Inca Trail permits: quotas, release, the February closure, and the citadel entry
Operator-only, passport-bound permits with a hard daily quota; following-year permits release roughly a year ahead; since 2026, trail arrivals enter the citadel on route 3-B under their own daily allocation.
Classic Inca Trail permits are capped per day (roughly 200 tourist places plus support staff), can only be purchased by licensed operators, are bound to your passport, and are non-transferable and non-refundable. Permits for the following year are released roughly a year ahead (recently around October or November, and announced each year by the Ministry), and high-season dates are gone within hours to days. The trail closes every February for maintenance. If your dates lack permits, the Short Inca Trail and alternative treks are the standard fallbacks.
Since the 2026 season, arriving on the trail and entering the citadel are two separately rationed things. Article 15-B of the Machu Picchu visitor regulation (Ministerial Resolution 306-2025-MC, November 2025) gives visitors who arrive on the Inca Trail network their own limited daily allocation of citadel entries, reserved and paid in advance through the licensed operator that holds the trail permit, and admits them on route 3-B, the lower citadel. The trail itself still ends at the Sun Gate; what the resolution fixes is the ticketed circuit inside the citadel afterwards. A visit on Circuit 2, the classic viewpoint and urban core, is a separate entry on a separate day, and the size of the 3-B allocation is set by the Cusco cultural authority within the citadel's daily capacity.
We design your whole Peru trip and arrange every part of it around the right Machu Picchu access, with every entry confirmed as part of it.