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The short answer
Four trails reach the summit of Mt Fuji. They answer to two different prefectures, and the rules do not match. The Yoshida trail, the one you get to from Tokyo, belongs to Yamanashi and shuts its gate once 4,000 climbers have gone up that day. The other three belong to Shizuoka, with no cap at all, but with an online briefing to sit before you leave. Both sides charge ¥4,000 (about $25) a head. What has to be booked earliest is neither the toll nor the passage: a bed in a mountain hut, and only if you want sunrise from the top.
Mount Fuji is open a little over ten weeks a year, and the climb is paid for on both sides of the mountain. At 3,776 meters (12,389 feet) it is the highest ground in Japan. The trail you pick settles everything after that: the date it opens to you, the paperwork you owe before you leave, and whether a daily limit exists on it at all.
The summit from a plane, above the cloud. Snow like that’s what pushes an opening date past July 1.
Photo Takuya Jodai.The climbing season, trail by trail
| Trail | Prefecture | 2026 season | Daily cap | Online briefing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Yoshida | Yamanashi | July 1 to September 10 | 4,000 climbers | not required |
| Subashiri | Shizuoka | July 1 to September 10 | none | required |
| Fujinomiya | Shizuoka | July 10 to September 10 | none | required |
| Gotemba | Shizuoka | July 10 to September 10 | none | required |
Dates and rules from the Yamanashi and Shizuoka prefecture notices, last checked August 19, 2026 on the official climbing site.
Yoshida is the trail most visitors from abroad take. Its fifth station is a bus ride from Tokyo and from the lakes, no car needed, and it carries the only daily cap of the four, four thousand climbers a day, counted at the gate.
Fujinomiya and Gotemba open on July 10, 9 days after the other two. So the first week of July leaves you Yoshida or Subashiri, and nothing else. Worth knowing before you fix your dates: the two trails that open late are the shortest climb and the longest one.
Fuji at first light. The lake is one of the five at the foot of the mountain.
Photo James Pere.The hut is compulsory only for a night climb
Climb in daylight and you book no hut. You go through the gate before 2 p.m., you go up, you come back down.
The hut becomes compulsory the moment you want to be on the summit at sunrise, because that means walking onto the mountain in the dark, and both prefectures write that rule into their night-entry hours. On the Shizuoka side, entering between 2 p.m. and 3 a.m. requires a hut booked in advance. On the Yoshida side the fifth station gate is shut over those same hours, and only hut guests get through it.
The third way up is the one both prefectures are trying to stop. Turn up late in the day, walk all night without sleeping, come down in the morning: the Japanese call that dangan tozan, the bullet climb, and it is what a traveler who leaves Tokyo after lunch with no hut booking ends up doing. The gate hours exist to make it impossible.
Where a hut gets booked
With each house, on its own site or over the phone. There’s no single desk, not even on the official climbing site, and the calendars open somewhere between mid-April and early June depending on the hut.
That’s the piece that can go missing. The toll is still paid on the day.
Climbing with a guide, as a package
Klook sells the Yoshida climb as a 2-day trip out of Shinjuku, with a professional English-speaking mountain guide, a night in a hut at the eighth station around 3,150 meters (10,335 feet), the bus each way, and an onsen hot spring bath on the way down.
It is a different way up from the one described so far. You walk with a guide, and the hut and the transport come attached.
The ¥4,000 (about $25) toll sits outside that price. It stays yours, paid on the mountain.
The cap applies to one trail only
On the Yoshida side the gate closes once 4,000 people have gone up that day. Past that point two groups still get in, those who reserved a passage and those sleeping in a hut. The Shizuoka trails carry no limit of the kind.
That passage reservation is optional, and it costs the price of the toll and not one yen more. It is sold in English on the Yoshida trail booking system, right up to the day of the climb, and it shuts as soon as the day’s limit is reached. For the 2026 season it opened on April 27 at 1 p.m. Japan time, which was midnight on the East Coast, 9 p.m. the evening before in California, and 5 a.m. in London.
How often that cap is really reached, the prefecture does not publish for recent seasons. So nobody can tell you whether your date is at risk.
What Shizuoka asks on top
The three Shizuoka trails want an online briefing on safety and on protecting the mountain, then a pre-registration in the FUJI NAVI app, which issues a QR code permit to show at the trailhead. It all runs through the prefecture registration page. For the 2026 season it opened on May 8.
Cancellation is where the two sides stop being equally fair, and Yamanashi is the harsher of the two. On the Shizuoka side it is free until the day itself, as long as the permit has not been validated on the spot. On the Yamanashi side fees start 2 days after payment, and no personal reason opens a right to a refund, a delayed train included.
The 2 p.m. gate
Arriving after 2 p.m. wipes out the benefit of your reservation. The fifth station gate on the Yoshida side is shut from 2 p.m. to 3 a.m., and a passage paid weeks in advance buys no exemption: reach it after the hour and the reservation is worth nothing. Only hut guests still go up.
Going down stays possible at any hour on the Yoshida side, including while the gate is shut for the night.
A five-story pagoda facing Fuji in winter. The trails have been shut since the fall, and they stay shut until the prefectures announce the next season, which they do the summer before, so a date read on an old page is worth nothing.
Photo Karen Z.What you can do today
- Pick your trail before you lock your dates. The trail is what sets the rulebook, and Fujinomiya and Gotemba open only on July 10.
- Read the season dates for the year you are going, not the year you are reading. Mt Fuji reopens each July, and the prefectures publish the new dates the summer before.
- Decide first whether you want sunrise from the summit. If you do, you need a bed in a hut, booked house by house as each calendar opens. If you do not, you climb in daylight and book nothing.
- On the Shizuoka side, sit the briefing and pre-register before you fly. The QR code permit is shown at the trailhead, and it is not issued there.
- Sleep at the foot of the mountain the night before, at Kawaguchiko. The last bus up leaves earlier than most people plan for.
- Look at what the passage reservation actually buys on Yoshida: the right to enter once the day’s cap is reached, for the price of the toll, up to the day itself on the Yoshida trail booking system.
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