Key Takeaways
- 45 million Americans on the move. AAA forecasts a new Memorial Day record for 2026: 39.1 million by car, 3.66 million by air, between Thursday May 21 and Monday May 25.
- Orlando is the #1 booked destination. Theme parks dominate AAA's top 10 — Orlando (#1), Las Vegas (#4), New York (#3). All three combine attractions with long-weekend itineraries.
- Alaska cruises drive Seattle + Anchorage. Seattle ranks #2 and Anchorage #7, both because Memorial Day kicks off peak Alaska cruise season — not because of city tourism.
- Atlantic beaches are the drive-to favorites. AAA's list skews to flights, but real road-trip volume goes to Myrtle Beach, the Outer Banks, Destin/Panama City, and Gulf Shores — none in the top 10 but all dominating I-95/I-65 traffic.
- Mountains and lakes round out the map. Asheville, Gatlinburg/Smokies, Lake Tahoe, and the Finger Lakes catch travelers who want the long weekend outdoors without an airport.
Memorial Day Weekend 2026 will be the busiest in modern record. The AAA travel forecast projects 45 million Americans will travel at least 50 miles between Thursday May 21 and Monday May 25 — 200,000 more than 2025, and the highest figure AAA has ever recorded for the holiday. The unofficial start of summer is also the largest predictable demand spike on US roads, runways, and rental-car lots.
Below: every top US destination plotted on one map, AAA’s official top 10 with rank-by-rank notes, and the regional drive-to favorites that AAA’s airport-skewed booking data understates.
The map: top 19 US Memorial Day Weekend destinations
Solid-fill pins are AAA’s top 10 most-booked destinations (excluding Anchorage, which is in Alaska and off the visible extent). The remaining nine are regional drive-to favorites that don’t show up in AAA’s flight-skewed booking data but dominate Memorial Day road traffic.
AAA’s top 10 most-booked destinations
AAA’s rankings reflect bookings made through its travel-agent network. That means they tilt toward big-ticket fly-in trips — theme parks, cities, cruise embarkation ports — and underweight the millions of drive-up beach and mountain trips that don’t involve a booking agent. With that caveat, here’s the official list:
AAA 2026 · Most-Booked
AAA's top 10 US destinations for Memorial Day Weekend 2026
Ranked by AAA booking data. Heavily skewed toward fly-in destinations — theme parks, cities, and cruise gateways — because AAA captures booked-through-AAA travel agents rather than drive-up bookings.
| Destination | AAA Rank | Category |
|---|---|---|
| Orlando, FL | #1 | Theme parks |
| Seattle, WA | #2 | Cruise gateway |
| New York, NY | #3 | Urban / patriotic |
| Las Vegas, NV | #4 | Entertainment |
| Miami, FL | #5 | Beach / urban |
| San Francisco, CA | #6 | Urban |
| Anchorage, AK | #7 | Cruise / nature |
| Chicago, IL | #8 | Urban |
| Denver, CO | #9 | Mountain gateway |
| Boston, MA | #10 | Patriotic / urban |
Regional drive-to hotspots
These are the destinations that absorb the bulk of the 39.1 million Memorial Day road-trippers — the I-95 beach corridor, the Appalachian and Rocky mountain getaways, and the patriotic-city circuit that doesn’t show up in fly-in booking data.
🏖️ Atlantic & Gulf beaches
Myrtle Beach, SC (pin 12) is the prototype Memorial Day beach town — three days of beach access, country bars, and SC-501 traffic backed up to I-95. The Outer Banks, NC (pin 13) plays the more relaxed long-drive role for the mid-Atlantic, with Kitty Hawk, Nags Head, and Duck pulling in Virginia, Maryland, and DC families. On the Gulf side, Destin and Panama City Beach, FL (pin 16) anchor the Florida panhandle and absorb most of the Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee traffic; Gulf Shores, AL (pin 17) is the same circuit one state west, with the added pull of the Hangout Music Festival running over the weekend.
🏔️ Mountains, parks, and lakes
The Southern Appalachians are the closest mountains for half the US population: Asheville, NC (pin 14) for craft-beer-and-arts city breaks, and Gatlinburg / the Smoky Mountains, TN (pin 15) for family hiking and the entrance to America’s most-visited national park. In the West, Lake Tahoe (pin 18) is the Bay Area and Sacramento overflow valve; in the Northeast, the Finger Lakes (pin 19) absorb the New York, Philadelphia, and Boston wine-country crowd.
🇺🇸 Patriotic & historic cities
Memorial Day is, fundamentally, a day of remembrance. Washington, D.C. (pin 10) hosts the National Memorial Day Parade and ceremonies at Arlington National Cemetery — the single largest patriotic gathering of the weekend. Philadelphia (pin 11) and Boston (pin 9, also AAA #10) double down on revolutionary-era history; both also rank in AAA’s top urban destinations. New York City (pin 3) runs the Fleet Week parade of warships up the Hudson — a wildly photogenic but lesser-known Memorial Day fixture.
By the numbers — what to expect on the road
AAA’s 2026 figures break down as: 39.1 million by car (87% of all travelers), 3.66 million by air, and the remainder by rail, bus, or cruise. INRIX, AAA’s traffic-data partner, projects the worst congestion windows on Thursday May 21 between 1pm and 7pm local time outbound, and the return on Monday May 25 between 11am and 5pm. Avoiding those four-hour windows can cut a typical drive time by 25–40%.
Airport pressure is highest at the AAA top-10 hubs: Orlando MCO, JFK and LGA, Las Vegas LAS, Miami MIA, San Francisco SFO. Las Vegas and Seattle in particular face cruise- and event-driven secondary surges (Vegas for entertainment, Seattle for Alaska embarkation) on top of normal holiday traffic. TSA wait times above 30 minutes are expected at all six between 4am and 10am Friday May 22.
Data references for this post.
Image Sources
- Featured photo — James Sestric via Unsplash – https://unsplash.com/photos/american-flag-waves-near-a-dark-truck-and-mountains-F8UD2WDOevk
