The Pilgrims Affairs Office of Ghana, under the supervision of the Hajj Board, will officially commence the airlifting of pilgrims to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on May 1, 2026.

Eighteen flights have been booked for the exercise, which will begin in Tamale, the Northern Regional capital, and later in Accra.

Alhaji Mohammed Amin Lamptey, the Communications Director of the Pilgrims Affairs Office of Ghana, disclosed this in an interview with the Ghana News Agency on Friday.

He said an advanced team would be departing the country for Saudi Arabia to ensure that all the necessary arrangements had been made for the arrival of the about 5000 pilgrims.

As part of preparations for the upcoming exercise, Alhaji Lamptey said the Ghana Hajj Board had concluded three rounds of meetings with key stakeholders to identify challenges and recommend solutions associated with the Hajj coordination exercise.

These challenges included poor crowd management, logical inadequacies, and safety protocol breaches.

“There is so much interdepartmental communication. All the departments that we have under the Hajj Board, we are communicating effectively,” he said.

“The ICT, the administration, the communication, and then the office that is in charge of our scholars who will be taking our pilgrims through the processes spiritually or religiously on how they should go about the pilgrimage.”

Based on notifications from the Ghana Embassy in Saudi Arabia, Alhaji Lamptey said the Ambassador, Alhaji Said Sinare, had pleaded with Ghanaians “to ensure they do the right things at the right time and avoid carrying anything that is untoward, something that is prohibited.”

He warned pilgrims against carrying contraband items, including narcotics, as that could lead to harsh sentencing.

Alhaji Lamptey noted that pilgrims had the responsibility of protecting “the image of Ghana, the image of Islam and the image of Muslims in Ghana.”

He warned against the use of backdoor channels to embark on the pilgrimage as that could hamper the chances of performing hajj in the future.

“The key point that came out is that most of those whose passports have been rejected are the people whose fingerprints were taken last year when they went through the back door,” he said.

“So, their passports have been rejected. So, that tells us that now the equation is changing.”