A Popular National Park Just Eliminated Its Reservation Requirement

Interest in America’s national parks shows no signs of slowing down. In 2025, the National Park Service recorded 323 million visits, with 26 parks setting all-time visitation records. The popularity of these incredible natural wonders has led some parks to impose restrictions during peak times to keep crowds manageable and preserve these delicate ecosystems. Interestingly, however, the National Park Service announced that one perennially popular park will no longer require reservations in 2026. Here are all the details. 

Reservations No Longer Required at Yosemite

Established in 1890, Yosemite National Park in California is the country’s third-oldest national park. The park welcomed 4.76 million visitors in 2025, which ranks fifth among all the parks in the system. (Great Smoky Mountains is No. 1, followed by Zion, Yellowstone, and Grand Canyon national parks.)

Over the years, Yosemite has faced growing concerns with crowding, traffic congestion, and limited parking. In 2022, park officials added a number of closures due to infrastructure upgrades and introduced a timed-entry reservation system during peak season. Each day from late May through September, visitors were required to make a reservation to enter or drive through the park from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m.

The reservation system was abandoned in 2023, but the traffic jams and parking problems returned, so officials once again implemented timed-entry reservations during the peak summer period in 2024 and 2025, along with select weekends and holidays in spring and fall.  

However, in February of this year, the National Park Service announced that it will not require vehicle reservations in 2026, noting that “the decision follows a comprehensive evaluation of traffic patterns, parking availability, and visitor use during the 2025 season.”

The statement continued, “Park analysis found that most weekdays maintained available parking, stable traffic flow and visitation levels within the park’s operational capacity. These findings indicate that a season-wide reservation requirement is not the most effective approach for 2026.” 

To help manage crowds, the park will provide real-time traffic monitoring on its website and employ more staff at key intersections and during peak traffic periods to manage parking lots. The park service is also encouraging travelers to visit on weekdays when congestion is less of a concern, and to explore surrounding attractions just outside of Yosemite Valley, such as Tuolumne Meadows and the glacier-carved Hetch Hetchy Valley.

Yosemite National Park Highlights

There’s a reason Yosemite is so popular: The 1,200-square-mile preserve is filled with stunning waterfalls, sprawling meadows, ancient giant sequoias, and world-famous rock formations like Half Dome. (If you’re adventurous enough to tackle the cables to climb the final 400 feet to the summit of Half Dome, you’ll need to enter a lottery to do so — only 225 people per day are granted access.) 

A popular way to see the park is by driving Tioga Road, one of our favorite national park road trips. Open during the summer months, the 46-mile drive winds from the Crane Flat campground to Tioga Pass, the 9,943-foot highway pass through the Sierra Nevada mountains — the highest pass in California. 

Many visitors come for the waterfalls in particular, including Bridalveil, Vernal, Sentinel Falls, and the park’s namesake Yosemite Falls. The latter drops 2,425 feet as one of the tallest waterfalls in the country; during peak snowmelt in spring, up to 2,400 gallons of water gush over the upper edge of the falls every second. 

Another Yosemite highlight is the Mariposa Grove, home to over 500 mature giant sequoias, including the famous Grizzly Giant. Estimated to be about 3,000 years old, it’s the park’s second-oldest tree, and it towers over 200 feet tall, with branches that reach a diameter of 6 feet. 

Other National Parks Still Requiring Reservations 

Along with Yosemite, two other popular parks will not be requiring park-wide vehicle reservations in 2026: Arches National Park in Utah and Glacier National Park in Montana.

However, Rocky Mountain National Park will continue its timed-entry reservation requirement for peak season, running from late May through mid-October.

There are also a number of specific attractions within national parks that travelers will continue to be required to book in advance. For instance, you’ll need to obtain a permit if you wish to tackle Zion National Park’s famed Angels Landing hiking trail, and reservations are required to drive Acadia National Park’s Cadillac Summit Road, the highest point on the Eastern Seaboard of the U.S.