The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office advises against all travel to most of Libya, and against all but essential travel to the cities of Tripoli, Benghazi, Al-Bayda, Derna and Misrata and the surrounding Jebel Akhdar area. That advice is current and was last updated on 21 July 2026. The reason is the volatile security situation and the risk of clashes between armed groups.
Briefing the Security Council on 18 August 2026, the head of the UN Support Mission in Libya, Hanna Serwaa Tetteh, said the mission-facilitated roadmap had advanced, with a structured dialogue on governance concluding in June and a committee working through contested election issues. She set that progress against a state that is struggling to deliver basic services.
Across July and August, extensive electricity blackouts disrupted power and water supplies for hundreds of thousands of people, following fuel shortages and declining gas supplies. Libya's National Oil Corporation spends around a billion US dollars a month on fuel imports, and large-scale diversion of subsidised fuel is undermining the network.
On the security side, Tetteh condemned the recent assassination of Fawzi Mansuri, the Libyan National Army's director of military intelligence, in a reported car bombing, alongside heavy clashes between armed groups on the western coast that caused civilian casualties. Council members warned that the window for political progress is open but not indefinitely, and that holding the status quo raises the cost to stability.
For a protective team, Libya is a country to plan around rather than into. Any tasking that touches it should assume disrupted power, fuel and communications, restricted movement between the coastal cities, and a security environment where a single incident can change the picture quickly. The all-travel advice covers most of the country, and even the exempted cities sit under an all but essential line, which shapes insurance, duty of care and any extraction planning.
