Etosha Gate Times by Month, Gates and Camps

Etosha doesn’t have one set of gate hours. It has sunrise and sunset. Every entrance gate, and the gate of every Namibia Wildlife Resorts (NWR) camp inside the park, opens at sunrise and shuts at sunset, so the times creep forward or back every week of the year. That can catch out people used to parks with a neat summer and winter timetable.

The rule behind it is simple. Between sunset and sunrise you are either inside a camp or outside the park. Nobody drives the public roads in the dark unless they are on a guided night drive.

Gate times through the year

A sheet with the opening and closing time for every week comes out each year, and NWR links to the 2026 version from its park fees page. Below are sunrise and sunset at Okaukuejo on the 1st and 15th of each month, from a table a guest farm near the park posted in June 2026. I checked them against the 2025 gate times sheet and they agree to within about five minutes all year, which is what you’d expect for sunrise and sunset.

Date	Sunrise (gates open)	Sunset (gates close)
1 January	06:22	19:38
15 January	06:31	19:40
1 February	06:42	19:38
15 February	06:49	19:32
1 March	06:55	19:23
15 March	06:59	19:11
1 April	07:03	18:57
15 April	07:07	18:46
1 May	07:11	18:35
15 May	07:16	18:29
1 June	07:23	18:26
15 June	07:27	18:26
1 July	07:30	18:30
15 July	07:30	18:35
1 August	07:25	18:41
15 August	07:17	18:45
1 September	07:05	18:48
15 September	06:52	18:51
1 October	06:38	18:54
15 October	06:27	18:58
1 November	06:16	19:04
15 November	06:10	19:12
1 December	06:09	19:21
15 December	06:13	19:30

Last checked 7 October 2026. The times on the sheet change once a week (the 2025 sheet changed them every Monday), and gates further east or west can be a few minutes off Okaukuejo. The posted time at the gate is the one that counts, so read it when you go in. NWR says itself that opening and closing times can change, so look at the current sheet on nwr.com.na before a tight day.

A few things stand out. Winter mornings are late: in June and July nothing opens before about 07:20, which is a surprise if you planned a dawn start. Summer evenings are long, with the gates open until somewhere between 19:20 and 19:40 from December to mid February. And the shortest day in the park, around mid June, still gives you roughly eleven hours.

The four entrance gates

Etosha has four gates you can drive in through.

Gate	Side of the park	Comes in from	Nearest NWR camp
Andersson	South	Outjo (C38)	Okaukuejo, about 17 km
Von Lindequist	East	Tsumeb (B1)	Namutoni, about 17 km
King Nehale	North-east	Ondangwa, about 106 km away	Namutoni or Halali
Galton	South-west	Kamanjab	Olifantsrus, about 70 km

Andersson Gate is the main entrance and the obvious one from Windhoek. NWR gives Okaukuejo as 432 km by road from the capital. Von Lindequist is the gate for Namutoni and the eastern waterholes, and NWR puts Namutoni 110 km from Tsumeb. King Nehale is the newest of the four and the one to use if you are coming from Ondangwa and the north.

Galton Gate in the far west was only for Dolomite guests until it opened to everyone on 28 February 2014. It’s the long way in. NWR lists Olifantsrus at 70 km from Galton, Dolomite at 50 km from Olifantsrus and Okaukuejo at 130 km from Olifantsrus, so arriving at Galton in the afternoon and heading for Okaukuejo is a bad idea.

One more thing on names. In September 2025 the ministry said it plans to rename all of Etosha’s gates, which currently carry colonial-era names, and Galton has been proposed as Otjovazandu Gate. Nothing changes until a new law is passed, and when I checked in October 2026 the old names were still in use on NWR’s pages. You may see new signs on a future trip.

Camp gates and the sunset rule

The rest camp gates work on the same clock as the entrance gates. NWR spells this out for Olifantsrus (open at sunrise, closed at sunset “as per the general park regulations”) and other sources say the same of every NWR camp in the park. So if you are sleeping in Halali, sunset is the time you need to be through Halali’s gate, not the time you need to be somewhere near it.

