From the journal
How Yosemite’s reservation system actually works
For 2026 the park dropped entry reservations entirely. What that means at the gate, what it still costs, and what to watch if the system comes back.
The short version
There is no entry reservation for Yosemite in 2026. None. The Park Service announced it in late December 2025: after watching a season of traffic and parking data, they decided a season-wide reservation requirement wasn’t the right tool and shelved it. You can drive up to the Arch Rock, Big Oak Flat, or South entrance any day this year, pay the entrance fee, and go in.
If that sentence surprises you, you probably planned a trip between 2020 and 2025 — the years when “can we even get in?” was a real question. Here’s how it worked, why it mattered, and what still matters now that it’s gone.
How we got here
The system arrived with the pandemic. In 2020 and 2021, Yosemite required a day-use permit just to drive through the gate. In 2022 that evolved into a “peak hours” version — book a slot or arrive early or late. In 2023 the park dropped it entirely, crowds surged back, and in 2024 the peak-hours system returned.
2025 was the last season of it, and the most specific: reservations were required over Memorial Day weekend, daily from June 15 through August 15, and again over Labor Day weekend — but only for arrivals between 6 a.m. and 2 p.m. The reservation cost $2 on Recreation.gov, covered three consecutive days, and the person who booked it had to be in the car with photo ID. Slots for popular dates disappeared in minutes. We watched guests discover this two weeks before their trip, with hotels already booked.
There was always a back door, and it was us: guests riding with a park-authorized tour operator never needed a day-use reservation. The operator’s authorization covered the vehicle. For years that was one of the most concrete reasons to book a tour — not the snacks, not the narration, the gate.
What “no reservations” actually means in 2026
It means the paperwork is gone. It does not mean the crowds are gone.
The reasons the system existed — full parking lots, gridlock on Southside Drive, two-hour gate lines on July weekends — are still physics. The Park Service has said it will manage 2026 with real-time tools instead: temporary traffic diversions when lots fill, active parking management in the Valley. In practice, on a summer Saturday, the Valley lots still fill by mid-morning. If you roll up to the South entrance at 11 a.m. in July, you’ll still wait — there’s just no website telling you so in advance.
The honest advice hasn’t changed in twenty years: be through the gate early. Our tours are built around that — we cross into the park before the day-trip wave, do Glacier Point or the Valley while the light is good, and we never circle a parking lot, because a tour vehicle drops you at the viewpoint and meets you there.
What the gate costs this year
- $35 per private vehicle, good for seven days. Buy it as a digital pass on Recreation.gov before you come and the gate line moves faster.
- New for 2026: international visitors age 16 and up pay an additional $100 per-person surcharge on top of the vehicle fee. If you’re flying in from abroad, check Recreation.gov for the current rules before you budget.
- On any Crossroads tour, none of this is your problem. Park entrance fees are included in the tour price — see the includes list on each tour page.
If it comes back
The Park Service decides this year by year, and the announcement usually lands in winter — the 2026 call came in late December 2025. If a future season brings the system back, expect the familiar shape: a morning-to-early-afternoon reservation window, exemptions for arrivals outside it, for in-park lodging and wilderness permits, for YARTS bus riders — and for guests of authorized tour operators, which is us.
When you’re checking, go straight to nps.gov/yose and Recreation.gov. Third-party blogs (and yes, tour-company journals like this one) go stale; the park’s own pages don’t. We update this story when the policy changes — last verified June 2026.
And if you’d rather not think about any of it: that’s the product. Call us, pick a pickup point, and the only thing you need to bring to the gate is yourself.