Manaslu is filling up for autumn 2026 while the road to its trailhead is broken

Sources at Nepal’s Department of Tourism expect to grant around 300 permits to international climbers on Manaslu this autumn, ExplorersWeb reported on 25 August 2026. Last year the department issued 381, and 659 people reached the summit. Base camp is being built now. The road that gets people to the start of the walk in is cut.

Why so many people go to this mountain

Manaslu is not the easiest 8,000 m peak. It is the one that is available. Cho Oyu and Shishapangma sit on the Tibetan side and are shut to foreign expeditions, and those two were for years the standard first 8,000er. With them closed, the traffic goes to Manaslu.

The mountain is also genuinely more forgiving than most in its class. The route is a snow climb rather than a technical one. That is not the same as safe. Manaslu’s upper slopes hold large amounts of loaded snow, and the section between Camp 2 and Camp 3 has a history of avalanche. A queue of three hundred people on a snow slope does not make the slope safer.

The Expedition Operators Association of Nepal put the figure at more than 300 foreign clients across ten outfitters when the season was being organised, and its president Damber Parajuli said agencies were finalising logistics while support staff pitched tents at base camp. Ram Krishna Lamichhane, Director General of the Department of Tourism, confirmed the government was preparing liaison officers, who are mandatory on every Nepali 8,000 m expedition.

The schedule the mountain runs on

Rope-fixing decides the season. A seven-member team under Chhiring Bhote is on the route. Once the line reaches the summit, everyone moves at once in the first clear window, and that is why summit day on Manaslu looks like a procession rather than a climb.

The dates repeat closely year to year. Last season the first summits came on 21 September. In 2024, more than 600 people had reached the top by 2 October. If this season runs to form, the mountain will be quiet again by the middle of October.

One climber is going the other way. Lukas Supergan of Poland has announced an attempt in September without supplemental oxygen and without Sherpa support. Above 8,000 m you have about a third of the oxygen you have at sea level. Doing it without bottled oxygen is not a harder version of the same climb; it is a different one, and very few finish it.

The part nobody has solved yet

Everything above assumes people can reach the mountain. On 28 August the Trekking Agencies’ Association of Nepal listed the Manaslu region, Tsum Valley and the Larke Pass as cut off, because the Malekhu–Dhading Besi road lost a bridge in the 26 August floods. Two days later the Prithvi Highway itself subsided at Krishnabhir in Dhading, on the same corridor. Traffic stopped in both directions and no reopening date has been given.

Expeditions will get through. They charter helicopters when they have to, and a team with three hundred thousand dollars of client money on the mountain does not wait for a bridge. A trekker on a fixed two-week holiday has neither that budget nor that flexibility. Those are two different problems wearing the same road.

What this means for trekkers

Do I need a permit to trek the Manaslu Circuit?

Yes, and more than one. The circuit needs a Restricted Area Permit as well as the Manaslu Conservation Area Permit, and a licensed guide is mandatory — Manaslu had that rule before Nepal extended it more widely. Our cost and permit breakdown has the current figures.

Is the Manaslu Circuit the same as climbing Manaslu?

No. The circuit is a trek that crosses the Larke Pass at just over 5,100 m (about 16,700 ft) and never goes on the mountain itself. The expedition goes to 8,163 m. They share a valley and nothing else.

Will the crowds spoil the trek?

Not in the way people fear. The expedition traffic branches off toward base camp above Samagaon, so the circuit beyond that point stays quiet. What it affects is lodge availability in two villages for about three weeks.

The mountain will be busy, then it will be empty. It goes that way every year. Whether anyone can drive to it is this season’s open question.

Sources: ExplorersWeb, 25 August 2026, for the permit estimate, the 2025 and 2024 figures, the rope-fixing team and the Cho Oyu and Shishapangma closures; The Tourism Times for the Expedition Operators Association of Nepal figures and official comment; Trekking Agencies’ Association of Nepal route advisory, 28 August 2026, for the road position.

Cover photo: Pratapgrg via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). Section photos: pierre matile via Pexels (Pexels licence); Alois Lackner via Pexels (Pexels licence); Arif Baroya via Pexels (Pexels licence); Arjay Neyra via Pexels (Pexels licence).