Costa Rica’s Ministry of Public Works and Transport is expanding traffic monitoring and enforcement ahead of Semana Santa 2026, as one of the year’s busiest travel periods approaches from March 29 to April 5. While officials have not announced a brand-new Holy Week live camera platform in recent days, MOPT has continued to push a broader road surveillance plan while preparing the usual Easter traffic operations on the country’s busiest corridors.
The longer-term plan is ambitious. In January 2025, MOPT said it aimed to install 2,000 cameras on highways before May 2026 as part of a system meant to strengthen enforcement against speeding and other dangerous driving. The project has been presented as a way to give authorities more consistent oversight on high-risk routes where traffic police cannot be everywhere at once.
For Holy Week, the more immediate changes are familiar ones. MOPT has already outlined traffic management measures tied to the Easter travel rush, including reversible lanes on Route 27, one of the main highways used by drivers heading between the Central Valley and the Pacific coast. In the 2025 Semana Santa operation, all available lanes between Pozón and the toll area near Ciudad Colón were directed toward San José during peak return hours on Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday.
Authorities are also warning drivers to use extra caution on Route 32, the key road between San José and Limón. MOPT and CONAVI said holiday traffic combined with ongoing road works can create added risk on that corridor, one of our country’s most sensitive routes during long weekends and national holidays.
The holiday operation also typically includes practical measures aimed at easing travel. During the 2025 Easter recess, MOPT announced that the four state toll booths would temporarily stop charging from midday on Holy Thursday until early Holy Saturday, and COSEVI also adjusted services during the break. Those announcements offer the clearest recent guide to how authorities are managing major travel surges around Semana Santa.
For drivers, tourists, and expats planning to be on the road, you should keep in mind that Costa Rica is entering Holy Week with more monitoring, more enforcement, and more traffic management on the roads most likely to clog as people head to the beaches, mountains, and Caribbean.
The promised camera expansion remains part of that broader modernization push, even if the full system has not yet been publicly confirmed as fully deployed nationwide ahead of Easter 2026.
