Eight Must-Visit National Parks and Game Reserves in Botswana

Each of Botswana’s national parks tells its own story brimming with unique characters and spellbinding landscapes. They tell stories of water and dust, reflecting the country’s environments of green abundance and semi-arid desolation. All offer quiet wilderness and spectacular game viewing.

These Botswana national parks and game reserves are among Africa’s last true strongholds of wild beauty, remote and untouched. Botswana game parks, both its many national parks and its private concessions, are part of the country’s low-impact, high-value tourism model, and are vital in sustaining its natural wealth.

Whether your dream features elephants crossing a river at sunset or endless desert silence under a star-spangled sky, Botswana’s wildlife parks promise a journey that will stay with you long after you’ve left the bush.

These are eight of the best national parks in Botswana that you can experience on safari:

1. Moremi Game Reserve

Small but packed with unique wildlife, Moremi Game Reserve is the heart of the Okavango Delta.

Where the delta fans out in a maze of channels and lagoons, Moremi Game Reserve protects one of the most diverse ecosystems on the continent. You’ll find lions padding through golden grass, leopards melting into mopane woodland, and red lechwe bounding through shallow floodplains.

Moremi is also one of the last refuges for the endangered African wild dog, and birders are rewarded with more than 500 species throughout the year. Birding during the green season, when the migrants make the Okavango Delta their home, is hugely rewarding.

Lodges here blend seamlessly with the landscape, offering low-impact luxury and guided mokoro excursions that reveal the rhythm of the delta.

Best for: Photographers, couples, and first-time safari travellers seeking classic Okavango Delta landscapes and year-round game viewing.

2. Chobe National Park

It’s not for nothing that Chobe National Park, stretching over 11,700 km², is known as the Land of Giants. It’s famous among Botswana wildlife parks for its elephants – thousands of them. Watching herds emerge from the riverine forest to drink along the Chobe River at dusk is a sight you’re unlikely to ever forget.

Each year, thousands of elephants make their way from Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe to Chobe National Park as part of their larger migration route. You’re also likely to see wild dogs, cheetahs, and leopards, as well as smaller creatures like African bush babies, wild cats, and honey badgers.

The park’s varied terrain moves from lush floodplains to dense woodland, home to buffalo and lions, even the elusive sable antelope. Beyond the game drives, travellers can take a river cruise or a photographic boat safari for an entirely different perspective of Botswana’s wild abundance.

Chobe’s luxury accommodation makes it a wonderful destination for family safari holidays, offering fantastic game drives, tiger fishing, and sunset cruises.

Best for: Families and travellers who want rich wildlife encounters and luxurious riverside lodges with easy access from Kasane.

3. Central Kalahari Game Reserve

It’s remote, it’s humbling, and it’s huge. Botswana’s Central Kalahari Game Reserve is southern Africa’s second-largest game reserve. Its ancient dunes and fossil river valleys shimmer in the heat under an endless blue sky.

And then, in spring, rains transform the desert into sweeping grasslands alive with antelope and predators.

It’s the home of the ancient San, who have lived in this sparse landscape for thousands of years. Walks with the San people are almost spiritual. They will teach you about the fauna and flora of the land and how they’ve survived through the years.

During a safari here, you may see unique desert-adapted wildlife, like Kalahari black-maned lions, desert elephants, and delicate springbok.

Best for: Adventurous travellers drawn to solitude, storytelling, and the raw beauty of the desert.

4. Savuti

Savuti was once the coastline of a prehistoric super-lake. Now it’s a land of shifting channels and ancient secrets, of dry wilderness and sandy veld, savannah, mopane bushes, and acacia shrubland. The Savuti Channel shapes a landscape where wildlife adapts and drama unfolds.

Savuti’s lions are famous for their power and persistence – in the dry months they’re often seen challenging elephants. With its open plains and rocky outcrops, Savuti feels wild and untamed. It’s a reminder that nature writes its own script.

Best for: Seasoned safari-goers and filmmakers seeking intense predator action and a sense of raw wilderness.

5. Makgadikgadi Pans Game Reserve

The great white expanse: at first glance, the Makgadikgadi Pans appear lifeless, a vast silver-white crust stretching so far to the horizon you can see the curvature of the Earth. But when the rains arrive, the pans come alive with flamingos, wildebeest, and zebras in one of Africa’s most mesmerising migrations, making Makgadikgadi Pans a sought-after destination on a Botswana tour.

Stay in a luxury tented camp for an experience of silence and scale you’re unlikely to find anywhere else. At night, the Milky Way glows so brightly, it feels close enough to touch.

Best for: Dreamers, photographers, and travellers who crave stillness and surreal desert beauty.

6. Nxai Pan National Park

Along the northern border of Makgadikgadi lies Nxai Pan National Park, where open grasslands and pans attract huge herds of elephants and springboks, prides of lions, and speedy cheetahs.

​​It’s also home to Baines’ Baobabs, a circle of ancient trees immortalised by 19th-century explorer Thomas Baines.

During the wet season, the park bursts with life, offering excellent game viewing and dramatic skies that make for spectacular photography.

Best for: Travellers who love history, scenery, and intimate, seasonal safaris off the main circuit.

7. Khutse Game Reserve

Khutse Game Reserve is the gateway to the Kalahari Desert.

Bordering the Central Kalahari, Khutse is smaller but no less evocative. Its name means “a place where one can kneel to drink”, highlighting its important past as an ancient river system. Expect endless horizons, desert-adapted wildlife, and a glimpse of traditional Kalahari culture.

Its remoteness calls for an experienced guide and tracker. The rewards are immense: expect peace, authenticity, and a sense of being far from the modern world.

Best for: Explorers and returning safari enthusiasts seeking remote, cultural, and conservation-led experiences.

8. Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park

The park where two nations meet: Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park straddles South Africa and Botswana. ​​

Kgalagadi is a cross-border wilderness of red dunes, black-maned lions, and clear desert light. Here, you can drive for hours and see no one, yet feel the presence of life everywhere, from cheetahs sprinting across the sand to gemsbok standing sentinel against the wind.

It’s renowned for its breathtaking landscapes and distinctive wildlife. It has predators like leopards and spotted and brown hyenas, as well as herbivores like springbok. Honey badgers, bat-eared foxes, and meerkats can also be seen.

Luxury lodges sit deep within the park, combining exclusivity with spectacular desert scenery.

Best for: Travellers who value solitude, landscape photography, and a true sense of frontier adventure.

Quick Guide to National Parks in Botswana

When to go: Peak game viewing along the Chobe River and in the Okavango Delta is May to October (dry season). The green season (November to March) brings superb birding and lower crowd levels to Botswana parks.

Experiences: Mix areas to get the most out of your visit, such as water-based safaris in Moremi with land-based game drives in Savuti or the Kalahari.

Accommodation: Camping in Botswana national parks unfolds differently, with luxury tented camps and established mobile camps on our tours that align with conservation best practice.

Logistics: Charter flights stitch far-flung Botswana wildlife parks together, reducing travel time and maximising time on safari.

Planning Your Botswana Safari

Each of these Botswana game parks offers its own rhythm, from the shimmering waterways of the Okavango to the vast silence of the Kalahari. Choosing the right one depends on what you seek: luxury, remoteness, adventure, or serenity. Whatever you choose, Botswana’s wild heart will stay with you.

Inspired by Botswana’s wild heart? Start planning your journey by browsing our exclusive Botswana safari tours, or let us build your dream African trip.