Yosemite won’t require vehicle reservations this summer. Here’s what to expect

Yosemite National Park dropped its advance vehicle reservation system for 2026,

Critics say the move could bring back gridlocked roads and hours-long entrance lines.

More than 4.2 million people visited the popular park in 2025, and federal officials plan to manage the expected surge with real-time traffic measures and additional staff.

FULL STORY: Warming weather is bringing crowds to Yosemite National Park. What to know

Here are key takeaways:

• The National Park Service announced in February it would not require advance reservations at Yosemite in 2026, including during peak summer months. The park will instead use real-time traffic management, diverting vehicles when parking areas hit capacity.

• Yosemite saw about 2.9 million visits in the summer of 2025, up 7% from the prior year, according to The Fresno Bee.

• Before the reservation system launched in 2020, the park dealt with “multi-hour entrance lines,” gridlocked roads and parking lots that filled by mid-morning, according to Friends of Yosemite Search and Rescue.

• That nonprofit group predicted peak weekends and holidays will “likely return to ‘capacity saturation’ conditions especially in Yosemite Valley, Glacier Point corridor and Mariposa Grove.”

• Friends of Yosemite Search and Rescue also warned that larger crowds could strain safety operations. “More spontaneous visitation historically correlates with ill-prepared visitors” and incidents involving heat, dehydration and navigation, the group said.

• In 2025, the Trump administration fired roughly 1,000 National Park Service workers and temporarily froze several seasonal positions. The park service said it is “working to strengthen seasonal staffing and operational readiness” for 2026.

The summary points above were compiled with the help of AI tools and edited by journalists. The full story in the link at top was reported, written and edited entirely by journalists.