Canaveral National Seashore & Playalinda Beach: Open Today?

Quick answer: Canaveral National Seashore opens every day at 6 a.m. and closes at 8 p.m. in daylight saving time (March to early November) or 6 p.m. in standard time; the last car goes in an hour before closing. Entry is $25 a car, cashless. Rocket launches close Playalinda’s vistas and road; Apollo Beach stays open.

How to use it

Pick the beach, Playalinda (the south end, east of Titusville) or Apollo (the north end, south of New Smyrna Beach), and the day (today is filled in). The answer gives that day’s gate hours, the last time a car may come in and the time the beaches close, with the date the season next changes and the fee. Below it, the launches from the Cape that day and the next ones, from the same live schedule as our rocket launch viewing planner; Black Point Wildlife Drive’s hours that day; and the National Park Service’s own rules, with links.

The hours, by season

The National Park Service sets the hours in its 2026 Superintendent’s Compendium: the seashore is “Closed from 6:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. (Eastern standard time) during the winter season and 8:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. (Daylight savings time) during the summer season.” So the season follows the clocks: summer hours from the second Sunday of March to the first Sunday of November, winter hours the rest of the year. “The park inbound lanes close 1 hour prior to closing time”, and the beaches 30 minutes before it. Both districts keep the same hours.

The beaches close in daylight most of the year. In 2027 the sun sets at Playalinda before the beaches close on 99 days: from mid-September through December, and 2 days in March.

Launch days at Playalinda

Playalinda Beach sits just north of Kennedy Space Center’s pads 39A and 39B. The Compendium: “During rocket launches at the adjacent Kennedy Space Center or within Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, park vistas will be closed within the Playalinda District”, the beach at parking area 1 closes a quarter mile south to the Kennedy Space Center boundary, and “the Playalinda District will close to inbound traffic one half hour (30 minutes) prior to the launch”. For some launches the whole district closes: for a Falcon 9 from 39A on June 3, 2021, the NPS closed it “beginning at 6:00 AM” while “The Apollo Beach District will remain open”, and for Artemis II from 39B it closed the district from January 31 to February 6, 2026, “or until the day of a successful launch”. “NASA may set up road-blocks and/or close the NASA owned portions of the park at any time for the needs of the space program.” The tool marks every launch it knows of on your date and names the pad.

Fees, and Black Point Wildlife Drive

Entry is $25 a car, $20 a motorcycle, or $15 a person on foot or a bike for anyone 16 and older; the park’s annual pass is $45, and America the Beautiful passes are accepted. “This park does not accept cash.” Next door, the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge’s Black Point Wildlife Drive is open “from sunrise to sunset daily”; it needs a refuge pass, $10 a car for the day, unless you carry an interagency pass such as America the Beautiful, which covers both.

Worked examples

Playalinda on Saturday, October 10, 2026. Summer hours: 6 a.m. to 8 p.m., the last car in at 7 p.m., the beaches closed at 7:30 p.m. That evening the sun sets at 6:58 p.m. at Black Point.

Playalinda on Sunday, November 1, 2026. The first day of winter hours: 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., the last car at 5 p.m., the beaches closed at 5:30 p.m.

Apollo Beach on Friday, January 15, 2027. 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Black Point Wildlife Drive is open from 7:17 a.m. to 5:48 p.m., sunrise to sunset.

A launch at 7 p.m. in summer. The road to Playalinda closes to incoming cars at 6:30 p.m., half an hour before liftoff, and the vistas are closed; the beaches themselves close at 7:30 p.m.

Common mistakes

• Arriving at 7:15 p.m. in summer, or 5:15 p.m. in winter. The gate takes its last car an hour before closing.
• Bringing cash. Both entrance stations take cards and phones only.
• Planning a launch from a vista. The vistas close for every launch.
• Going to Playalinda on a 39A or 39B launch day without checking. The NPS has closed the whole district for them; Apollo Beach, at the seashore’s north end, stayed open.
• Buying two passes. One America the Beautiful pass covers the seashore and Black Point Wildlife Drive.

Plan the rest of the trip

Read our guides to whether Cape Canaveral has nice beaches, whether Cape Canaveral is worth visiting, Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral, Cocoa Beach or New Smyrna and New Smyrna Beach or Daytona Beach. For the launches themselves, see the Rocket Launch Viewing Planner; for a day at the visitor complex, the Kennedy Space Center Visit Planner; and for the water and the flags, Florida Beach Conditions.