US will charge non-residents $100 to visit its most popular national parks

The spike successful fees for non-US residents comes arsenic the National Park Service fund faces imaginable cuts adjacent year.

The United States is implementing a caller “America-first” introduction interest argumentation that volition complaint non-US residents without an yearly walk $100 per idiosyncratic astatine its 11 most-visited nationalist parks.

The alteration was announced connected Tuesday by the Department of the Interior, which oversees the nationalist parkland system, arsenic portion of its 2026 interest scheme. The terms of an yearly parks walk for non-US residents volition besides emergence from $80 to $250, it said.

Recommended Stories

• list 1 of 4Cuba condemns ‘aggressive’ US stance towards Venezuela arsenic tensions rise
• list 2 of 4New Zealand parent jailed for beingness implicit ‘suitcase murders’ of her children
• list 3 of 4Italy adds ‘femicide’ to the transgression codification to curb unit against women
• list 4 of 4Trump says China’s Xi Jinping agreed to accelerate purchases of US goods

Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum said successful a connection that with the interest hikes, US President Donald Trump aims to “put American families first”.

“These policies guarantee that US taxpayers, who already enactment the National Park System, proceed to bask affordable access, portion planetary visitors lend their just stock to maintaining and improving our parks for aboriginal generations,” Burgum said.

Parks affected by the interest hike see the Great Smoky Mountains National Park successful Tennessee and North Carolina, Zion National Park successful Utah, and the Grand Canyon National Park successful Arizona.

The Great Smoky Mountains, the astir visited US nationalist parkland successful 2024, antecedently offered escaped introduction to each visitors, though it charged $5 per day, $15 per week, oregon $40 per twelvemonth for parking.

Zion antecedently charged betwixt $20 and $35 for a modular introduction pass, portion the Grand Canyon charged $35 per backstage car oregon $20 per person.

Yet, adjacent arsenic the Trump medication has sought to warrant the accrued fees for non-US residents arsenic a mode to enactment up the finances of America’s nationalist parks, it has besides chopped resources antecedently allocated for them.

Earlier this year, Trump projected slashing $1bn successful backing from the National Park Service. That fig has since been revised, but the parkland work fund could look imaginable fund cuts successful 2026.

One fund connection earlier this twelvemonth from the House Appropriations Committee recommended cutting $176m from the parkland work operations budget, according to the National Parks Conservation Association, a non-partisan US advocacy group.

The US authorities and parkland strategy is funded done January 30, 2026, but Congress has yet to afloat o.k. a 2026 fiscal bill.

The parkland work has mislaid 4,000 unit members since January owed to fund constraints and related issues, the relation said this week. Most nationalist parks stayed unfastened with constricted services during the caller 43-day authorities shutdown, though 9,000 employees were furloughed, it besides said.