How do I navigate to a parent route from a child route?

Do you want a link/HTML or do you want to route imperatively/in code?

Link: The RouterLink directive always treats the provided link as a delta to the current URL:

[routerLink]="['/absolute']"
[routerLink]="['../../parent']"
[routerLink]="['../sibling']"
[routerLink]="['./child']"     // or
[routerLink]="['child']" 

// with route param     ../../parent;abc=xyz
[routerLink]="['../../parent', {abc: 'xyz'}]"
// with query param and fragment   ../../parent?p1=value1&p2=v2#frag
[routerLink]="['../../parent']" [queryParams]="{p1: 'value', p2: 'v2'}" fragment="frag"

With RouterLink, remember to import and use the directives array:

import { ROUTER_DIRECTIVES } from '@angular/router';
@Component({
    directives: [ROUTER_DIRECTIVES],

Imperative: The navigate() method requires a starting point (i.e., the relativeTo parameter). If none is provided, the navigation is absolute:

import { Router, ActivatedRoute } from '@angular/router';
...
constructor(private router: Router, private route: ActivatedRoute) {}
...
this.router.navigate(["/absolute/path"]);
this.router.navigate(["../../parent"], {relativeTo: this.route});
this.router.navigate(["../sibling"],   {relativeTo: this.route});
this.router.navigate(["./child"],      {relativeTo: this.route}); // or
this.router.navigate(["child"],        {relativeTo: this.route});

// with route param     ../../parent;abc=xyz
this.router.navigate(["../../parent", {abc: 'xyz'}], {relativeTo: this.route});
// with query param and fragment   ../../parent?p1=value1&p2=v2#frag
this.router.navigate(["../../parent"], {relativeTo: this.route, 
    queryParams: {p1: 'value', p2: 'v2'}, fragment: 'frag'});

// navigate without updating the URL 
this.router.navigate(["../../parent"], {relativeTo: this.route, skipLocationChange: true});

constructor(private router: Router) {}

navigateOnParent() {
  this.router.navigate(['../some-path-on-parent']);
}

The router supports

• absolute paths /xxx - started on the router of the root component
• relative paths xxx - started on the router of the current component
• relative paths ../xxx - started on the parent router of the current component

This seems to work for me as of Spring 2017:

goBack(): void {
  this.router.navigate(['../'], { relativeTo: this.route });
}

Where your component ctor accepts ActivatedRoute and Router, imported as follows:

import { ActivatedRoute, Router } from '@angular/router';

You can navigate to your parent root like this

this.router.navigate(['.'], { relativeTo: this.activeRoute.parent });

You will need to inject the current active Route in the constructor

constructor(
    private router: Router,
    private activeRoute: ActivatedRoute) {

  }