Camping in Yosemite National Park: The Gate Moved in 2026
For four summers the hardest part of a Yosemite trip was getting through the gate. You booked a timed entry slot, you set an alarm for the release, and if you missed it the trip was off no matter what else you had arranged.
That gate is gone. Yosemite will not use a timed entry reservation system in 2026. The park is managing congestion with traffic monitoring, parking management and staffing instead of with a booking window.
This is good news that quietly makes planning harder, because the bottleneck did not disappear — it moved. Everything that rations a Yosemite camping trip now sits inside the park rather than at its boundary: a campground release at 7am on the 15th of the month, a wilderness permit lottery 24 weeks out, and a Half Dome lottery that runs for exactly one month in March. Turn up in 2026 expecting the old obstacle and you will sail through the entrance station straight into a valley where every site was spoken for in February.
The 15th of the month is the date that actually matters
Yosemite's valley campgrounds are released five months in advance, on the 15th of each month, at 7:00 am Pacific. That single sentence governs more Yosemite trips than any other rule in the park.
Each release covers a one-month block of arrival dates. Booking a stay that starts on 20 July means being at a screen on 15 February. Upper Pines, Lower Pines, North Pines, Wawona and Hodgdon Meadow all work this way, and the valley ones — the Pines campgrounds — are gone in minutes.
Two other clocks run alongside it. Tuolumne Meadows releases half its sites two months ahead on the same 15th-of-the-month rhythm. And a whole group of campgrounds runs on a rolling 14-day window, released at 7am Pacific fourteen days before each arrival date: Bridalveil Creek, Crane Flat, Tamarack Flat, White Wolf, Yosemite Creek and Porcupine Flat. Camp 4, the historic climbers' campground, runs on a rolling seven-day window at $10 per person.
The practical consequence is that Yosemite rewards two completely different kinds of planner, and punishes the one in between. If you plan five months out, aim at the valley. If you plan two weeks out, aim at the high country. If you plan six weeks out, you are in the dead zone — too late for the Pines, too early for the rolling window — and that is where most disappointed visitors live.
The campgrounds, and what you are actually choosing between
Yosemite's campgrounds are not variations on a theme. They sit between 4,000 and 8,600 feet, which is the difference between a warm valley evening and a night close to freezing in August.
In the valley, at 4,000 feet: Upper Pines (236 sites, $36, open all year), Lower Pines (74 sites, $36, roughly late April to mid-October) and North Pines (81 sites, $36, late April to late October). These are the ones people mean when they say they are camping in Yosemite. They are close together, busy, and put you within walking distance of Yosemite Falls, Mirror Lake and the Mist Trail. Camp 4 (61 sites, $10 per person, all year) is also in the valley and is shared-site walk-in camping with a culture of its own.
Mid-elevation: Wawona (95 sites, $36, all year) at 4,000 feet near the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias. Hodgdon Meadow (100 sites, $36, all year) at 4,900 feet by the Big Oak Flat entrance. Crane Flat (148 sites, $36) at 6,200 feet, roughly late May to mid-October.
High country, and this is where the park changes character: Tuolumne Meadows (289 sites, $36) at 8,600 feet, July to late September. Porcupine Flat (55 sites, $24) at 8,100 feet. White Wolf (68 sites, $36) at 8,000 feet. Yosemite Creek (74 sites, $24) at 7,700 feet. Bridalveil Creek (110 sites, $36) at 7,200 feet. Tamarack Flat (52 sites, $24) at 6,300 feet.
Look at the open seasons in that last group. Most of them start in July and finish in September — an eight to ten week window, because they sit above the snow line and depend on Tioga Road being plowed open. That work begins on or about 15 April each year and normally takes one to two months, and the Park Service is explicit that predicting the opening date is not possible even in late spring.
So the honest planning rule for the high country is: book it, and have a valley or foothill fallback that does not need the road.
Half Dome has a one-month application window in March
If Half Dome is the reason for the trip, this is a hard deadline rather than a preference.
