Memorial Day Weekend Gas Prices 2026: $4.48 National Average Forecast

Updated 2026-05-20. Memorial Day weekend is May 23-25, 2026, just five days out. GasBuddy forecasts the national average at $4.48 per gallon, up roughly $1.34 versus Memorial Day 2025. AAA expects a record 39.1 million Americans to travel by car this weekend despite the elevated prices. The drivers behind the forecast are not the usual seasonal stack of summer blend, refinery turnarounds, and demand bumps. The 2026 holiday window sits squarely inside an active geopolitical supply shock.

Expect pump prices to stay elevated through the holiday and likely tick higher in the week leading up to it. Here is what is driving the forecast and where gas will still be relatively cheap.

Why Memorial Day weekend usually sees price increases

Three structural patterns produce the holiday bump every year:

Demand stacking. Memorial Day kicks off the US summer driving season. Holiday weekend travel pushes daily gasoline consumption from the typical 9.0 million barrels per day baseline up to 9.5-9.7 million barrels per day. That additional demand has to be sourced from the same refining capacity, and refiners pass the cost increase through to wholesale prices within 5-10 days.

Summer blend gasoline. EPA reformulated gasoline (RFG) standards took effect May 1, 2026. Summer blend has lower volatility than winter blend to reduce evaporative emissions in warm weather, but it costs refiners 5-15¢/gal more to produce. Most of that cost reaches the pump within two weeks of the transition. Memorial Day falls right inside that pass-through window.

Retailer pricing discipline. Stations know holiday demand is inelastic. Drivers fill up before a road trip whether prices rose 10¢/gal that week or not. So stations are less likely to absorb wholesale increases in the run-up to the holiday than during slower demand windows.

What's different about Memorial Day 2026

Three specific 2026 factors compound the standard pattern. The first two are the dominant drivers:

Strait of Hormuz closure and the US-Iran war. US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran on February 28, 2026 killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and started the 2026 Iran war. Iran responded by closing the Strait of Hormuz to vessels going to or from US, Israeli, and allied ports. The US imposed a naval blockade on Iran on April 13. With roughly 20% of global oil supply normally transiting Hormuz disrupted, WTI crude sits at $112/bbl as of May 18 (up from $78 in late February, a 43% rise in two months). This is the binding constraint on Memorial Day prices.

Record Strategic Petroleum Reserve drawdowns absorbing the shock. The EIA Weekly Petroleum Status Report released May 20 showed 9.92 million barrels released from the SPR in the week ending May 15. That broke the prior all-time weekly record of 8.6 million barrels set just one week earlier. The DOE is releasing strategic reserves to keep US refineries supplied and prevent a faster pump-price spike. Without those releases, the retail translation of the Hormuz disruption would already be materially worse than $4.48 national average. For the full structural breakdown, see our SPR drawdown crisis research.

Joliet refinery disruption (residual). ExxonMobil's Joliet, Illinois refinery experienced operational issues earlier in May. The 270,000-barrel-per-day facility supplies a large share of Midwest gasoline. PADD 2 (Midwest petroleum administration district) operates with thinner spare refining capacity than the Gulf Coast, so a single major refinery stumble has outsized regional impact. Illinois retail prices stayed elevated above neighboring Indiana/Missouri/Wisconsin averages through mid-May. For the regional breakdown, see our Illinois gas spike explainer.

Cheapest states for Memorial Day weekend

The states with reliable Gulf Coast refinery access and lower fuel taxes will continue to lead on price. Recent EIA data and station-level reporting suggest the following will remain the cheapest fill-up zones over Memorial Day:

• Oklahoma ($3.20-3.40/gal range). Major oil-producing state with local refining capacity. Low state taxes.
• Texas ($3.30-3.55/gal). Home to the largest concentration of US refineries, especially the Houston-Port Arthur-Corpus Christi corridor. The Gulf Coast refinery cluster insulates Texas from most regional supply shocks.
• Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana ($3.30-3.55/gal). Gulf Coast adjacency, lower state taxes, low retailer competition keeping prices down.
• Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska ($3.35-3.60/gal). Magellan and Williams pipeline access from the Gulf Coast plus low state gas taxes.

Anyone driving through these states for a long weekend trip can fill up with 50-80¢/gal less per gallon than in coastal markets.

Most expensive states

California ($5.20-5.60/gal). Structural CARB blend requirements, cap-and-trade, and the highest state gas tax stack in the country. California is always the most expensive market by a wide margin during summer driving season. For the full California breakdown, see our research on why California gas is the highest.

Illinois ($4.80-5.10/gal at current levels). The Joliet refinery issue is the unusual contributor on top of Illinois's normal 53¢/gal city + county + state tax stack (in Chicago).

