Massachusetts Fall Foliage Map 2026

The county map today

Where to go in Massachusetts

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

1. Silvio O. Conte National Fish and Wildlife RefugeConnecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont
   Too earlyPeak 6 Oct best 5 to 8 Oct
2. Tyringham CobbleMassachusetts
   Too earlyPeak 13 Oct best 12 to 15 Oct
3. Oxbow National Wildlife RefugeMassachusetts
   Too earlyPeak 14 Oct best 13 to 16 Oct
4. Great Meadows National Wildlife RefugeMassachusetts
   Too earlyPeak 15 Oct best 14 to 17 Oct
5. Assabet River National Wildlife RefugeMassachusetts
   Too earlyPeak 15 Oct best 14 to 17 Oct
6. Minute Man National Historical ParkMassachusetts
   Too earlyPeak 15 Oct best 14 to 17 Oct
7. Parker River National Wildlife RefugeMassachusetts
   Too earlyPeak 18 Oct best 17 to 20 Oct
8. Massasoit National Wildlife RefugeMassachusetts
   Too earlyPeak 18 Oct best 17 to 20 Oct
9. Cape Cod National SeashoreMassachusetts
   Too earlyPeak 21 Oct best 20 to 23 Oct
10. Monomoy Wilderness AreaMassachusetts
    Too earlyPeak 21 Oct best 20 to 23 Oct
11. Mashpee National Wildlife RefugeMassachusetts
    Too earlyPeak 21 Oct best 20 to 23 Oct
12. Monomoy National Wildlife RefugeMassachusetts
    Too earlyPeak 22 Oct best 21 to 24 Oct
13. Nomans Land Island National Wildlife RefugeMassachusetts
    Too earlyPeak 22 Oct best 21 to 24 Oct

When to go

Across 14 counties, peak color is forecast to arrive first in Middlesex County around Oct 6 and last in Nantucket County around Oct 23. Most of the state peaks near Oct 14.

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.

1 of 14 counties here are corrected by people who have actually looked at the trees this season. 4 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.

Early October in the Berkshires, mid-to-late October in central and eastern Massachusetts is how Massachusetts is usually described.

What actually turns

The Berkshires produce classic New England color with sugar maples blazing orange and scarlet, birches going gold, and red oaks anchoring the ridges in deep burgundy.

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

The Mohawk Trail (Route 2) through the Berkshires is the original American scenic highway, and the Hairpin Turn overlook at Florida, MA offers a 60-mile view of color.

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.