A maximum of 300 hikers a day are allowed on the cables — about 225 day hikers and 75 backpackers. The preseason lottery for the day-hiker share is open 1 March to 31 March, with results in mid-April. There is a $10 non-refundable application fee and a further $10 per person when the permit is issued, refundable if you cancel by 11:59pm Pacific the day before.
Missing March is not fatal. Daily lotteries run for a small number of permits with an application window two days before the hiking date, open from midnight to 4pm Pacific, with notification late that night. Only named permit holders can apply — no alternates.
The cables are normally up from the Friday before Memorial Day until the day after the second Monday in October, and those dates move with conditions. Outside that window the cables are down and the route is a technical climb, not a hike.
Backpacking: a lottery 24 weeks out, and a second chance a week out
A wilderness permit is required year-round for any overnight stay in the Yosemite Wilderness, and trailheads carry daily quotas.
Sixty percent of permits go through a lottery 24 weeks in advance. Whatever is unclaimed becomes first-come, first-served on the Friday after that week's lottery closes, and stays bookable up to three days before the trip. The remaining 40% is released seven days in advance, bookable up to three days out.
Read that the way experienced Sierra hikers do: the 24-week lottery is for people committed to one specific trailhead, and the seven-day release is for people committed to a specific weekend. Decide which of those you are before you start refreshing.
Walk-up permits do exist between late April and mid-October at wilderness centres open 8am to 5pm, but few go unused in summer. From late October to mid-April most trailheads do not fill at all and you can get a permit the day before or the day of.
Bear canisters are the other half of this. Yosemite has the most food-conditioned bears in American camping, the canister covers soap, sunscreen and rubbish as well as food, and the counterbalance hang most people were taught is considered ineffective here. Canisters can be rented at the Valley Welcome Center — bring your own if you would rather not depend on that.
Costs, and the timing that saves you the most
Entrance is $35 per private vehicle for seven days, $30 for a motorcycle, and $20 for an individual on foot or bicycle. An annual Yosemite pass is $70; the America the Beautiful pass covers it too. Non-US residents aged 16 and over pay an additional $100 per person unless they hold an annual or America the Beautiful pass — worth knowing if you are hosting visitors from abroad. The park does not take cash.
Campgrounds are $36 a night for most, $24 for the smaller high-country sites, and $10 per person at Camp 4.
The cheapest and most effective planning decision costs nothing: go in September. The high country is open, the water is still running, the mosquitoes that peak a few weeks after snowmelt are finished, the nights are cold and clear, and the valley empties the moment schools go back.
Kit that Yosemite specifically asks for
Two things drive the packing list here, and both are about elevation.
The first is temperature range. A July day at Tuolumne Meadows can be warm at noon and near freezing at 3am, and a bag chosen for the valley is the wrong bag at 8,600 feet — our Sleep & Comfort range is where to buy for the altitude you will sleep at rather than the one you drive through. Pair it with a tent you can pitch on granite and guy out properly, which is worth reading our Tents & Shelter range for.
The second is food storage. Every campsite has a metal locker and using it is mandatory, so plan your kitchen around sealable, transferable containers rather than loose bags — our Camp Kitchen range covers that, and the same discipline applies to a canister in the wilderness. A daypack that carries three litres comfortably matters on the Mist Trail and on the Half Dome day, a bright headlamp is not optional for a pre-dawn start, and sunscreen, a trowel and a water filter finish it.
The short version
No timed entry in 2026 — do not plan around a gate that no longer exists. Put the 15th of the month, five months before your arrival, in a calendar at 7am Pacific. Book the valley far ahead or the high country two weeks ahead, and avoid the six-week dead zone in between. Apply for Half Dome in March or accept the two-day-out daily lottery. Enter the wilderness lottery 24 weeks out if the trailhead matters, or wait for the seven-day release if the date matters. Assume the high-country campgrounds may open late and have a fallback. Store everything scented in the locker. And if you can choose your week, choose September.
Last updated: July 2026. Reservation systems, campground seasons, permit quotas, fees and road openings change every year — confirm current details with the National Park Service and Recreation.gov before you travel.