Washington, Oregon, Hawaii, Nevada ($4.30-4.80/gal). West Coast supply chain dependence on California refineries plus high state taxes.

Pennsylvania ($3.85-4.10/gal). Highest state gas tax in the country at 57.6¢/gal. The pump price reflects that tax burden year-round, but it gets more visible during high-demand windows.

Smart fill-up timing for the holiday weekend

Empirical pricing patterns suggest a clear timing strategy:

• Fill up Tuesday or Wednesday before Memorial Day weekend. Mid-week prices are reliably lower than Thursday-Sunday prices. The gap widens during high-demand windows.
• Avoid Friday and Saturday before the holiday. Stations raise prices into peak weekend demand starting Thursday afternoon.
• If driving long-distance, fill up at the cheapest state on your route, not at your start or end. A 15-gallon tank in Oklahoma at $3.30 vs. Pennsylvania at $4.00 is $10.50 of savings on a single fill-up.
• Skip interstate exit stations. Highway stations charge 10-20¢/gal more than stations a half-mile off the exit. On a holiday road trip with multiple fill-ups, that compounds.

How to actually save during the holiday weekend

A few practical habits that reliably cut your holiday gas spend:

• Search by ZIP on Gas Price Check before any fill-up. Within most metros, the cheapest and most expensive stations are 30-50¢/gal apart on the same day. That spread is 2-3x what state-level averages move during a holiday week.
• Use warehouse clubs if you have a membership. Costco, Sam's Club, and BJ's typically run 20-30¢/gal below surrounding stations and hold that gap through demand spikes.
• Cross state lines if you live near a border. Texas drivers near the Oklahoma line, Pennsylvania drivers near the Ohio or West Virginia line, and Illinois drivers near the Indiana line all have meaningful arbitrage opportunities.
• Keep tires properly inflated. A tire pressure gauge takes seconds to use before a fill-up. Properly inflated tires improve fuel economy by up to 3%, worth real money on a holiday road trip with several hundred miles driven.
• Mount your phone for navigation. A phone mount keeps turn-by-turn directions hands-free so you can route to a cheaper station across town without juggling your phone.

Roadside coverage before the trip

Memorial Day weekend is the busiest road-trip window of the year, and breakdown call volume spikes accordingly. Standard insurance-bundled roadside attaches to a specific insured vehicle, which means you are not covered in a rental, a friend's car, or a borrowed vehicle. AAA Membership covers the member regardless of which vehicle they are driving, which matters more for holiday travel than during routine commuting.

The roadside-only tier through AAA starts at around $6/month and covers tows, jumps, lockouts, and fuel delivery in any vehicle. The full membership tiers (Classic, Plus, Premier) bundle roadside with hotel and rental car discounts. For the full breakdown of what each tier includes, see our AAA Membership review, or get covered before the trip.

Disclosure: Gas Price Check earns commission on AAA Membership signups through the link above. Pricing reflects the CalState NCNU region (Alaska, Arizona, Northern California, Montana, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming); other AAA regional clubs may differ.

The forecast

Realistic outlook for the next 14 days, against the GasBuddy $4.48 national-average forecast:

• National average sits at $4.33 today (EIA, period 2026-05-18). Drifts up toward GasBuddy's $4.48 forecast across the next week. Some downward movement possible after Memorial Day if SPR releases continue at their record pace and the Hormuz situation begins to stabilize.
• Summer projection runs to $4.80 per gallon for the full driving season per GasBuddy, well above the prior summer record of $4.43 from 2022. If the Strait of Hormuz remains closed for much of the summer, prices could hit $5 per gallon nationally or higher.
• California stays at $5+ through the weekend. Current state EIA average is $5.27.
• Illinois stays elevated. The Joliet residual and Midwest refining capacity tightness compound on top of the national supply-side picture.
• Gulf Coast and Plains states keep their structural premium below the national average. Texas EIA state average is $3.95. Suburban Houston and Dallas ZIPs sit below their state averages on station-level data, with self-aggregated medians around $3.77 (Houston) and $3.89 (Dallas).

Memorial Day weekend is the most expensive Memorial Day in modern US history outside the 2022 spike. The combined commercial-plus-SPR draw last week was 17.8 million barrels, the largest single-week US crude inventory fall since the data series begins in 1982 (per Bloomberg's Javier Blas). Knowing your state's pricing environment and timing fill-ups around mid-week is worth $15-50 over the long weekend for most drivers.

For state-by-state current averages updated daily, see our gas prices by state overview. For the federal gas tax suspension question that came up this week, see our federal gas tax explainer.

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