Uganda is a strongly religious country. According to the 2014 census, about 84% of Ugandans are Christian, mainly Roman Catholic and Anglican, with fast-growing Pentecostal churches, and about 14% are Muslim. Smaller communities include Seventh-day Adventists, Hindus and Sikhs, Bahá’ís and the Abayudaya Jewish community near Mbale. Many people also keep aspects of traditional belief, such as respect for ancestors and clan rituals, alongside their faith.

How religion arrived

Islam came first, through Arab and Swahili traders who reached the Buganda court in the 1840s. Anglican missionaries of the Church Missionary Society arrived in 1877 and Catholic White Fathers in 1879. Rivalry between Muslim, Protestant and Catholic factions at court led to the execution of converts in 1885–1887, remembered as the Uganda Martyrs, and to civil wars in the late 1880s and early 1890s. Religious identity remained linked to politics for much of the 20th century. See our guide to the Namugongo Martyrs Shrine.

Religion in daily life

Churches and mosques are full on Sundays and Fridays, gospel music plays everywhere, and prayers open meetings and meals. Christmas, Easter, Eid al-Fitr, Eid al-Adha and Martyrs’ Day on 3 June are public holidays. Schools and hospitals were often founded by churches and still have religious links. Traditional practices continue in some areas, including consulting traditional healers and clan ceremonies at births, marriages and funerals. See our guide to Uganda’s public holidays.

Visiting places of worship

Kampala’s skyline is shaped by its religious buildings: Namirembe Anglican Cathedral and Rubaga Catholic Cathedral on their hills, the Uganda National Mosque in Old Kampala, and the Bahá’í House of Worship on Kikaya Hill, completed in 1961 as the first in Africa. Visitors are generally welcome; dress modestly, remove shoes in mosques, and ask before photographing services. See our guide to Kampala’s mosques and churches.

Etiquette for visitors

Ugandans often ask about your faith in friendly conversation; a polite answer is fine. Respect prayer times, avoid criticising religion, and dress modestly in rural areas and religious sites. Near Bwindi, Sunday church services with lively choirs are open to visitors who want to join respectfully. The gorilla permit costs US$800, or US$600 in April, May and November. See our guide to what to wear in Uganda.

Frequently asked questions

Religious Diversity in Ugandan Culture

Uganda’s religious landscape — approximately 85% Christian (of whom the Catholic and Anglican communities are the largest), 14% Muslim, and less than 1% traditional African religion or other — reflects the mission education system’s comprehensive penetration of the colonial period alongside the Islam that the pre-colonial coastal trade network introduced into the interlacustrine region. The religious diversity is visible in the landscape through the competing hilltop dominance of Catholic, Anglican, and Muslim institutions — the famous three hills of Kampala each topped by a different religious institution — and in the calendar of religious holidays that the national public holiday schedule accommodates across traditions. The Martyr’s Day pilgrimage to Namugongo on June 3 — marking the execution of the Uganda Martyrs by Kabaka Mwanga in 1886 — draws over 2 million pilgrims annually from across Africa and is the most significant annual religious event in sub-Saharan Africa after the Islamic pilgrimages and the South African church conventions.

The interreligious tolerance that Uganda’s multi-faith public culture maintains — partly a product of the constitutional framework, partly a product of the specific history of religious conflict and its resolution that the 19th century’s religious wars produced — is visible in the practical arrangements of daily Ugandan life. A Muslim and a Christian family sharing a compound observe each other’s major celebrations without hostility; a business owned by an Anglican employs without discrimination across religious lines; the national holiday calendar includes both Christian and Islamic holidays. This tolerance is not universal — there are communities and contexts where religious identity creates social friction — but the general pattern of Ugandan interreligious daily life is more consistently tolerant than many of the world’s plural religious societies, a fact that visitors who engage with Ugandan communities across faith lines consistently note. The historical context for this tolerance is specific — the 1889 religious wars between Catholic, Protestant, and Muslim factions that ended in negotiated coexistence established a pragmatic tolerance that subsequent generations inherited.