If you are staying outside the park, you need to be back through an entrance gate before it closes. Travel Butlers, a tour operator, says fines are issued to people who are late, but I couldn’t find an official amount. Don’t test it.

Day visitors have one extra limit at Olifantsrus, where NWR only lets them use the picnic area until 16:00.

Driving inside the park

The speed limit is 60 km/h on the park roads. In June 2023 the then environment minister said fines of at least N$10,000 for speeding and other rule breaking were coming once a law change went through. I haven’t seen that confirmed since, so treat the figure as a warning rather than a tariff.

The bigger issue is how slowly you actually move. Travel Butlers suggest not counting on more than about 25 km an hour once you stop for animals. A rough plan: take the distance to your camp, divide by 25, and add half an hour for the sighting you won’t want to leave.

Other rules that come up at the gate:

• Stay in your car except at fenced camps and marked picnic or toilet stops, and keep to the marked roads.
• Fees are paid at the NWR office when you come in. Keep the paperwork, you’ll show it again on the way out.
• Plastic bags are banned in Namibia’s parks. NWR’s terms quote a fine of up to N$500, or up to six months in prison.
• You may only use the park for the purpose you were given permission for. In August 2026 the ministry cited that rule when it defended keeping empty game-viewing vehicles out, and said Etosha is not a transit town people can drive through as they wish.

Road works between Okaukuejo and Halali

MEFT is rebuilding the main road from Okaukuejo through Halali and Namutoni to King Nehale Gate as a sealed road. Detours started in April 2025 via Gemsbokvlakte, and from 26 February 2026 the diversion moved further east along the smaller roads past Sueda, Salvadora and Charitsaub. That takes you away from the Newbrowni and Kapupuhedi waterholes and adds time to the Okaukuejo to Halali drive. I couldn’t find a finish date. Ask at Okaukuejo reception about the current route before you set off east.

The NWR camps inside Etosha

NWR runs six places to stay inside the park. All of them follow the sunrise and sunset gate rule.

Okaukuejo, 17 km from Andersson Gate in the south, is the camp NWR calls famous for its floodlit waterhole. It has a restaurant, shop, filling station and 37 campsites as well as rooms and chalets.

Halali sits between Okaukuejo and Namutoni at the foot of a dolomite hill. It has a floodlit waterhole, 58 campsites, a shop and fuel, and NWR runs morning, afternoon and night drives from here.

Namutoni is built around an old German fort from 1897 in the east, close to Von Lindequist Gate, and looks over the floodlit King Nehale waterhole.

Dolomite is in the west, in an area that used to be closed to tourists, with 20 chalets and some 15 waterholes nearby. It opened in June 2011. Guided morning and afternoon drives were N$650 a person and night drives N$750 on NWR’s rates for July 2026 to June 2027.

Onkoshi is on the rim of the pan, north of Namutoni and away from the public self-drive roads, with 15 chalets. It opened in 2008. Because it’s off the normal routes, ask NWR how you get there when you book.

Olifantsrus is a camping-only site between Okaukuejo and Dolomite with ten pitches and a two-storey hide over its waterhole.

A practical warning: when I checked NWR’s site on 7 October 2026 it showed a notice that online booking was unavailable and asked guests to email reservations@nwr.com.na instead.

What it costs to get in

Fees went up on 1 April 2026. Etosha is in the higher band in Government Gazette 8877: N$280 a day for anyone 16 or over from outside SADC, N$180 for ages 9 to 15, nothing for children 8 and under, and N$60 a day for a car with 10 seats or fewer. SADC nationals pay N$180 an adult. These figures were last checked on 7 October 2026 and are not included in NWR accommodation prices.

Our Etosha National Park page lists places to stay inside the park and outside each gate, which is worth a look if the camps are full.