The Greatest Wildlife Show on Earth
Every year, roughly 1.5 million wildebeest, 400,000 zebras, and 200,000 Thomson’s gazelles move in a vast clockwise loop between Tanzania’s Serengeti and Kenya’s Masai Mara — following the rains and the fresh grass they produce. This is the Great Wildebeest Migration, and it is the largest overland movement of animals on earth. It has no fixed start date, no fixed route, and no guarantee of any single moment — but if you are in the right place at the right time of year, you will witness something that has no equivalent anywhere else on the planet.
The migration is not a single event but a continuous cycle. Calving happens in the southern Serengeti from January to March, drawing predators in enormous numbers. The herds move north through the central Serengeti from April to June. The Mara River crossings — the moment most people picture when they think of the migration — happen from July to October as the animals push into the Masai Mara and then return south. By November they are moving back through the eastern Serengeti toward the calving grounds again. See our month-by-month migration calendar to understand exactly where the herds are at the time of year you are planning to travel.