1. Your Discovery Yacht
2. The destinations
3. First timer or expedition expert?
4. Penguins or polar bears?
5. Glaciers or the tundra?
6. Solitude or society?
7. Featured itineraries

When legendary explorer Roald Amundsen completed the first ever crossing of the Arctic’s Northwest Passage in 1905, it took a three-year journey of utter privation with just six crew aboard the tiny Gjoa, a 21m wooden sailing ship. When he clawed his way to the South Pole six years later, he made it back with just 11 of the 52 sled dogs he started out with.

A century down the track, you can now travel to these most remote corners of the globe in ultra-luxury, on your Discovery Yacht, Scenic Eclipse. The ship brings the innovation and safety of a Polar Class 6 rating with the comforts of a 6-star floating hotel. You’ll be one of just up to 220 guests (200 in Antarctica) staying in spacious verandah suites with butler service and an almost 1:1 crew to guest ratio.

A polar Discovery Team of up to 20 experts will take you on extraordinary experiences; kayaking^~ between icebergs, cruising on Zodiacs, spotting polar bears in the distance in the Arctic or shuffling along behind a waddle of penguins in Antarctica. Step aboard one of the two Airbus H130-T2 helicopters^ to soar over icy landscapes and search for coasting whales or dive up to 100 metres in our custom-built submersible^, Scenic Neptune, for a new perspective on these awe-inspiring destinations.

If this is your first true expedition cruise, Antarctica is an unforgettable place to begin. The seventh continent stuns with its sheer scale and silence - an untouched world of towering glaciers, endless ice, and surreal beauty. Crossing the infamous Drake Passage is a rite of passage in itself, and nothing compares to your first encounter with a colossal iceberg or a vast colony of penguins.

For the seasoned explorer, the Arctic offers a richer sense of connection - both to nature and to people. Cruising through the remote regions of Iceland, Greenland, and Norway, you’ll chart lesser-travelled paths, navigate fjords few have seen, and engage with Indigenous Sámi and Inuit communities who have lived in harmony with this icy frontier for generations. It’s a cultural and geographical exploration that reveals the Arctic not just as a place of stark beauty, but as a living, breathing world.

Teeming with penguins, seals and seabirds, Antarctica’s frozen landscapes are anything but lifeless. Wildlife is found across the continent, from the world’s largest colony of Adelie penguins in East Antarctica to Weddell seals resting on ice floes and migrating humpback, minke, and even blue whales cutting through the Southern Ocean. You might spot seabirds like albatrosses and petrels soaring overhead, or catch a glimpse of elusive species like the Ross Sea orca. Even further north, on the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia, tens of thousands of King penguins gather in some of the planet’s most striking wildlife spectacles.

By contrast, the Arctic offers a different kind of experience. Here, wildlife can be harder to spot, but every encounter feels intimate and rewarding. Polar bears roam the sea ice, narwhals and belugas glide beneath frigid waters, and walruses crowd rocky shores. On land, you might see arctic foxes, snowy owls, or herds of caribou moving across the tundra. While animals are more spread out, the Arctic’s wild beauty lies in the thrill of discovery - each sighting a quiet, powerful moment in an untamed world.

Spread across eight countries, these range from Indigenous Saami and Inuit communities to modern cities home to tens of thousands of people. On an Arctic voyage, you can meet the fascinating people who choose to live in one of the most inhospitable places on earth.

While both the Arctic and Antarctic are defined by ice, the landscapes at each pole couldn’t be more different.

Antarctica is a vast, high-altitude continent buried beneath miles of ancient ice - remote, otherworldly, and shaped by towering glaciers, jagged mountain ranges, and endless white horizons. It’s a place of inexplicable beauty, a white landscape of deep canyons and dramatic mountain ranges reaching up to 5000 metres, surrounded by pristine ocean, strewn with thick ice sheets and glowing blue glaciers. Antarctica is also home to the driest place on Earth, McMurdo Dry Valleys; an active volcano, Mt Erebus; and the Ross Sea Ice Shelf, which is the largest body of floating ice in the world at almost 1,000 kilometres long.

While Antarctica is a continent encased in ice, the Arctic is an ocean surrounded by land, where drifting sea ice gives way to tundra, fjords, and dramatic coastal cliffs. It’s not as cold up here, and during summer, much of the ice melts, revealing rolling hills blanketed in moss and wildflowers, and frozen shorelines etched by centuries of wind and water. The region is also home to majestic waterfalls and deep fjords - including Scoresby Sund in East Greenland, the world’s largest fjord system.

A journey to the polar regions is as much about atmosphere as it is about environment. In Antarctica, you enter a realm of deep solitude. There are no cities, no permanent residents —  only ice, silence, and the occasional research station. Scenic’s expert-led Discovery Team, including marine biologists, glaciologists, and naturalists, guide you through this pristine wilderness on Zodiac excursions to remote ice shelves, kayak through glacial waters, and exclusive helicopter^ flights over places few have ever seen, like the McMurdo Dry Valleys and Snow Hill Island. You’ll trace the footsteps of explorers like Shackleton and Mawson and witness the raw, untouched grandeur of the White Continent.

In its own way, the Arctic offers not just natural beauty, but living culture. Here, four million people reside within the Arctic Circle — across eight nations — ranging from Indigenous Sámi and Inuit communities to colourful fishing villages and modern cities. With Scenic, you’ll explore the diversity of the region, from Iceland’s volcanic landscapes to Greenland’s vast ice sheets and Norway’s dramatic fjords. You might cruise into Disko Bay to hear the thunderous crack of calving glaciers, visit the world’s largest fjord system at Scoresby Sund, or stand beneath the Northern Lights. In the Arctic, you're never far from signs of human life — and the stories of those who call this extreme environment home.