Burning Man Tickets

Your Route Into Black Rock City

There are no seats to choose at Burning Man, so the decision that counts is which sale to target and how many vehicles your group really needs. Every ticket and vehicle pass is sold in advance by the organization, in a fixed sequence, and nothing is sold at the gate. Next year's city is scheduled to open August 29, 2027, and close September 6 (Labor Day), and the theme will be Spellbound. In 2026, Axis Mundi was the theme, and the city stood from August 30 through September 7.

Burning Man is not a concert. About 70,000 people raise a pop-up city on the cracked lake bed of Nevada's Black Rock Desert, stay roughly a week, set fire to a towering wooden effigy known as the Man, and leave the ground as empty as they found it. Everything you see and hear, from sound camps to classes to sculptures, comes from attendees, which is why no lineup is ever announced.

The Sales, in the Order They Happen

From the organization's 2026 ticketing page:

• Stewards Sale: invitation-only, aimed at the people who build the city: supported theme camps, art crews, art car (mutant vehicle) teams and infrastructure volunteers. It needs a Burner Profile but no advance registration. (Earlier years ran a similar Directed Group Sale.) If you are joining an established camp, this is your best shot.
• Main Sale: the big spring sale. You must register ahead of time, and registering only gets you a chance to buy. Prices are set in a handful of fixed levels. The cap is two tickets plus a single vehicle pass per order, and each person and each payment card may place only one order. Installment payment is offered.
• Ticket Aid Program: discounted tickets awarded to low-income participants on an application that stays open on a rolling basis. Another track, the Resilience Program, gives tickets free to people hit by disasters or conflict.
• OMG Sale: the final release, close to the event. No registration needed; two tickets per buyer still applies.
• Kids Tickets: a child aged 12 or younger costs nothing when accompanied by a parent holding a ticket; you still print a Kids Ticket at home for each one.

Name changes are allowed on most tickets. Delivery is either a mailed ticket ahead of time or pickup at the box office in Black Rock City.

Vehicle Passes Are the Real Bottleneck

A ticket admits a person; a vehicle pass admits a vehicle. Under the 2026 rules, motorcycles and anything being towed are the only vehicles that roll in without a pass of their own. Buyers get at most one pass for each pair of tickets.

That ratio shapes camp planning more than anything else. Groups bringing RVs, box trucks and trailers have to pool passes, carpool, or move gear on a towed trailer. Settle your vehicle plan before the sales open, not after.

Face Value Plus Fees, and Nothing More

As of 2026, the organization allows tickets and vehicle passes to be resold only at face value plus fees. Tickets that change hands for more risk being voided, with no warning and no money back, no matter where the sale happened.

For secondhand tickets the organization runs STEP, short for Secure Ticket Exchange Program: fans sell to fans at face value through its MyTickets system. Vehicle passes and tickets list on their own, though once a ticket has been transferred it is no longer eligible for STEP. Given the voiding risk, buying in an official sale or on STEP is the low-risk path. Review the current ticketing information before buying anywhere else, and see How to Avoid Ticket Scams for general warning signs.

Getting to the Playa and Back

• By car: the closest large city and airport is Reno, roughly 100 miles to the south. Drivers head north, pass through tiny Gerlach and continue to the Gate. Lines at the Gate run long on opening days, and Exodus, the mass departure at the end, moves cars out in timed waves, each roughly a mile of traffic.
• Burner Express Bus: the organization's coach service from San Francisco and Reno, running since 2013, takes thousands of people off the road and frees up vehicle passes.
• Burner Express Air: planes fly in from Reno, Southern California and the Bay Area.
• Black Rock City Airport: pilots flying themselves can land on a seasonal dirt strip (code 88NV) with no runway lights, so it operates only by day while the city is up.

Finding Your Way Around the City

Picture a clock face about 1.5 miles wide with a third cut away: the streets form that horseshoe around the Man, and radial streets carry clock-time names. The Esplanade is the innermost ring. At 6:00 you find Center Camp, looking across at the Man; the Temple rises beyond it in the open desert in the 12:00 direction.

Saturday night of Labor Day weekend is the Man's burn. The Temple burn, quieter and more reflective, follows on the last night, usually Sunday. Unlit bikes are hard to spot after dark, so put lights on yourself and your bike.

Survival Kit for a Week of Self-Reliance

Money barely changes hands once you arrive; the short list of things you can pay for includes ice, fuel and shuttle rides. Bring:

• Water and food for every day, with extra for the heat.
• Wind-rated shelter, staked for dust storms and whiteouts (storms that leave you unable to see a few feet).
• Eye goggles and a respirator or dust mask against the fine alkaline dust, and warm layers for cold nights.
• Bags for everything you brought, since crews sweep for MOOP (matter out of place) and camps are held to leaving nothing behind.

Ten principles guide behavior, among them gifting, decommodification, radical inclusion, radical self-reliance, leaving no trace and immediacy. Rain can shut down driving on the playa, as it did in 2023, so carry spare supplies in case your exit is delayed.

Burning Man Timeline and Attendance

It began on June 22, 1986, when Jerry James and Larry Harvey set a wooden figure alight on San Francisco's Baker Beach. By 1990 the burn had moved to Nevada's desert. Management passed to Black Rock City LLC in 1999 and then, in 2013, to the nonprofit Burning Man Project. A Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Special Recreation Permit sets the population cap, which was 87,000 as of 2022.

• 2019: a population of 78,850.
• 2020 and 2021: no event, because of the pandemic.
• 2023: 74,126 people. Storms soaked the lake bed, vehicles were barred from moving in the mud, and one person died during the event.
• 2024: 69,141, the first year since 2011 without a sellout.
• 2025: 72,181 under the theme Tomorrow Today, with severe dust storms as the city opened.

Sources

• Wikipedia – Burning Man
• Burning Man – Ticketing information (2026)
• Burning Man – Black Rock City 2027
• Burning Man – Black Rock City 2026
• Burning Man – Tickets
• Burning Man – Burner Express