Mark your calendar for the 15th. That is the day Yosemite Valley campsites for 2027 become available, and the clock starts at 7:00am Pacific time on recreation.gov. Booking opens exactly five months before your trip. When a release goes live, it unlocks a single month of arrival dates. Say you are hoping to check in somewhere between July 15 and August 14, 2027. Your booking day is March 15, 2027. Blink and the Valley fills up for that entire stretch. [VERIFY: the 2027 schedule against the official Yosemite reservation page, and whether the 15th-of-month rule still applies]
That is really all there is to it. Everything below covers the schedule, the campgrounds that follow this system, our daily measurements of how packed they get, and your options if you come up empty.
The 2027 release calendar
Each drop handles arrivals starting on the 15th of a month and ending on the 14th of the following month. The sale happens five months in advance, on the 15th, beginning at 7:00am Pacific.
| Arrival dates | Release date, 7:00am Pacific |
|---|---|
| Jan 15 to Feb 14, 2027 | Sep 15, 2026 |
| Feb 15 to Mar 14, 2027 | Oct 15, 2026 |
| Mar 15 to Apr 14, 2027 | Nov 15, 2026 |
| Apr 15 to May 14, 2027 | Dec 15, 2026 |
| May 15 to Jun 14, 2027 | Jan 15, 2027 |
| Jun 15 to Jul 14, 2027 | Feb 15, 2027 |
| Jul 15 to Aug 14, 2027 | Mar 15, 2027 |
| Aug 15 to Sep 14, 2027 | Apr 15, 2027 |
| Sep 15 to Oct 14, 2027 | May 15, 2027 |
| Oct 15 to Nov 14, 2027 | Jun 15, 2027 |
[VERIFY: confirm every row against the official 2027 schedule; the park has changed this system before and can again]
Log in early and have the campground page open well before 7:00. Keep your dates, site type, and payment info within reach. Valley spots for weekend nights are the first to vanish. Should the site freeze right at 7:00, just keep hitting refresh. Giving up at 7:02 is a mistake.
Which campgrounds use this release
The 15th-of-the-month drop applies to every reservable campground inside the park. In the Valley that means Upper Pines, Lower Pines, and North Pines. It also includes Wawona, Hodgdon Meadow, and Tuolumne Meadows. [VERIFY: the full 2027 list and the season opening dates for Wawona, Hodgdon Meadow and Tuolumne Meadows]
Upper Pines is the largest of the bunch at 235 sites. North Pines comes in at 81 sites, and Lower Pines has 74. Way up on Tioga Road sits Tuolumne Meadows with 277 sites. It only operates during summer and early autumn.
How full they really are
Our team refreshes recreation.gov multiple times each day. Every campground gets a score based on how many nights show zero availability, with extra weight given to Friday and Saturday. A perfect 100 means every single night is booked. Here is how the Valley looked during the three weeks from September 10 to September 30, 2026:
- Upper Pines: 98
- North Pines: 98
- Lower Pines: 98
Keep in mind that is late September, once the summer rush has cleared out. Even then, all three Valley campgrounds sat at near total capacity. Summer weekends get even tighter. Today's score is always posted on the Lower Pines page, and you can compare all locations on the live ranking.
Tuolumne Meadows plays by different rules. Our rating puts it at Moderate in summer and High in autumn. With 277 sites and that high elevation, where nights stay cold even in July, it never turns into the free-for-all the Valley becomes. If the Pines shut you out, Tuolumne is your most realistic shot at a Yosemite reservation. Just remember it sits an hour and a half from the Valley floor. Plan for a high-country adventure, not a Half Dome one.
Google data confirms the growing demand. Searches for "yosemite camping reservations 2026" hit breakout status this year, while "yosemite camping lottery" climbed 200% over five years. Everyone wants the same 390 Valley sites.
Camp 4 sits at the bottom of the Valley's north wall and operates as a walk-in campground. It skips the 15th-of-the-month release entirely. During peak season, recreation.gov runs a daily lottery for it. You put your name in the day before your intended arrival, then learn later that same day if you scored a spot.
Nobody knows the exact odds, and we refuse to invent numbers. Here is what is certain: this runs on its own separate system. Advance booking is impossible. It also stands as one of the few Valley entry routes that does not hinge on a single morning five months ahead.
There is one more thing to track. Recent summers brought a separate peak-hours entry reservation for day visitors, though a camping reservation also got you through the gate.
Coming up short on booking day happens to almost everyone. Our alert data paints a clear picture of what follows.
Between August 13 and September 10, 2026, our system fired off 329 alerts for California campsites that had been sold out and then reopened. Within that group, 76 alerts (23%) arrived two days or less before the arrival date. Another 163 (50%) came three to six days out. Add those together and you get three quarters of all our catches, every one landing inside the last week.
Sites opening more than a month ahead accounted for just 26 alerts (8%). Translation: a cancelled July weekend in the Pines will not surface in March. It pops up in July, days before the trip, when someone's plans collapse.
Cancellations follow patterns too. Tuesday brought 41 true cancellations and Wednesday brought 40, making them the clear leaders. Friday lagged behind with only 9. The busiest hours ran from 5pm to 10pm, right after the workday. People tend to back out once dinner is over.
Tuolumne Meadows generated 10 alerts on its own during those four weeks, landing it among our top ten California campgrounds for cancellations. Valley campgrounds see cancellations as well, but Pines sites get snatched up fast. Grabbing one manually means refreshing the page nightly for a week straight.
Recreation.gov tacks on a cancellation fee, and cancelling same-day or late costs you the first night's payment. [VERIFY: current fee amounts and the late-cancellation cutoff] Those fees are the reason reopened sites exist at all. Cancelling early lets people recover most of their money, which sends the site back into circulation.
Sign up for a free alert on Lower Pines, Upper Pines, or North Pines, and an email lands in your inbox the second a site reopens: campsitescan.com. Think of it as a watch service, not a booking service. The email tells you a site is free. Snagging it is still on you.
For bookings, head to [recreation.gov]. Our scoring method is detailed in [how we measure].
CampsiteScan