Thanksgiving is 17 days away — but the year’s most quoted travel forecast still does not exist. And the number going round as this year’s forecast is last year’s. AAA, the auto club whose annual Thanksgiving forecast sets the tone for the holiday, has still not published its 2026 numbers, as of Sunday, November 8. AAA published its 2025 forecast on November 17, 2025, and its 2024 forecast on November 18, 2024 — so a mid-November release is the pattern, and the 2026 forecast is not yet due. TripPrimer checked AAA’s newsroom on November 5 and found no 2026 forecast; the newest post that day was a gas-price update. FreshCalendars reached the same finding on October 24, and again on November 8. That matters because a figure is already circulating as if it were the 2026 forecast. Several sites are presenting 81.8 million travellers as the 2026 number — but that is the 2025 forecast, not this year’s. It should not be presented as a 2026 figure. The same applies to the 6 million flyers, 73 million drivers and $700 average round-trip fare that travel with it: those are AAA’s 2025 numbers, for the travel window of Tuesday, November 25, to Monday, December 1, 2025. The 2026 window would be Tuesday, November 24, to Monday, November 30.
What last year looked like
The 2025 AAA forecast counted 81.8 million Americans travelling at least 50 miles from home — a record, and 1.6 million more than the year before. About 73 million of them drove, about 90% of all travellers, while about 6 million flew domestically, up 2%, and nearly 2.5 million travelled by bus, train or cruise, up 8.5%. A round-trip domestic flight averaged $700, unchanged year on year. The pattern of the week is well established. The busiest days to fly are the Tuesday and Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and the Sunday after is the busiest of all.
What is confirmed for 2026
Amtrak is the only 2026 plan published so far. Its November 3 release promises extra railcars and two additional Northeast Regional round trips between Washington and New York from November 20 to 30, on top of the 1.2 million trips it carried over Thanksgiving in 2025, up nearly 6% on 2024. The railroad says it expects another record this year. For drivers, the news is better than it has been in weeks: petrol is $4.0093 a gallon on Monday, down for a 16th straight day, and GasBuddy’s average is already below $4 — although that is still about a dollar more than the $3.06 average on Thanksgiving Day last year. For flyers, the picture is less clear: no 2026 forecast has been published by AAA, the TSA or the FAA, and no 2026 airfare average has been confirmed. The forecast, when it lands in mid-November, will be the number to watch — and until then, any site quoting 81.8 million as this year’s figure is quoting last year.
