Which Famous Travel Blogs Are Still Active in 2026?

Travel blogging gets declared dead every year — and yet 68 of the 93 travel blogs our scoring engine monitors (73%) published a new post within the last 90 days. The absences are loud: Migrationology has been silent since 2021, Expert Vagabond since spring 2025, and The Blonde Abroad hasn't published since March. But the base rate tells the opposite story, and the author of this year's widely shared "travel blogs are dying" essay is, by our crawl, one of the most reliably active bloggers in the niche.

Last verified: August 16, 2026. Our crawler re-checks every blog on this page weekly, and scores refresh three times a week. We ran this same status check on vegan blogs in July and readers asked for the travel edition — so here it is, with a verified last-post date for every famous name people keep asking about. Treat this as documentation, not a takedown: bloggers graduate to YouTube channels, TV careers, tour companies, and consultancies, and the sites stay up as libraries.

Our number isn't an outlier, either. João Leitão's independently maintained travel blog census — 2,111 blogs checked — currently finds about 65% alive. Our full directory average across 612 indie blogs is 68% active within 90 days. Three independent measurements landing in the same band: roughly two-thirds or more of travel blogs are still publishing. The famous ones that went quiet mostly didn't fail — they moved.

Travel Blog Status Check: The Famous Names at a Glance

Statuses below are as of our August 16, 2026 crawl, oldest silence first. "Last post found" is the newest entry in each blog's RSS feed — the limits of that instrument are covered in How We Verified This.

How We Verified This

Every blog in the Travel & Adventure category of our directory is crawled weekly by the same scoring engine that ranks it: we read each blog's RSS feed, sitemap, and post markup, extract the newest publish date, and refresh seven scoring metrics three times a week. Every date in this article comes from that crawl, cross-checked by hand for each blog we make an individual claim about.

One honest limitation: a quiet feed is not an abandoned site. Feeds measure new blog posts — not page updates, not maintenance, not whether anyone is home. Two blogs on this page prove it. João Leitão's RSS feed has been silent since November 2024, yet his travel-blog census page was updated this month. And The Professional Hobo's feed stopped responding to crawlers in 2024 — but a manual visit in August 2026 found freshly updated guides. Where the instrument fails, we say so rather than publish a number we can't stand behind. The hand-check for this article moved three blogs' dates forward — including Legal Nomads, which published a new post the day after our weekly crawl had passed. Five further blogs (Along Dusty Roads, A Broken Backpack, Find Cute Spots, We Are Foodie Travelers, Stuck in Customs) are excluded from the counts below pending manual verification, because their feeds gave us nothing trustworthy to report.

Run one of these blogs? If our date is wrong, or you've started publishing again, tell us — the crawler re-checks weekly and this page gets corrected, not defended.

Still Publishing: 68 of 93 Travel Blogs (73%)

The unreported story of travel blogging in 2026 is how much of it is simply still happening. Seven in ten of the travel blogs we monitor posted within the last 90 days — a shade above our directory-wide average — and the active tier's mean Awesome Score of 66 runs about fifteen points above the dormant tiers'. These are working publications, not zombie domains.

Is Nomadic Matt still blogging in 2026?

Nomadic Matt is still publishing regularly — his most recent post went up on July 28, 2026, less than three weeks before our August crawl. Matt Kepnes has run the site since 2008, and whatever you've read about the death of the big travel blogs, his isn't participating. It holds an Awesome Score of 73 in our directory, with content volume and freshness both intact.

Is A Dangerous Business still active?

A Dangerous Business is still publishing steadily — Amanda Williams' most recent post landed July 29, 2026. That's worth pausing on, because Williams wrote this year's most-shared account of the industry's crisis, "How Google and AI are Killing Travel Blogs Like Mine": fifteen years building a site to 150,000+ monthly visitors, then a roughly 40% traffic decline after Google's 2023 Helpful Content Update, with ad revenue following it down. Her essay and her feed together are the clearest statement of what's actually happening: the crisis is economic, not editorial. The traffic died; the writing didn't. She scores 67 in our directory.

Is Adventurous Kate still blogging?

Adventurous Kate is still publishing regularly — Kate McCulley's latest post is dated August 6, 2026. Fifteen-plus years in, hers is one of the steadiest feeds in the solo-female-travel niche, and at 76 in our directory she out-scores almost everyone in the category.

Is The Professional Hobo still active?

The Professional Hobo is active — and she's our cautionary tale about trusting crawlers. Nora Dunn's RSS feed stopped responding to automated checks in late 2024, which made the blog look dormant in our own data. A manual visit in August 2026 found guides freshly updated within the week, alongside her active YouTube channel and freelance work for major travel publications. The site is alive; our instrument was blind. We've said so above — and it's why every dormancy claim in this article was verified by hand.

Is Legal Nomads still being updated?

