The U.S. Department of the Interior has announced finalized plans to dramatically increase

the cost of a national park visit for international tourists beginning in January.

The $80 annual pass will now be $250 for non-residents, and 11 of the busiest national parks in the

country will charge a $100 non-resident visitor surcharge.

I'm Jason Epperson, and this is parkography. Normally, I do a news roundup of National Park

and Public Lands News every other week, but this news just dropped and it's sort of big,

so I wanted to get it out there early. Other changes are coming in January to National

Park passes as well, so stick around for a minute to hear what those are. According to a press

release from the Department of the Interior, beginning January 1st, 2026, the annual pass will cost

$80 for U.S. residents and $250 for non-residents. Non-residents without an annual pass will pay a $100 per person

fee to enter 11 of the most visited national parks in addition to the standard entrance fee.

Those parks are Acadia, Bryce Canyon, Everglades, Glacier, Grand Canyon, Grand Teton, Rocky Mountain,

Sequoia and Kings Canyon, Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Zion.

There are a lot of questions about how these changes will be implemented.

Currently, anyone, regardless of citizenship, can buy an annual pass called the America

the Beautiful Pass or interagency pass sometimes, which allows you to visit nearly all fee-charging

federal lands, including national parks, but also national forests, Bureau of Land Management,

monuments, et cetera. The pass is available from the federal government, but also from certain

retail stores and requires no verification and isn't linked to your name except for when you sign it.

So how will the park pass purchase process work now? It's a lot of peas. I'm assuming the choice

of the word resident instead of citizen in the release means a non-citizen resident like green card

holder will be able to buy the pass and that a driver's license will be enough

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