Lincoln Park Zoo (2026) (Part 1)
Published on HivePostify by @byzantinecat · Sat Aug 08 2026
Fondest greetings!
Today I'll be posting about Lincoln Park Zoo, a free public zoo in downtown Chicago. I usually visit Lincoln Park Zoo about once a year - I still have pictures from last year (2025) that are on backlog. My previous series of Chicago posts (from 2024) ran into some writer's block but in order to keep some momentum going I'm skipping ahead to this 2026 zoo review.
Due to size limits, this post is broken up into two. This first portion covers the main zoo while the second portion addresses the farm, nature boardwalk, and gift shop.
Here are my other downtown Chicago posts:
B1: [Chicago Overview, CityPASS, & Millennium Park](https://peakd.com/travel/@byzantinecat/chicago-overview-citypass-and-millennium-park)
B2: [Field Museum of Natural History](https://peakd.com/travel/@byzantinecat/field-museum-of-natural-history)
B3: [Shedd Aquarium](https://peakd.com/travel/@byzantinecat/shedd-aquarium)
B4: [Museum of Science and Industry](https://peakd.com/travel/@byzantinecat/museum-of-science-and-industry)
B5: [Art Institute of Chicago (Part 1)](https://peakd.com/travel/@byzantinecat/art-institute-of-chicago-part-1)
B6: [Art Institute of Chicago (Part 2)](https://peakd.com/travel/@byzantinecat/art-institute-of-chicago-part-2)
B7: Lincoln Park Zoo (2026) (Part 1) (this post)
B8: [Lincoln Park Zoo (2026) (part 2)](https://peakd.com/travel/@byzantinecat/lincoln-park-zoo-2026-part-2)
I have a more modest to-do list for Chicago tourist attractions:
- Willis/Sears Tower Skydeck, the Rookery, Chicago Fed Money Museum, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago Cultural Center, & Design Museum of Chicago
- Medieval Torture Museum (NSFW)
- Museum of Contemporary Art
- Lincoln Park Zoo (2025)
All of the pictures in this post were taken by me except for the map of the zoo. If you want to use any of my photos, please contact me to first obtain permission.
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LINCOLN PARK ZOO
2400 N. Cannon Drive Chicago, Illinois 60614
Website: https://www.lpzoo.org/
Hours:
Weekdays: 8 AM - 5 PM Weekends & Holidays: 8 AM - 7 PM
While the gates open at 8 AM, the buildings don't open until 10 AM. The buildings close 30 minutes before the rest of the zoo closes.
Also Farm-in-the-Zoo closes at 5 PM even on weekends when the rest of the zoo is open until 7 PM.
Cost (as of 2026): FREE!
You will likely have to pay for parking though. If you are lucky or arrive early in the morning you may find free parking on Cannon and Stockton Drive, north of the zoo, but those spots are very limited. You may otherwise find some moderately priced metered spots on the street. The final option is expensive parking lot rates. While the Lincoln Park Zoo lot is free for the first 30 minutes, the rate quickly climbs reaching $35 - $45 per day.
Estimated Time: 1 - 2 hours for the main zoo. You can optionally add 15 - 30 minutes for Farm-in-the-Zoo and 30 minutes for the Nature Boardwalk if you want.
Lincoln Park Zoo is a medium size zoo. You can get through it in under 2 hours if you go at a brisk pace. A lot of the enclosures may be empty so if you spend more time, a lot of it is revisiting exhibits hoping to see an animal you didn't see earlier.
I spent 3 hours on the first day, 30 minutes on the second day, and 2 hours on the third day but much of it was retreading the same ground hoping to see elusive critters.
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SUMMARY
Chicago has two main zoos. Lincoln Park Zoo is a free zoo in downtown Chicago while Brookfield Zoo is a nicer paid zoo in the suburbs. The good thing about Lincoln Park Zoo is it free but the lack of revenue results in being not as clean or maintained as many private zoos.
My biggest issue with Lincoln Park Zoo is that it can be hard to see many of the animals. For example, even though the zoo gates open at 8 AM, that is way too early to see many of the animals, who won't come out until later. Most of the animals have free access to both indoor and outdoor spaces, so if they want to stay inside all day, you probably won't get to see them. While I appreciate zoos caring about the animals and giving them the choice of where to go, better designed zoos have ways around this - they design the enclosure so that the animals want to hang out in highly visible areas or they create indoor viewing opportunities through buildings or video cameras.
