It’s 6:50 AM, and you’re in a loose gaggle of airplanes holding over Rush Lake, Wisconsin, at 1,800 feet. Third in line behind a Bonanza and an RV-7, you’re burning fuel you didn’t plan to burn, with no idea where you’re sleeping tonight, because you were hoping to find a vacancy somewhere in the Fox River Valley. You knew AirVenture would be busy. You didn’t know it would be this busy, this early, or that Chicago’s Class B airspace wouldn’t allow a transition, pushing you well out of your way.
Every pilot who’s flown into Oshkosh has a version of this story: the one where the trip almost went sideways because of something they could have handled weeks earlier from their kitchen table. The good news is that none of it is complicated. It just has to happen before engine start, not during the flight. Here are five things to nail down before you commit to flying yourself into EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2026.
Have You Decided Between Camping and a Hotel Bed?
This isn’t just a comfort question. It’s a logistics question that shapes your entire trip.
Camping at Camp Scholler, or under the wing of your own airplane in aircraft camping, puts you inside the fence and inside the culture of AirVenture. You wake up to the sound of radial engines starting fifty yards away, and you don’t need a shuttle to get to the flight line. The tradeoff is Wisconsin in July: afternoon highs near 90°F (32°C), nights that can dip to 55°F (13 C), the occasional line of thunderstorms, and shared shower facilities.
A hotel means air conditioning, a real bed, and privacy, but it also means a shuttle schedule, drive time, and a harder truth: on-field lodging and the closest hotels in Oshkosh, Appleton, and Fond du Lac historically sell out months ahead of AirVenture week. If a hotel is part of your plan, that reservation needs to happen now, and at publication time, there may be only a handful of vacancies remaining in the Fox River Valley.
Have You Taken a WINGS-Credit Course Built for This Exact Flight?
If you have not yet taken one of the FAA Safety Team online courses built specifically around the Fisk VFR arrival and the AirVenture NOTAM, please consider doing that. One is still available on July 8 called “Pro Tips for AirVenture 2026,” and it counts toward a Basic WINGS phase.
This is more than generic recurrent training. It walks through the same transitions, altitudes, and radio expectations you’ll fly for real over Ripon and Fisk. If you’ve never flown the arrival, or it’s been a few years, this is one of the highest-value hours you can spend before the trip. Completing Oshkosh-specific arrival training well ahead of your trip is a must for safety. It can make your arrival less stressful.
Have You Watched EAA’s Fly-In Videos and Read the NOTAM Cover to Cover?
In addition to the FAA Safety courses available online, EAA publishes cockpit-view walkthrough videos of the arrival, showing exactly what the railroad tracks, the gravel pit, and the Fisk checkpoint look like from the flight deck of a sport aircraft.
Watch them more than once. Then read the official AirVenture NOTAM in full, not just the arrival pages. It covers preflight planning, airport closure windows, parking procedures, alternate airports, and the VFR and IFR arrival and departure sections, each with detail that changes from year to year. Skimming it is how pilots end up holding incorrectly and getting corrected on the arrival frequency. With so many arrivals, ATC has limited time to help unprepared pilots. We suggest you print it, mark up the pages relevant to your aircraft category and likely arrival runway, and keep a copy in the airplane for quick reference.
Have You Mined the Forums and Workshop Schedule?
AirVenture runs hundreds of forums, hands-on workshops, and presentations throughout the week, making Oshkosh as much a classroom as it is an air show. Daily forums at the Forums Plaza bring together hundreds of innovators, industry leaders, authors, and aviation legends covering everything from homebuilding, maintaining, and restoring aircraft to cutting-edge technology and instruction on flying safer and more proficiently, while workshops taught by skilled craftsmen let attendees watch and learn as classic homebuilt aircraft are constructed on-site throughout the week.
Type clubs also hold their own sessions covering all aspects of flying and owning that type of aircraft. For example, if you fly a Bonanza, an RV, a Cub, or a Cirrus, you can probably find your organization exhibiting at AirVenture with related courses or sessions available.
Find the workshops and forums you’re interested in attending. And check the schedule now for another reason: it changes how many days you may actually want to be on the field. A pilot chasing a maintenance workshop or a forum on the latest PFD needs a different arrival and departure plan than one coming strictly for the airshow.
Have You Actually Built Your Airshow Schedule and Considered a Night Show?
Most first-timers plan their arrival and their parking, then figure the airshow schedule will sort itself out. It won’t. The daily airshow closes the field to arrivals during the demonstration window, with arrivals normally resuming about 30 minutes after each afternoon show, confirmed on the Arrival ATIS (125.9).
Two nights are worth building your whole evening around: the Night Shows, scheduled for Wednesday, July 22 and Saturday, July 25, from 8:00 to 10:30 PM CDT. If you have not yet experienced a night airshow, it is definitely worth seeing. Fireworks, night formation aerobatics, and a flight line lit up after dark are things you rarely see elsewhere in general aviation.
2026 AirVenture Airshow & Night Show Schedule (CDT)
| Date | Event | Time |
| Mon, Jul 20 – Sat, Jul 25 | Daily Airshow | 2:15 PM – 6:30 PM |
| Wed, Jul 22 | Night Show | 8:00 PM – 10:30 PM |
| Sat, Jul 25 | Night Show | 8:00 PM – 10:30 PM |
| Sun, Jul 26 | Daily Airshow | 1:00 PM – 5:00 PM |
Quick-Reference Recap: 5 Things to Do Before You Commit
| # | Task | Why It Matters |
| 1 | Book lodging (camping or hotel) | On-field and nearby hotels historically sell out early |
| 2 | Take the WINGS-credit “Pro Tips for AirVenture 2026” course | Real prep plus possible WINGS credit/flight review |
| 3 | Watch EAA fly-in videos and read the full NOTAM | Cockpit-eye view plus closure and parking details you’ll miss skimming |
| 4 | Check the forums and workshops schedule | Learn from controllers, pilots, and your type club; decide trip length |
| 5 | Build your airshow schedule, including a Night Show. See schedule here. | Avoid the closure window, catch a memorable evening |
Ready to Fly In With Confidence?
None of this replaces stick-and-rudder proficiency. Before you commit to Oshkosh, an honest flight review, or a refresher on slow flight, short-field work, and radio discipline, pays for itself the moment you check in on Fisk Approach. Gleim’s Online Ground School and Flight Review prep are built on the same mission: give pilots the knowledge and confidence to fly with precision, not luck. Start your review at GleimAviation.com/OGS.
Onward and upward. We’ll see you at AirVenture.
Next in the series: “Top 10 Things You Must Preflight for Your Trip to AirVenture 2026,”