Budapest Zoo Is Having a Baby Boom, and Tourists Should See It Now

If cute animal babies are on your Budapest bucket list, timing couldn’t be better: the Budapest Zoo and Botanical Garden is in the middle of a genuine summer baby boom, with a brand-new giant anteater cub as the latest star arrival.

Meet the Newest Arrival Near the Palm House

On July 19, 2026, longtime residents Isabella and William, the zoo’s pair of giant anteaters, welcomed their fifth cub together, and visitors can already spot the tiny newcomer riding on its mother’s back in the enclosure next to the Palm House. Giant anteater babies cling to their mother for six to nine months, starting out almost permanently attached before gradually working up the courage to explore the world on their own. One charming detail zookeepers point out is that the cub instinctively positions itself so its fur pattern lines up with its mother’s, creating natural camouflage that helps protect both of them in the wild.

There’s a sweet family tradition behind the naming, too. Isabella and William’s previous cubs have all been named after Hungarian pastries and desserts, including Bejgli, Flódni, Guba, and Zserbó, so the newest arrival was expected to get an equally delicious name. Zookeepers explained that dessert names work well early on since a cub’s sex can’t be reliably determined for weeks, and staff prefer not to disturb the sensitive mother-and-baby bond just to find out. True to form, the zoo later confirmed the little one would be called Muffin, joining its sibling in the sloth enclosure who received the name Puszedli, chosen with input from public suggestions on social media.

A Whole Nursery Full of Newcomers

The anteater cub is just the latest addition to what’s been an unusually busy season for zoo babies. Earlier in July, keepers introduced a red panda cub born to Dayah and Bendegúz, a pairing that only got together a little over a year ago after Dayah arrived at the zoo in May 2025 to join Bendegúz, who has lived there since 2020. Red panda cubs spend their first months almost entirely inside a den, rarely seen even by keepers, so photographing this one took real patience, including one especially memorable moment when a volunteer captured Dayah gently carrying her cub in her mouth between dens.

Just before that, on June 24, 2026, a healthy zebra colt was born to Romy and Zucchero, and can now be seen in the outdoor enclosure opposite the Elephant House. Romy, a Budapest Zoo resident since 2010, is a seasoned mother who has successfully raised several foals over the past sixteen years, including Zuri and Zuhara, the latter born during the 2024 holiday season and still living at the zoo. The young zebra’s coat looks noticeably fuzzier than the adults, and its stripes appear more brownish than black, which is completely normal since foals carry a special coat called “foal fur” until their first molt, offering extra insulation while their internal temperature regulation is still developing.

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Rounding out the season’s arrivals are a Pallas’s cat kitten, born in December 2025 to parents Bohus and Lucy, whose name the public was invited to vote on through mid-July, along with a sloth baby and earlier tiger cubs born last spring. It’s a genuinely rare stretch to see this many species reproduce at once, and it reflects the zoo’s long-running breeding and conservation programs for vulnerable species.

Best Time to Visit This Summer

The Budapest Zoo and Botanical Garden, one of the oldest zoos in the world, first opened its gates on August 9, 1866, and this year the whole institution is marking its 160th anniversary as a jubilee year, with special exhibits and historical displays already running throughout 2026. The official birthday celebration lands on August 9, 2026, and will include a full slate of programs, among them a live concert from the popular Hungarian band Budapest Bár.

For visitors planning a trip to Budapest this summer, pairing a zoo visit with the anniversary festivities makes for a particularly memorable day out, letting you see the newest generation of anteaters, red pandas, and zebras while the zoo celebrates over a century and a half of history. The zoo is easy to reach from central Budapest via the M1 metro line to Széchenyi fürdő station, right next to City Park, making it a convenient stop alongside other nearby attractions like the Széchenyi Thermal Bath.

If you don’t have time for a full day at the Zoo, you can still learn a lot of interesting things about the animals at the RakpartoZoo pop-up attraction on the downtown Budapest riverside