The FCDO's Kenya advice, refreshed on 1 September 2026 with a note on airport flight delays caused by industrial action, keeps a firm hostile-area frame around the north and the coast. It advises against all travel to Mandera County, to Lamu County except Lamu Island and Manda Island, to specified parts of Wajir and Garissa, and to the area within 60km of the Somalia border. It advises against all but essential travel to Garissa Town, to Tana River County north of the Tana River as far as Saka, and to the coastal strip within 15km of the east coast between the Tana River and the Galana.
The driver is terrorism. The FCDO says terrorists are very likely to try to carry out attacks in Kenya, and that the main threat is from extremists linked to al-Shabaab, an al-Qaeda-affiliated militant group in Somalia. It lists likely targets as places visited by foreigners, including hotels, bars, restaurants and nightclubs, supermarkets and shopping centres, beaches, safari parks, sporting events, places of worship, and commercial, government and diplomatic premises. On kidnap the advisory is explicit: there is a high threat of terrorist kidnap across Kenya, Westerners have been taken in the northern counties bordering Somalia and in coastal counties, and British nationals are seen as legitimate targets, including tourists, aid workers, journalists and business travellers.
For an operator, Kenya is a two-speed country. Nairobi and the main safari and resort circuits carry the standing soft-target terrorism risk that drives venue selection, arrival and departure profiles and reconnaissance, while the Somalia border band and the northern Lamu coast are advise-against-travel kidnap ground that a task should route around rather than try to mitigate. The 1 September airport-disruption note is a practical reminder to build slack into flight connections and to confirm schedules before committing a movement plan.
