August 25 is a fee-free day at the National Park Service and is not one on BLM land. The two agencies publish separate lists, they waive different fees, and neither list has ever covered your campsite.
Both lists carry eight entries for 2026, and seven of them match. The BLM’s fee-free days page, checked August 24, 2026, does not include August 25. The National Park Service page, last updated January 5, 2026 and checked the same day, does, for the agency’s 110th birthday.
It runs the other way too. The BLM’s list includes July 16 for the bureau’s 80th birthday, which is not on the Park Service list. Those two dates are the whole difference. For the rest of 2026 it means September 17, October 27 and November 11 are fee-free at both agencies, and nothing else is.
What the BLM waiver actually covers
This is the sentence worth reading twice, from the BLM page: “On fee-free days, the waiver applies to recreation standard amenity and day-use fees on BLM lands, including visitor centers, picnic/day use areas and National Conservation Lands units. Expanded amenity fees and other fees (i.e., group day-use, developed camping, cabin rentals, and individual special recreation permits for the use of special areas) remain in effect.”
The page then repeats it plainly: fees for overnight camping at the listed campgrounds still apply.
So the day-use fee at a place like Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area in Nevada, or Valley of Fires in New Mexico, comes off. Whatever you pay to sleep at a BLM campground does not. If you were hoping to move a booked campground night onto a fee-free date and save the fee, that plan does not work on either agency’s land.
Which is to say, this is worth very little to a boondocker
Say the unhelpful part. If you are dispersed camping on BLM land, you were not paying a fee in the first place, and a fee-free day changes nothing about your trip. The people it helps are the ones who were going to pay a day-use charge at a developed BLM site anyway, and who happen to be near one on the right date.
One more change that has caught people this year. Both agencies now limit the waiver. The BLM page states that beginning in 2026, free access on these days is for US citizens and residents only, and nonresidents pay the regular standard amenity fee plus any applicable nonresident fees. The Park Service page carries the same restriction on its entrance-fee waiver.
How to check before you drive
The BLM’s fee-free page carries a state-by-state list of participating locations and says outright that the list is subject to change, so contact the local office. That is the right instinct generally: a fee is set at the unit, and the unit page is where the current number lives. Many BLM recreation sites charge nothing on any date.
The posted sign at the fee tube and the field office on the phone beat any website, this one included. The list is lopsided, for what it is worth: Oregon carries 16 participating sites and Utah 10, while Nevada, California and Washington have one apiece. For what the free side of the ledger looks like in the two states with the most, see free camping in Oregon and free camping in Utah.