NYC Gridlock Alert Days 2026: The Full List, and What Each One Means If You Are Coming From Long Island

Every fall, NYC DOT publishes its list of Gridlock Alert Days, the specific dates when Manhattan traffic is expected to be at its slowest and most congested. The 2026 list came out on September 10. There are twenty days on it, they run from September 21 to December 23, and if you travel into the city from Nassau or Suffolk for work, clients, shows, or the airports, this is the calendar to put next to your own.

Here is the full list, what drives each cluster, and how we plan around them.

The 2026 Gridlock Alert Days

UN General Assembly week

• Monday, September 21
• Tuesday, September 22
• Wednesday, September 23
• Thursday, September 24
• Friday, September 25

Thanksgiving week

• Wednesday, November 18
• Thursday, November 19
• Tuesday, November 24

Holiday season

• Wednesday, December 2
• Thursday, December 3
• Friday, December 4
• Tuesday, December 8
• Wednesday, December 9
• Thursday, December 10
• Friday, December 11
• Tuesday, December 15
• Wednesday, December 16
• Thursday, December 17
• Friday, December 18
• Wednesday, December 23

DOT's own advice for all twenty is not to drive. Its data shows Midtown normally averages four to six miles per hour, and on these days it drops below that. Variable message boards go up around the city warning of delays. That is the official position. Below is what the days actually look like from the Long Island side.

September 21 to 25: UN General Assembly

This is the worst stretch of the year, and DOT says so directly: average Midtown speeds during UN week are historically the slowest of any week, under four miles per hour. More than a hundred heads of state and government are in town, each moving with a police escort that freezes whatever street it is on. First Avenue closes around the UN campus, the FDR shuts on a rolling basis, and Midtown and Upper East Side hotel zones lock down block by block.

This year the General Debate opens Tuesday the 22nd and resumes Monday, September 28, after the alert window closes. Plan the 28th like an alert day.

If you have Manhattan meetings that week, we book them as one hourly reservation with one chauffeur who stays with you all day, not as a series of point-to-point rides. The full plan is on our UN General Assembly car service page, and the closure footprint is in our UNGA street closures post.

November 18, 19, and 24: Thanksgiving Week

The two mid-November days catch the start of holiday season traffic, when the tree is going up at Rockefeller Center, the Fifth Avenue windows are unveiling, and out-of-town visitors start arriving in numbers. The Wednesday before Thanksgiving, November 24, is a different animal: it is the single heaviest travel day of the year in the New York area, and it hits everything at once. Midtown is jammed, the parade route is being set up along Central Park West, and JFK, LGA, and Newark all peak on the same afternoon.

From Long Island, November 24 is an airport day more than a Midtown day. The LIE and the Van Wyck slow down hours before the evening flight bank, and terminal curbs at JFK are at their most chaotic. That is a day for a car booked well in advance with a driver tracking your flight, not a day to test a rideshare app at 3 PM. We will publish the full Thanksgiving plan in November, and our JFK car service page covers the airport side year-round.

December 2 to 23: Holiday Season

Sixteen of the twenty alert days fall in December, and the pattern is precise: every Tuesday through Friday from December 2 through the 18th, plus Wednesday the 23rd. Mondays are not on the list. Weekends are not on the list. It is the weekday midtown crush of holiday shoppers, tourists, Rockefeller Center crowds, and, for our clients specifically, corporate holiday parties, client dinners, and year-end meetings, all landing on the same streets at the same hours.

For Long Island businesses, December is the month of the client dinner in Midtown and the firm party in the city. A Tuesday-night holiday dinner on December 8 means driving into a Gridlock Alert Day and out of it again at 10 PM, when every other party in Manhattan is also letting out. We run those nights hourly for the same reason we run UN week hourly: the car stays, the chauffeur is at the curb when the dinner ends, and nobody from your team is standing on 52nd Street in a coat watching surge pricing climb. We will publish the December plan in late November.

How the Alert Days Change What We Recommend

Three things shift on a Gridlock Alert Day compared with a normal Manhattan trip.

Departure margin. We build more of it, and we tell you the number when you book rather than guessing on the day. On a normal weekday the LIE to the Midtown Tunnel is predictable. On an alert day the last two miles are not.

Hourly over point-to-point for anything with more than one stop. A single ride to a single meeting is fine as a point-to-point trip. Two or more stops in Manhattan on an alert day means booking the hourly service, so the same car and chauffeur stay with you and reposition while you are inside.

Routing decided live, not in advance. The closures on these days are dynamic. A chauffeur who has done twenty Decembers in this city knows which crossing to take at 5:15 PM on a Thursday in mid-December, and it is not always the one the app suggests.

Put It on the Calendar

The value of this list is that it is published in September. You know today which twenty days will be the worst, which means you can book the car for the client dinner on December 10 now, move the Midtown East meeting off September 22 now, and get ahead of the November 24 airport run now. We handle all of it from Nassau and Suffolk, and our corporate car service page covers how we work with executive assistants and travel managers on exactly this kind of planning. Here is our full Long Island car service coverage.

Request a quote for any of the twenty dates above. The UN week cars book first, and the December Thursdays are not far behind.