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The Vatican has unveiled an extensive international travel schedule for Pope Leo XIV in the first half of 2026.
It has confirmed visits to Monaco, Spain, and four African nations: Algeria, Cameroon, Angola, and Equatorial Guinea.
This marks one of the busiest papal itineraries in years, complementing a grand tour of Italy starting in May, which includes a half-dozen one-day visits across the peninsula.
Papal travel had largely been on hold since Leo’s election last May as the first US-born pontiff. His calendar was packed ministering to 33 million pilgrims during the 2025 Holy Year.
With the Jubilee now concluded, the 70-year-old Pope is freer to engage with his global flock, having already begun “get-to-know-you” visits to Roman parishes each Sunday this Lent.
Before his papacy, Robert Prevost spent two decades as a missionary in Peru and has often expressed his love for travel. His 12-year tenure as Augustinian superior saw him frequently on the road, visiting communities worldwide.
Pope Leo XIV arrives in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican for his open-air weekly general audience (AP)
He took his first and so far only foreign trip as pope late in 2025, visiting Turkey and Lebanon. The trips fulfilled promises made by Pope Francis that he was unable to complete because of his failing health.
Now looking ahead to his own agenda, Leo will make a one-day visit to Monaco on 28 March.
His next trip is a 10-day voyage starting soon after Easter: He will visit Algeria, Cameroon, Angola and Equatorial Guinea from 13-23 April.
In recent times, only Francis undertook such an arduous and long foreign trip, when he visited Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore in 2024.
The Algeria stop is particularly significant to Leo given its strong connection to the life and death of St. Augustine of Hippo, the 5th-century inspiration of Leo’s religious order.
Francis had largely avoided big, traditionally Catholic European countries during his 12-year pontificate, preferring to visit instead smaller Catholic communities on the peripheries. Leo will spend nearly a week in Spain, from 6-12 June.
He is widely expected to be in Barcelona on 10 June to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the death of Antoni Gaudí, the architect of the famed Sagrada Familia basilica.
The massive church just last week reached its maximum height with the placement of the church’s soaring central tower piece.
While the Vatican did not announce further foreign travel, Leo is also expected to visit his beloved Peru, and possibly Argentina and Uruguay, in the second half of 2026.
The Vatican has confirmed he will not travel to the United States this year, skipping out on the country’s 250th independence anniversary.
On the anniversary itself, 4 July, Leo will be visiting the southern Italian island of Lampedusa, the main arrival point of migrants who are smuggled to Europe from north Africa