This year, despite multiple attempts, I was not able to see any of the lions, polar bear, aardvark, bats, or beaver though I was able to see all of them last year. Last year I didn't see the pygmy hippo despite multiple tries and I failed on my first attempt this year but I did finally see it on my third day. I was able to see more of the red panda than I did last year, and also the seals. I didn't get to see most of the farm animals, but I spent more time with the birds and reptiles than I did last year. And I only got brief glimpses of the African painted dog, alpaca, and sloth. I usually visit the zoo in the summer and am never able to see the wolves because that part of the zoo is cordoned off seasonally to allow native black-crowned night herons to nest.
So my overall experience is spending a lot of the time walking past the same empty enclosures multiple times and occasionally getting lucky through persistence. The situation was similar to that of the Detroit Zoo.
For me, the highlight of any zoo is always going to be the red pandas. I also enjoyed finally seeing the pygmy hippo. Lincoln Park Zoo also has a baby Grevy's Zebra born June 22nd, 2026, so it was only a few weeks old when I saw it.
I got some surprisingly good pictures of the snow leopards, grizzly bears, meerkats, bushbaby, otters, and seals. I also took way more pictures of scenery and flowers than I had originally planned to.
Although the online schedule makes it seem like there are a lot of daily events, many of the entries are just notifications of when things open or opportunities to feed farm animals. There are only a handful of training and demonstration events. Despite spending 5.5 total hours at the zoo, I was only able to make it to one - a seal training demonstration.
Overall, I would rate Lincoln Park Zoo at 3 stars because it is free. If it was a paid zoo, it would just be an average 2 stars. Here is how other zoos compare:
5 stars:
- San Diego Zoo (San Diego, CA) - Brookfield Zoo (Brookfield, IL) - Taipei Zoo (Taipei City, Taiwan)
4 stars:
- San Diego Safari Park (San Diego, CA) - Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden (Cincinnati, OH) - Oklahoma City Zoo (Oklahoma City, OK) - Milwaukee County Zoo (Milwaukee, WI) - Houston Zoo (Houston, TX) - Oakland Zoo (Oakland, CA)
3 stars:
- Lincoln Park Zoo (Chicago, IL, Free) - Zoo Atlanta (Atlanta, GA) - Buttonwood Park Zoo (New Bedford, MA) - Butterflies of Cape Cod (Bourne, MA) - International Crane Foundation (Baraboo, WI) - Henry Vilas Zoo (Madison, WI, Free) - Indianapolis Zoo (Indianapolis, IN) - Sacramento Zoo (Sacramento, CA) - Santa Barbara Zoo (Santa Barbara, CA) - Fort Worth Zoo (Fort Worth, TX) - Fort Wayne Zoo (Fort Wayne, IN) - Zoo Knoxville (Knoxville, TN) - ZooTampa (Tampa, FL) - Busch Gardens (Tampa, FL) - Los Angeles Zoo & Botanical Gardens (Los Angeles, CA) - Detroit Zoo (Detroit, MI) - Virginia Zoological Park (Norfolk, VA) - Virginia Living Museum (Newport News, VA) - Minnesota Zoo (Apple Valley, MN)
2 stars:
- Audubon Insectarium (New Orleans, LA) - Audubon Zoo (New Orleans, LA) - Sarasota Jungle Gardens (Sarasota, FL) - Save Our Seabirds Wild Bird Learning Center (Sarasota, FL, Free) - San Francisco Zoo & Gardens (San Francisco, CA) - Six Flags Discovery Kingdom (Vallejo, CA) - Franklin Park Zoo (Boston, MA) - Capron Park Zoo (Attleboro, MA) - Taylor-Bray Farm (Yarmouth Port, MA, Free) - Racine Zoo (Racine, WI) - Ochsner Park Zoo (Baraboo, WI, Free) - John Ball Zoo (Grand Rapids, MI) - Potter Park Zoo (Lansing, MI) - Antalya Zoo (Antalya, Turkey) - Marine Mammal Center (Sausalito, CA, Free) - Santa Ana Zoo (Santa Ana, CA) - San Antonio Zoological Society (San Antonio, TX) - Cameron Park Zoo (Waco, TX) - Dallas Zoo (Dallas, TX) - Caldwell Zoo (Tyler, TX) - Peoria Zoo (Peoria, IL) - Miller Park Zoo (Bloomington, IL) - Scovill Zoo (Decatur, IL) - Potawatomi Zoo (South Bend, IN) - Como Park Zoo & Conservatory (St. Paul, MN, Free)
1 star:
Tags: #travel#travelblog#wanderlust#chicago#illinois#lincolnpark#zoo#animals#cute#giftshop