The National Zoological Garden of South Africa, the Pretoria Zoo, is running its R27 admission day for another twelve months. Entry costs R27 on the 27th of every month, the extension starts on Tuesday 27 October 2026, which is the zoo’s 127th birthday, and it runs to 27 September 2027. It applies to every admission ticket category and not to other paid offerings.
The zoo announced the extension on 6 October 2026. The number behind the decision is the interesting part: attendance on the promotional dates during the first year ran more than 60 percent above the corresponding historical average, and school participation rose with it.
What a R27 ticket is actually buying
A cheap gate day is only worth covering if something happens once people are through it, and the zoo has built the anniversary month around that. Weekday school lessons continue through much of October. Weekends carry animal talks and the Zoo Adventure program, and visitors can sit in on selected feeding and enrichment sessions across the site.
Three dates are worth putting in a diary:
- 10 October, African Penguin Day, with migratory bird activities alongside the weekend animal talks and the Zoo Adventure program.
- 21 October, Reptile Awareness Day, including a reptile encounter later in the day.
- 27 October, the zoo’s 127th anniversary and the first R27 admission day of the extended run.
Leslie Mudimeli, General Manager of the National Zoological Garden of South Africa, put the reasoning for the extension on the visitors rather than on the numbers.
“Last year’s celebration reminded us that the Pretoria Zoo’s story is shared with the people who visit, learn and make memories here,” he said. “Extending this initiative gives more families and schools an opportunity to experience it while engaging with the conservation work that takes place here every day.”
And on what he wants people to leave with: “As we celebrate 127 years, we want visitors to enjoy the Zoo and also leave with a clearer understanding of why biodiversity matters. Every school lesson, animal talk and conservation conversation that visitors experience, helps build and strengthen the connection between people and nature.”
What is the National Zoological Garden of South Africa?
It is the largest zoo in the country and the only one with national status, an 85-hectare site at 232 Boom Street in Pretoria. It is not run as a municipal attraction: it is an entity of the South African National Biodiversity Institute, which makes it a national research facility that happens to have a front gate. The zoo describes its own job as a mix of recreation, learning, research and conservation, and SANBI’s stated reason for continuing the birthday initiative is to hold on to the public interest the 126th birthday campaign generated.
Why a discount day is a conservation story
Because the gate is where the money and the audience both come from. A 60 percent lift on a promotional day is a real number of people standing in front of a real animal, many of them schoolchildren who had not been before, and a zoo that can show that lift has an argument to make to the institute that funds it. South Africa’s seabird work, a few hundred kilometers south, runs on exactly the same logic at a different scale: two African penguins and one volunteer in a week is what the attention converts into downstream.
African Penguin Day on 10 October is four days out at the time of writing, Reptile Awareness Day follows on 21 October, and the first R27 day of the new run is 27 October. All three are worth the trip, and the cheapest of them is the birthday.
Source: National Zoological Garden, Pretoria, 6 October 2026.
Quick answers
- When does the R27 admission day start?
The extended run begins on Tuesday 27 October 2026, the National Zoological Garden of South Africa’s 127th birthday, and continues on the 27th of every month until 27 September 2027.
- How much is admission on those days?
R27, and it applies to every admission ticket category. Other paid offerings at the zoo are excluded.
- Did the first year of the promotion work?
The zoo says attendance on the promotional dates ran more than 60 percent above the corresponding historical average, with a marked rise in school participation.
- What else is on at the zoo in October 2026?
African Penguin Day with migratory bird activities on 10 October, Reptile Awareness Day with a reptile encounter on 21 October, weekday school lessons through much of the month, and weekend animal talks, the Zoo Adventure program and selected feeding and enrichment sessions.
- Who runs the Pretoria Zoo?
The South African National Biodiversity Institute. The 85-hectare site in Pretoria is the largest zoo in the country and the only one with national status.
