16 of Our Favorite Free Virtual Field Trips of 2026

Best Factory Virtual Tour: M&M Factory Tour

The Food Network teamed up with candy maker Mars to give M&M fans a virtual tour of one of its factories. During the short YouTube video, viewers can pan around as a tour guide explains how unrefined chocolate is turned into the little candies we know and love.

Best Virtual Planetarium: Stellarium

Stellarium Web is an online planetarium created by two brothers. Offering an accurate and realistic view of the night sky, it lets you pan around and spot stars, satellites, and other celestial bodies.

It offers mobile apps for Android and iOS that aren’t free. The money goes toward paying server and development costs for the two-person project.

Best European Museum Virtual Tour: The Louvre

Sure, we’d love to jet off to France and tour its fabulous museums personally. But if that’s not an option, the Louvre has several virtual tours available on its website. The offerings include exhibitions on the body in movement, founding myths, Egyptian antiquities, and more.

The Louvre also has a handy list of family-friendly online resources everyone can enjoy, including a Mona Lisa VR experience.

Best Tour of Space: NASA

This might be cheating a bit because it’s really a collection of videos, but, oh boy, what a collection to tour! The Galleries open up an array of videos covering space topics from testing a parachute for Mars to moving water in space.

Each video is a mini virtual tour that will awe kids and encourage interest in science and space.

Best Virtual Zoo Tour: San Diego Zoo

The San Diego Zoo is home to more than 3,500 animals of more than 650 species and subspecies. It’s widely considered one of the best zoos in the world. But if you can’t make it to California, it has a robust virtual experience online.

You can peek in on the animals through live cams. There’s also a variety of videos that teach kids about vultures or show them how to draw a tiger, for example. There are also zoo-related games and activities kids can do at home.

Best Natural History Tour: Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History

This iconic museum is dedicated to understanding the natural world and humanity’s place in it. There’s so much to see that it can’t possibly be listed here. However, the museum offers an online tour of most of its exhibits. Split this tour up into multiple lessons, so kids don’t get overwhelmed.

Best Slime-Based Virtual Tour: Slime in Space

What happens to Nickelodeon’s iconic slime when it’s in space? That’s the concept behind the Slime in Space virtual field trip.

Featuring real astronauts and Nickelodeon celebrities, the 15-minute video shows kids how slime and water react in a microgravity environment 250 miles above the Earth.

Along the way, it answers burning questions like, “Is slime a solid or a liquid?” and “Can you slime a person in space?” (The answer is: yes, very slowly.)

Best Tour of the White House: Google Arts & Culture’s The White House

Every President since John Adams has occupied the White House, and now your children can visit it, too.

Google Arts & Culture offers four museum views (three tours of The White House and one of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building) plus a look at more than 140 paintings that grace (or have graced) the walls of the country’s most famous abode.

The 360-degree images let kids explore to their heart’s desire.

Best Living-History Virtual Tour: Colonial Williamsburg

Colonial Williamsburg is a living-history museum in Virginia that offers a glimpse at what life was like in the 18th century. Its virtual tour is highly interactive and includes videos, informational signs, and 3D models you can rotate.

With its various webcams, you can see the armory, courthouse, merchants’ square, and more. Colonial Williamsburg’s website also offers a virtual scavenger hunt that your kids can participate in as they tour the area.

Best General Virtual Tour Resource: Discovery Education

Discovery Education offers a variety of virtual field trips for kids learning from home. The offerings change often, but currently include an NFL experience, a doodling experience meant to encourage creativity, and a virtual field trip through the internet of things.

You can watch the field trips live or catch the videos later on-demand.

Best National Park Virtual Tour: Yellowstone

Yellowstone offers seven virtual tours appropriate for older elementary and middle school ages. There’s a lot of written information along with the images, but it’s fascinating, and the photos are stunning.

From learning about old Fort Yellowstone to discovering park anomalies like Mud Volcano, these tours are a great way for kids to discover unique facts about America.

Best Tours of Nature: Nature Works Everywhere

Explore nature around the world with The Nature Conservancy’s virtual tours. Visit the coral reefs of Palau, the deserts and grasslands of Africa, a rainforest (from a canoe’s viewpoint), a renewable energy plant, and more.

The tours are narrated and give great, quick facts to help kids learn in simple, straightforward ways. All tours are appropriate for grades 3 through 12, but are marked with notes about the grades most likely to enjoy the tour.

Best General Farm Tour: FarmFood 360

FarmFood 360 gives an inside look at the activities of a Canadian farm. Kids see 360-degree views of the farm as they learn about milk and cheese production, sheep farming, egg processing, and more.

There’s an app available for Android and iOS devices, and it’s compatible with some virtual reality headsets.

Best Tours of the World: AirPano

AirPano has a variety of tours in China, Portugal, Switzerland, and other countries. Children can visit the Zhangjiajie Glass Bridge in China, an underwater cave in Indonesia, ski resorts in France, and more destinations around the globe.

What makes this site so good is that it offers narrations of several tours, provides closeups through interactive actions, and includes short chunks of written information that’s easy for kids of most ages to read.

The tours are also fairly short, which makes these tours great for younger kids, but older kids will still enjoy the trip.

Best Art-Centric Virtual Tour: The Met

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is home to over 5,000 years of art from around the world. You can see some of it from the comfort of your home. Take a virtual stroll through part of the museum using Google Street View.

There are also numerous online exhibits on topics like Coco Chanel, Vermeer, Catholic allegory in art, and more.