A Yosemite camping reservation gets you into the park. An entry reservation does not get you a campsite. Those are two separate systems on the same website, and confusing them is how people arrive at the gate with permission to drive in and nowhere to sleep.

There are four things people mean when they say “Yosemite reservation.” Here’s what each one is, who needs it, and what it covers.

## Peak-hours entry reservations

In recent summers Yosemite has required a reservation just to drive into the park during busy hours on busy days, roughly the middle of the day from late spring through early autumn [VERIFY: whether 2027 requires entry reservations, and the dates and hours]. It’s sold on recreation.gov for a small fee [VERIFY: current fee and whether it counts toward the entrance fee]. It is not a campsite. It is not lodging. It’s a timed pass to get past the entrance station.

If you’re only day-tripping, this is the reservation you need. If you’re camping inside the park, you don’t, because your campground booking covers entry [VERIFY: this exemption still applies in 2027]. The same has been true for in-park lodging and, in recent years, for Half Dome and wilderness permits [VERIFY: permit exemptions for 2027].

The catch: the entry reservation is for a specific day. Show up at 6am and you don’t need one at all on most days, because the rule only applies during peak hours. Read the current year’s rules before you assume anything, because the park has changed them more than once.

## Campground reservations

This is the one that’s actually hard. Yosemite Valley’s three drive-in campgrounds (Upper Pines with 235 sites, North Pines with 81, Lower Pines with 74) all scored 98 on our sellout scale for the three weeks from September 10 to 30, 2026. That’s out of 100, where 100 means nothing bookable on any night. September. Not July.

Valley campgrounds, plus Wawona, Hodgdon Meadow and Tuolumne Meadows, release on recreation.gov five months ahead in one-month blocks, on the 15th of each month at 7:00am Pacific. So arrivals from July 15 to August 14 open on March 15 [VERIFY: 2027 release schedule and any change to the block system]. Sites go in minutes. Google searches for “yosemite camping reservations 2026” were a breakout term this year, and “recreation gov” itself is up 250% over five years, which tells you how many people are now sitting at the keyboard at 6:59am.

Tuolumne Meadows is the exception worth knowing. It has 277 sites, more than the three Pines campgrounds combined, and rated only Moderate in summer on our scale. It climbs to High in autumn as the season closes. It’s an hour and a half from the Valley over Tioga Road, but it’s the Yosemite campground where a normal person can still get a site.

Camp 4 is different again. It’s a walk-in tent campground run on a daily lottery in peak season, entered the day before [VERIFY: 2027 lottery dates]. Searches for “yosemite camping lottery” are up 200%, and most of those people are probably looking for Camp 4 without knowing the name. The lottery is covered in [the Yosemite camping lottery, explained](https://campsitescan.com/articles/yosemite-camping-lottery).

A campground reservation covers your entry. Print it or keep it on your phone and show it at the gate.

## Half Dome permits

If you want to climb the cables to the top of Half Dome, you need a permit. It’s a separate lottery from everything above, with a preseason draw in the spring and a small daily draw during the season [VERIFY: 2027 preseason lottery dates, daily lottery timing, fee]. A Half Dome permit is not a campsite and not a night in the park. Plenty of people hold one and sleep outside the park in Mariposa or El Portal.

## Wilderness permits

For overnight backpacking (Clouds Rest, the High Sierra Camps loop, the John Muir Trail sections inside the park) you need a wilderness permit for your trailhead and start date. Most of the quota is released months in advance on recreation.gov, with a smaller share held back for closer to the date [VERIFY: current release schedule and how much is held for near-term]. A wilderness permit lets you camp in the backcountry, and it usually comes with one night before and one night after in a backpacker campground [VERIFY: backpacker campground rules for 2027]. It does not get you a site at Upper Pines.

## What covers what

Camping in a park campground: you need a campground reservation. It covers entry. You don’t need a separate entry reservation.

Day trip during peak hours: you need an entry reservation, if the park is running them that year. Nothing else.

Half Dome: you need the permit. Add a campground reservation, an entry reservation, or a hotel outside the park, depending on where you sleep.

Backpacking: you need the wilderness permit. It covers entry and your backpacker campground nights. It does not cover a drive-in campsite.

Sleeping outside the park in a motel: you need an entry reservation for any peak-hours day you drive in. That’s all.

## If you missed the camping release

Sites do come back. Across everything we watch, three quarters of the cancellations we caught reappeared within a week of the arrival date. On recreation.gov campgrounds in California, 66% of weekend nights were sold out against 45% midweek, so a Tuesday arrival in the Valley is a real option and a Friday one is a cancellation game. The live page for [Lower Pines](https://campsitescan.com/campgrounds/lower-pines) shows what’s open right now.

Set a free alert on Upper, Lower or North Pines at [campsitescan.com](https://campsitescan.com/) and we email you the moment a site comes back.