Prague is mild. The bites to plan for are in South Moravia and on forest trails.

A few in Prague, and most of them come in through an open hotel window at night. The buggy part of the country is South Moravia, where the floodplain forests around Lednice, Valtice and Břeclav can swarm after floods or a wet spring, and where all of the country's human West Nile cases have occurred. On a forest hike the ticks matter more than any mosquito, and Czechia (the Czech Republic) counted more confirmed tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) cases than any other EU country in 2022.

Prague: close the window after dark

A summer city break in Prague is mostly light on bites, and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) listed no West Nile cases for the city in 2024–2026. The exception is the hotel room. Window screens are not standard, especially in older hotels, and a window left open on a warm evening lets in mosquitoes that bite through the night. Ask for a room with air conditioning or keep the windows shut after dark.

South Moravia's floodplain forests

The wooded floodplain where the Morava and Dyje rivers meet, along the Austrian border, is Czech mosquito country. Floodwater mosquitoes hatch there in huge numbers after floods or a wet spring, from Břeclav to the Lednice-Valtice area, and larvicide has been used in the forests after past floods. In a dry year the swarms are smaller. If your trip takes in Lednice-Valtice, Mikulov or the Pálava wine country, put repellent on before dusk and wear long sleeves and pants into the evening.

South Moravia is also the only part of Czechia with human West Nile cases. The virus has circulated there since 1997, when the first cases followed floods, and the region's house mosquitoes, which bite in the evening and at night, have been found carrying it. Five locally acquired cases were confirmed in 2018, and ECDC counted 2 in 2024 and none in 2025 or in 2026 as of October 21. The tiger mosquito has turned up near Mikulov since 2012, arriving along the roads from Austria and Slovakia, but it has not become established, and no local dengue or chikungunya has ever been reported.

Ticks are the bite that matters

ECDC counted 709 confirmed TBE cases in Czechia in 2022, the most of any EU country, at 6.7 per 100,000 people. Lyme disease, also spread by ticks, had its most infections in 11 years in the first half of 2025, the Czech news site Seznam Zprávy reported. The sandstone forests of Bohemian Switzerland and the riverside and forest walks around Český Krumlov are tick country, and South Bohemia is one of the regions that report the most TBE cases.

CDC's Czechia page says the TBE vaccine "is recommended for persons who will have extensive exposure to ticks based on their planned outdoor activities and itinerary." If your trip includes days of hiking or camping in the forests, ask a travel clinic about it 4–6 weeks before departure. On the trail, use a repellent with 20% or more DEET, which CDC advises when you need protection from both ticks and mosquitoes, tuck your pants into your socks and check your whole body for ticks after every outing. Ticks tend to stay active from spring into autumn, so a May or October hike needs the same care. Our protection guide has the full routine.

Where you're going

Here is how the main stops compare in summer.

Heading on to Vienna, Poland or Germany? See our Austria, Poland and Germany briefings.

What travelers report

Paraphrased from TripAdvisor reviews and linked so you can read them in full. Neither is dated, and in a Prague hotel the bites depend mostly on whether the windows have screens.

• Hotel Merkur, Prague

  A reviewer described a night with a room full of mosquitoes, by their account hundreds if not thousands. TripAdvisor ↗

• Iris Hotel Eden, Prague

  Answering whether the room windows open all the way, a respondent said guests can open the whole window but should remember the mosquitoes. TripAdvisor ↗

One more rule outlasts the trip. Any fever during or after your trip, or a fever or headache in the weeks after a tick bite, means a doctor visit, and you tell them you were in Czechia.

Traveler questions