Tulum ruins tickets: fees and hours in 2026

The price of Tulum dropped in July 2026

At 8 a.m. the sea below the wall is still flat and the plaza is empty. El Castillo stands on its low cliff with the Caribbean behind it, and for about an hour you have the walled city almost to yourself. The first buses reach the parking lot mid-morning. Since July, that early morning also costs a lot less than it used to. ⁷

A federal decree called Plan Tulum Renace rewrote every fee at the site. President Claudia Sheinbaum signed it in Tulum on 17 July 2026. It took effect on 20 July, and it runs through the 2027 fiscal year. A foreign visitor who wants the ruins, the beach and the wider park pays 265 pesos, about $15 at 17.2454 pesos to the dollar. ^{1, 3, 4}

Before that, paying meant three separate windows. INAH took 210 pesos for the archaeological zone, GAFSACOMM took 295 for the outer park, and CONANP took 120 for the national park. Stacked, 625 pesos, about $36. The cut per foreign visitor is 360 pesos, or 57.6 percent. ^{5, 1, 4}

How much are Tulum ruins tickets in 2026?

Two tickets, two booths, and the second one covers two protected areas at once.

Parque del Jaguar admission comes first. Mexican nationals enter free; foreign visitors pay 100 pesos. GAFSACOMM collects it, a state company under the Secretaría de la Defensa Nacional. Then comes the combined ticket for the national park and the archaeological zone: 80 pesos for nationals Monday to Saturday, 165 pesos for foreign visitors. ^{2, 1}

Sunday is the cheapest day and the fullest one. The free-entry rule applies at INAH sites across Mexico, so the plaza fills with families from Cancun, Playa del Carmen and Valladolid. A weekday at 8 a.m. buys the same city with fewer people in the frame. ^{2, 7}

The decree also keeps a long list of people who enter without paying. Each exemption turns on identification handed across the counter, so the card matters as much as the category.

• Minors, senior citizens, pensioners and retirees, and people with disabilities.
• Teachers and students with valid identification.
• Members of Indigenous communities in the neighboring municipalities, and tourist guides accredited by the Secretaría de Turismo.
• Permanent residents of the protected areas or the adjacent towns, and people who work inside the protected area.
• Anyone who lives in the municipality of Tulum, on a fiscal credit worth 100 percent of both fees. ^{2, 1}

What is the Jaguar National Park fee for?

Parque del Jaguar is four protected areas wearing one name, 2,913 hectares of connecting trails, bird-watching towers, bridges, viewpoints and beach, with a cultural lighthouse along the way. INAH describes it as a biocultural space. The 100 pesos is admission to that outer park; the national park and the walled city inside it are what the 165-peso combined ticket opens. Walking the whole of it fills a morning. ^{9, 2}

• Parque Nacional Tulum, protected since 1981, 664.32 hectares.
• Área de Protección de Flora y Fauna Jaguar, created in 2022, more than 2,249 hectares.
• Reserva de la Biosfera Caribe Mexicano.
• Zona de Monumentos Arqueológicos de Tulum, protected under a 1993 decree. ²

An electric cart ride costs 20 pesos for adults and 10 for children. Rented bicycles and the carts run the connecting routes, which earns its price on a site this wide in the heat. Both sit outside admission, so pay when the legs say so. ^{2, 9}

Why do official pages show different Tulum prices?

Two months after the decree, the government's own websites still carried the old numbers. Here are all of them, side by side.

INAH's ticket page for Tulum had not moved. Read on 25 September 2026, it still printed the pre-decree stack: 105 pesos for nationals and 210 for foreign visitors, plus 295 for GAFSACOMM and 120 for CONANP, with its own separate list of exemptions. Two months after the fees changed, that page showed the old ones. ⁵

CONANP's protected-area portal shows a fourth figure again. Its Tulum page lists one entry fee of 125 pesos per person per day, 50 percent off for Mexican nationals and foreign residents, 75 percent off for students and teachers. That matches neither the old 120 nor the new 65. ⁶

What are the Tulum ruins hours?

