you can book in Nyungwe, and that the way the park prices entry is the easiest part of its price list to misread. Both are worth understanding before you book.
The canopy walkway is priced as a guided activity rather than as a self-guided attraction. The park's own price list bundles it into a band of "special activities" alongside guided birding, other primate tracking and night treks, all at the same rate, all with a guide included, and all with a stated minimum of two and maximum of eight guests. It is something you book, in other words, not something you walk up to.
The minimum of two matters for solo travellers, and for couples where one person would rather not go. The pricing scheme publishes the minimum but says nothing about how solo bookings are handled, so that is a question to put to the park or your operator before the day itself rather than at the trailhead.
Treat the canopy walk as a complement rather than as the centre of a Nyungwe stay. It is a short, genuinely good stretch of forest taken from above rather than below, and it sits well either side of a morning chimpanzee trek. What it is not is a substitute for time in the forest on foot.
These are the rates published by Nyungwe Management Company (African Parks, in partnership with RDB) in its 2025–2026 pricing scheme. Park entry is additional to every figure below.
| Activity | International & Africa visitor | International visitor resident in Rwanda/EAC | Rwandan / EAC citizen |
|---|---|---|---|
| Canopy walk (also guided birding, other primate tracking, night treks) | USD 40 | USD 20 | RWF 5,000 |
| Chimpanzee tracking | USD 150 | USD 75 | RWF 25,000 |
| Chimpanzee habituation (full day) | USD 200 | USD 100 | RWF 30,000 |
The zipline and rope course are priced as packages that can include the canopy walk. On the highest published tier these run at USD 100 for the zipline alone, USD 125 for zipline plus canopy walk, USD 35 for the rope course alone and USD 150 for all three. The middle tier is USD 80 / 100 / 20 / 110, and Rwandan and EAC citizens pay RWF 20,000 / 23,000 / 10,000 / 30,000. These are VAT inclusive, and park entry is again additional. We have deliberately not named the visitor categories for the two upper tiers: the park's own document labels both of them with the same opening words, so the distinction it intends is not something the published text settles. We confirm which tier applies to a given passport with the park before quoting.
The entry fee table looks like a nightly rate. It is not. The figures are cumulative totals for the whole stay.
| Length of stay | International adult (total) | International child 6–12 (total) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 night | USD 100 | USD 50 |
| 2 nights | USD 150 | USD 75 |
| 3 nights | USD 200 | USD 100 |
| Nights 4–7 | No further charge | No further charge |
The structure comes from a taper the park publishes openly: the entry fee reduces by 50% for the second and third nights, then is free for subsequent nights up to one week. So three nights is USD 100 plus USD 50 plus USD 50, which is USD 200 in total — not USD 600. Children five and under are free, six to twelve pay child rates, and thirteen and over pay adult rates.
Other categories follow the same shape. Foreign residents in Rwanda or the EAC, and African citizens from outside the EAC, pay USD 60 / 90 / 120 for one, two or three nights. Rwandan and EAC citizens pay RWF 10,000 / 15,000 / 20,000. Groups of more than twenty nationals or residents get 20% off the normal entry fee, and annual pass holders get 10% off activities.
A practical warning that follows from this: several websites that present themselves as the park's own authority are tour operator sites, and some publish materially wrong figures. One of them, nyungwepark.com, lists chimpanzee tracking at USD 90 and the canopy walk at USD 60, against the official USD 150 and USD 40. Price from the park operator's published scheme, or from someone who works to it.
The permit is USD 150 for international and African visitors, includes a guide, and is capped at a maximum of eight adults per chimpanzee community. There is no admission for children under fifteen. RDB's 2018 booking guidelines put the same figure on the group size: eight people per group per day for chimpanzees in Nyungwe, and ten for other primate trekking.
The full-day habituation experience is a different proposition — you go out with the trackers at Gisovu, it costs USD 200, and it takes a maximum of four adults, again with no under-fifteens. Four is a small cap, which makes availability on your dates the first thing to check rather than the price.
Nyungwe is montane rainforest, so plan the trek as a demanding day on steep, wet ground whatever the permit costs. If your priority is a close chimpanzee encounter rather than Rwanda specifically, it is worth comparing Nyungwe with Kibale in Uganda before you commit. Kibale tracking is USD 250 for a foreign non-resident against Nyungwe's USD 150, falling to USD 200 in the low season of April, May and November — and UWA states that low-season permits cannot be rescheduled. From 1 January 2027 UWA's revised tariff takes Kibale chimpanzee tracking to USD 300, and Kibale chimpanzee habituation from USD 300 to USD 400, so a 2027 departure should be costed on the new figures. We cover the practical differences on our chimpanzee tracking page, and the wider Uganda-versus-Rwanda question in Uganda vs Rwanda gorilla trekking.
Often, yes — and RDB gives you a financial reason to. Its published low-season offer takes 30% off a Volcanoes gorilla permit, which is otherwise USD 1,500 for a foreign non-resident, but only from November to May and only on conditions:
RDB does not publish whether this discount stacks with its other promotional rates, so treat it as a single mechanism rather than something to layer. Geographically the combination works: Nyungwe sits in Rwanda's south-west and Volcanoes National Park in the north-west, and a Kigali-based itinerary can take in both. Our Rwanda gorillas and Kigali route sets out one way of shaping that.
Meteo Rwanda identifies two rainfall seasons nationally — March to May, and September through December — and its climatology page also describes the second as centred around October to December. It publishes no dry-season months, so anyone quoting you a precise dry window for Nyungwe is inferring it. Nyungwe is montane rainforest in any month: expect wet, steep trails and pack for them.
Two booking mechanics are worth knowing. Nyungwe's cancellation terms are more forgiving than Akagera's at the far end — nothing is charged more than thirty days before arrival, 30% more than seven days before, 50% inside seven days, and 100% once the activity was due to commence. And the park is cashless: Visa, mobile money, DirectPay Online and bank transfer only.
One caveat on every Nyungwe figure here. The scheme currently published on visitnyungwe.org is the 2025–2026 one, its stated tariff year has largely run out, and no 2026–2027 Nyungwe price list has appeared there — while Akagera has already issued one. The park does not state either way whether the older scheme has been superseded, so we confirm the live figure with Nyungwe Management Company before it goes into a quotation rather than carrying last year's number into this year's trip.
If Nyungwe is on your shortlist, the useful next step is to tell us how many days you have and whether the chimpanzees or the gorillas are the anchor — the answer changes the route. Start with plan your safari, read the park background on Nyungwe Forest, or get in touch and we will price it properly.
Safari planning team
The planning team answers permit, timing and logistics questions every day, and writes up the answers that come back most often. Everything published here is checked against current park authority rates and the routes our own vehicles drive.
