Maine Fall Foliage Map 2026

The county map today

Where to go in Maine

The destinations we cover in Maine, in the order their color arrives. Each carries its own forecast and its own band, because a state isn’t one place.

1. Aroostook National Wildlife RefugeMaine
   Near peakPeak 2 Oct best 1 to 4 Oct
2. White Mountain National ForestMaine, New Hampshire
   Near peakPeak 4 Oct best 3 to 6 Oct
3. Katahdin Woods and Waters National MonumentMaine
   Near peakPeak 4 Oct best 3 to 6 Oct
4. Umbagog National Wildlife RefugeMaine, New Hampshire
   Too earlyPeak 5 Oct best 4 to 7 Oct
5. Caribou-Speckled Mountain WildernessMaine
   Too earlyPeak 6 Oct best 5 to 8 Oct
6. Sunkhaze Meadows National Wildlife RefugeMaine
   Too earlyPeak 8 Oct best 7 to 10 Oct
7. Moosehorn National Wildlife RefugeMaine
   Too earlyPeak 9 Oct best 8 to 11 Oct
8. Baring Wilderness AreaMaine
   Too earlyPeak 9 Oct best 8 to 11 Oct
9. Edmunds Wilderness AreaMaine
   Too earlyPeak 11 Oct best 10 to 13 Oct
10. Seal Island National Wildlife RefugeMaine
    Too earlyPeak 11 Oct best 10 to 13 Oct
11. Acadia National ParkMaine
    Too earlyPeak 13 Oct best 12 to 15 Oct
12. Cross Island National Wildlife RefugeMaine
    Too earlyPeak 13 Oct, silver maple 20 Oct best 12 to 15 Oct
13. Petit Manan National Wildlife RefugeMaine
    Too earlyPeak 14 Oct best 13 to 16 Oct
14. Rachel Carson National Wildlife RefugeMaine
    Too earlyPeak 16 Oct best 15 to 18 Oct

When to go

Across 16 counties, peak color is forecast to arrive first in Somerset County around Sep 30 and last in Knox County around Oct 13. Most of the state peaks near Oct 10.

Each date is the middle of the four days we’d aim a trip at, and each place page names them. We score the model against 27 long-running forest monitoring sites in this part of the country and publish what it got wrong.

This autumn is running 1 day early in Maine. September has run cooler than the 1991 to 2020 normal so far, and the dates above already include that. It’s a real signal but a modest one: temperature explains under a tenth of how much peak color moves year to year.

3 of 16 counties here are corrected by people who have actually looked at the trees this season. 5 reports from official state sources have moved those dates off the model and narrowed their windows. Counties with neither keep the model forecast and say so. Which is which is marked in the table below.

Late September in the north woods, early-to-mid October downeast, late October on the coast is how Maine is usually described.

What actually turns

Maine's fall is defined by the contrast of scarlet maples and golden birches against dark spruce, with the rocky coast adding a blue backdrop that makes every color more vivid.

• Sugar Maple
• Red Maple
• White Birch
• American Beech
• Red Oak

Acadia National Park peaks in the second week of October, and the view from Cadillac Mountain of color stretching to the ocean is one of the great fall sights in America.

Worth the drive

Every county, by peak week

Elevation does most of the work here. Color runs down a mountain at roughly a day per 100 meters, so a ridge and the valley below it can be a week or two apart in the same county. On the coast the water adds its own delay, the shoreline itself 4 days behind the same trees inland.