Yes — Legal Nomads is still being updated, and it nearly fooled our crawler. Jodi Ettenberg published a new post on August 14, 2026, the day after our weekly crawl had passed through and recorded only her previous one — a year-end letter from December 2025, written largely from bed. The manual check caught it. Ettenberg wrote the blog full-time from 2008 until a 2017 spinal-fluid leak left her chronically ill; she now writes most often on the Curious About Everything newsletter and keeps the blog's archive — including the celiac translation cards and food guides that made it famous — intact. It scores 59 in our directory, and that archive remains one of the best-preserved bodies of work in travel writing.

Beyond the household names, the top of the active tier is where the actual best travel blogs of 2026 live: Green Global Travel (78), Salt in our Hair (77), BucketListly Blog (77), and Travel Past 50 (77) all posted within days of our crawl. If you want those as a ranked list rather than a status report, that's our best travel blogs of 2026 roundup.

Slowing Down: Quiet for 3 to 12 Months

Nine blogs sit in the in-between: not dormant, not weekly. This tier is where most of the "is X still around?" questions actually land — and in almost every case the answer is "yes, but the blog is no longer the main stage."

Is Wandering Earl still traveling and blogging?

Wandering Earl is still going — at a slower clip. Derek Baron's most recent post went up March 29, 2026, about four and a half months before our crawl. Baron has been traveling since 1999 and blogging since 2010, and since 2012 the main event has been Wandering Earl Tours, his small-group trip company. He's the counter-example to the pivot-and-vanish pattern: the business changed, the blog kept breathing.

Is The Blonde Abroad still active?

The Blonde Abroad is still online and posting occasionally — the most recent post our crawler found is dated March 26, 2026. Kiersten Rich's focus shifted after she moved back to San Diego and started a family: the site now blends travel with home and lifestyle content, and much of her travel energy goes into TBA Escapes, her women-only group tour company. Diversified, not disappeared — but the feed that once ran weekly now runs quarterly. Current score: 51.

Is Never Ending Footsteps still active?

Never Ending Footsteps is active — the monthly updates just moved. Lauren Juliff's blog shows its last post on February 15, 2026, but her long-running monthly travel summaries continue on her Substack, where she still writes regularly after fifteen years and roughly a hundred countries. This is the platform-shift pattern in miniature: the writer didn't stop; the blog stopped being where the writing goes first.

The rest of the tier reads similarly. Uncornered Market's Dan Noll and Audrey Scott now run a tourism consultancy — the blog that won responsible-tourism awards became the credential for advisory work. Hole in the Donut's Barbara Weibel, publishing since 2007 with more than 3,000 stories from 100+ countries, has eased to a few posts a year without ever stopping. And GlobeTrotter Girls' Dani Heinrich still posts a few times a year. None of these feeds are dead. They're just no longer in a hurry.

Dormant: A Year or More of Silence

Five blogs have gone more than a year without a new post in their feed. To be clear about what that claim means: no new entries in the blog's RSS feed as of our August 16, 2026 crawl — nothing more. Scores are omitted here, because our freshness metric mechanically collapses when posting stops; a dormant blog's low score partly measures the dormancy itself.

Is Expert Vagabond still active?

Expert Vagabond has not published a new post since March 28, 2025 — about seventeen months before our crawl. There's no farewell post and no announcement; Matthew Karsten's about page describes life in France with his family, and the site, its photography guides, and its archive all remain online. After nearly two decades of adventure blogging, the feed has simply gone quiet. Whether that's a pause or an ending, only he knows.

What happened to Nomad Revelations?

Nomad Revelations' feed has been quiet since November 1, 2024 — but João Leitão hasn't gone anywhere. Leitão maintains the web's most thorough census of travel blogs — 2,111 checked, roughly 65% alive — and that census was updated this very month, with no new RSS entry to show for it. He's this article's built-in disclaimer: a quiet feed measures blogging, not existence. His blog, documenting travel to some of the least-visited countries on earth, remains online in eleven languages.

Ended or Pivoted: The Blogs That Moved On

Five blogs have been silent for two years or more. These are the names that power the "travel blogging is dead" essays — but look at where the writers went, and the story reads less like death and more like graduation.

Does Mark Wiens still blog on Migrationology?

No — Migrationology's last post went up on January 15, 2021, and it's the clearest graduation story in travel media. Mark Wiens started the blog in 2009, quit his job to run it full-time in 2012, went video-first in 2016, and now fronts a YouTube channel with over 11 million subscribers and 3 billion views. The blog wasn't abandoned so much as outgrown by two orders of magnitude. The archive — some of the best street-food writing of its era — is still online.

What happened to Oneika the Traveller?

Oneika the Traveller's last post is dated June 23, 2023, and its author is now on your television. Oneika Raymond — a teacher who built one of the most-read Black travel blogs of the 2010s — became an Emmy-winning correspondent for NBC New York, hosted Travel Channel's Big City, Little Budget, and fronts Marriott Bonvoy's About the Journey podcast. The blog won SATW's Best Travel Blog award in 2018; the site stays up as the origin story.

