The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office keeps a wide advise-against line across the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In advice last updated on 29 July 2026, it advises against all travel to the eastern provinces of Haut-Uele, Ituri, North Kivu, South Kivu, Maniema, Tanganyika and Haut-Lomami, to within 50km of the DRC border with the Central African Republic, and to Kwamouth territory in Mai-Ndombe Province. It advises against all but essential travel to the N'djili and Kimbanseke districts of Kinshasa, the N1 road in Kinshasa Province, Bangoka International Airport at Kisangani, and Upemba National Park.
The eastern picture is one of open conflict rather than isolated incidents. The FCDO records that M23 rebels and the Rwanda Defence Forces have captured Goma and Bukavu and the surrounding areas in North and South Kivu. It notes that the same forces captured Uvira in December 2025 and then withdrew in January 2026, with clashes continuing since. It also records that on 23 May there were multiple drone attacks in the area of Kisangani airport, well to the north-west of the main Kivu fighting, which is a marker of how far the reach of the conflict now extends.
For anyone assessing movement, the exit problem is the one that matters most. The FCDO states that routes to depart Uvira, Goma and Bukavu are limited and may change at short notice, and that commercial flights are no longer operating from affected airports. That combination, a live front, no scheduled air link and ground routes that can close without warning, is what turns a difficult environment into a place a team can become stuck.
Operator implication: the whole of eastern DRC is an advise-against-all-travel environment, and the defining risk is extraction rather than any single threat. With commercial flights gone from the affected airports and departure routes able to shut at short notice, contingency planning cannot lean on a scheduled way out. Kinshasa itself carries an all-but-essential line in named districts and on the N1, so the capital is not a clean fallback either. For a duty-of-care assessment the east reads as do not travel, and any essential movement elsewhere needs a worked, redundant departure plan before anyone deploys.