The archaeological zone opens at 8 a.m. and closes at 5 p.m., with last entry at 3:30 p.m. INAH holds that cutoff even for people who already hold tickets. Parque del Jaguar runs 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. with last access at 5 p.m., and the Museo Regional de la Costa Oriental opens 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Those two come from an INAH bulletin of February 2025, before the decree. ^{5, 9}

1. 01

   Reach the parking lot by 7:45 a.m.

   The walk from parking to the site entrance takes about 15 minutes. ⁷ A shuttle covers the same stretch for around 50 pesos, and car parking runs 100 to 150 pesos. ¹⁰

2. 02

   Pay the Parque del Jaguar fee at the first booth

   Foreign visitors pay 100 pesos, Mexican nationals zero. Have the identification you plan to claim a rate with in your hand already. ²

3. 03

   Buy the combined ticket at the second booth

   165 pesos for foreign visitors covers the national park and the walled city together. Nationals pay 80 from Monday to Saturday. ¹

4. 04

   Walk the city before 10 a.m.

   Shade inside the walls is thin and there is nowhere in there to buy water, so fill a bottle on the way in. The tour buses arrive mid-morning. ⁷

5. 05

   Take the beach and the trails afterwards

   The cove under El Castillo and the trails toward the cultural lighthouse sit inside the fee already paid. The cove is small, it fills up, and it has no changing area. ^{9, 7}

Hurricane season runs June to November on this coast, which shapes the odds of a wet morning more than the hour of arrival does. Arriving at opening still answers the two problems a visitor can control: heat and crowds.

Is there a Tulum beach entrance fee?

The beach sits inside the national park, so the beach fee is the park fee. Parque Nacional Tulum covers 664.32 hectares of coast and coastal forest, and its share of the combined ticket is 65 pesos for foreign visitors, 30 for Mexican nationals Monday to Saturday, zero for nationals on Sunday. No second turnstile stands between the ruins and the sand. ^{1, 2}

The lines around the ticket now add up faster than the ticket does. Parking, a shuttle, a camera permit and the state tourist tax can double a foreign visitor's day at Tulum. Price them before you leave, because only one of them is payable online.

VISITAX rides on top of everything at the gate. Quintana Roo charges foreign visitors a state tourist tax under Article 51 octies of its state fee law, calculated at 2.5 times the 2026 daily UMA, which works out to about 293 pesos, payable once per trip at visitax.gob.mx and nowhere else. Add it to the site fees and one foreign visitor's day comes to 558 pesos, about $32. MMT's VISITAX guide walks the payment. ^{8, 4}

Tulum sits 118 km down Highway 307 from Cancun airport, toll-free the whole way. The ADO bus from Playa del Carmen priced at 90 to 136 pesos one way for same-day travel on 25 September 2026. For the choice between train, bus and rental car, read Tren Maya vs ADO bus vs rental car; the Playa del Carmen guide and the Mexico country guide cover the base you sleep in. ^{12, 11}

Whose city this is, and who keeps the money

Tulum is a Maya city and Maya people live around it today. Mexico's 2020 census counted 774,755 speakers of Maayat'aan, Yucatec Maya, across the peninsula, Tulum included. The walled city on the cliff is an ancestral site of those communities, protected by decree since 1993, and the fee decree names members of Indigenous communities in the neighboring municipalities among the people who enter free. ^{13, 2}

Four bodies collect money here, and knowing which helps at the booth. Four collectors, four sets of rules about who pays less, one queue in the morning.

Layered conservation fees are the pattern all along this coast. A marine park charges separately from a dive shop, and a national park charges separately from the ruins standing inside it. MMT prices that habit in marine park and conservation fees and in the Cozumel diving budget. Time the beach half of the day with the sargassum season guide.