What happened to SnarkyNomad?

SnarkyNomad's feed simply stops on February 9, 2019 — no farewell post, no announcement, no pivot we can point to. The site is still online, seven and a half years later. Sometimes a blog just ends. Its archive of sharp-elbowed packing and gear advice remains where it always was.

What happened to Hippie in Heels?

Hippie in Heels doesn't belong in any status table, and we won't put it in one. Rachel Jones, the nurse-turned-blogger who built one of the best-loved India travel blogs of the 2010s from Goa, passed away in May 2019, at thirty. The site published a note about its future and carried on for a time afterward; its guides to Goa and solo female travel in India are still online, still useful, and still hers. The archive is worth your time.

Why Are So Many Famous Travel Blogs Going Quiet?

Put the stories above side by side and the pattern is plain. Famous travel blogs don't typically die of neglect — they exit through one of four doors. Video: Mark Wiens took street food to YouTube at a scale no blog could match. Media careers: Oneika Raymond's blog was a decade-long audition tape for television. Businesses: Wandering Earl and The Blonde Abroad turned audiences into tour companies; Uncornered Market turned expertise into consultancy. Life: health, family, and — in the industry's saddest case — loss.

Underneath the individual exits runs the economic current Amanda Williams documented from inside: Google's 2023 Helpful Content Update and the rise of AI answers cut independent travel sites' traffic by 30-40%, and ad revenue fell with it. The blogs that survive increasingly do it on owned audiences — newsletters, tours, communities — rather than search traffic. That squeeze is real, and it's industry-wide: our study of publishing frequency across 595 indie blogs found 15.5% of all indie blogs dormant for a year or more, in every niche, not just travel.

And yet: 73% of the travel blogs we track still published in the last 90 days. The economics broke before the habit did.

What This Means If You Follow (or Run) a Travel Blog

If you're a reader, the practical takeaway is that static "best travel blogs" lists age badly — several famous recommendations you'll find elsewhere went quiet years ago. Our best travel blogs of 2026 ranking only ranks blogs that are verifiably alive, and the live category page re-sorts as the crawler re-checks. If you're a travel blogger — especially one still publishing through the squeeze — submit your blog: it gets the same seven-metric scoring as every site on this page, and a place in a directory that checks, weekly, that its recommendations are still breathing.

Updates: August 16, 2026 — initial publication; 93 blogs crawled, 20 famous names individually verified by hand.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Are travel blogs dead in 2026?

A: No. Of the 93 travel blogs our crawler monitors, 68 (73%) published within the last 90 days of August 2026 — right in line with the 68% active rate across our full 612-blog directory and the ~65% alive rate in João Leitão's independent census of 2,111 travel blogs. The famous silences are real, but they're the exception.

Q: How many famous travel blogs are still active in 2026?

A: As of our August 16, 2026 crawl: 68 of 93 published within 90 days, 9 posted within the last year, 5 have been quiet for one to two years, and 5 have been silent for two years or more. Five more blogs couldn't be verified and are excluded from those counts, and one — Hippie in Heels — we document separately out of respect for its late author.

Q: Is Nomadic Matt still active?

A: Yes. Nomadic Matt's most recent post went up July 28, 2026, and the site publishes regularly — it scores 73 in our directory.

Q: What happened to Legal Nomads?

A: Jodi Ettenberg became chronically ill after a spinal-fluid leak in 2017 and stepped back from full-time blogging. She still posts occasionally — most recently August 14, 2026 — and writes regularly on her Curious About Everything newsletter. The blog's archive remains online and maintained.

Q: Is The Blonde Abroad still posting?

A: Occasionally. The most recent post our crawler found is dated March 26, 2026. Kiersten Rich's focus has shifted to her TBA Escapes tour company and family life, with the blog updated a few times a year.

Q: What happened to Hippie in Heels?

A: Rachel Jones, the blogger behind Hippie in Heels, passed away in May 2019. The site and its archive of Goa and India travel guides remain online.

Q: Does Mark Wiens still write on Migrationology?

A: No — the blog's last post was January 15, 2021. Wiens moved fully to YouTube, where his food-travel channel has over 11 million subscribers. The Migrationology archive is still online.

Q: Which famous travel blogs have stopped publishing entirely?

A: By our August 2026 crawl, the longest silences among well-known names are SnarkyNomad (since February 2019), Migrationology (January 2021), The Cultureur (November 2021), Oneika the Traveller (June 2023), and Desk to Dirtbag (August 2023). Expert Vagabond and Nomad Revelations have been quiet more than a year. All of these sites remain online.

Q: How do you check if a travel blog is still active?

A: Look at the blog's RSS feed (usually at /feed) for the newest entry date, check the sitemap's last-modified dates, and check the most recent post on the homepage — a copyright year in the footer proves nothing, since it updates automatically. Our crawler does exactly this for every blog in the directory, weekly, and flags anything that stops.