Iceland tightens drone permits, frustrating photographers and educators

The shock for drone photographers in Iceland was not a blanket ban. It was a sharper split: the Nature Conservation Agency moved to refuse recreational and educational drone permits across more than 25 protected areas for the 2026 season, even as film, advertising, television and news crews kept getting approved.

That leaves two different rulebooks on the same trip. Outside protected areas, flying still follows the usual European Union Aviation Safety Agency and Icelandic Transport Authority rules. Inside protected areas, the agency says drones may be flown unless conservation conditions or special management rules say otherwise, but it also says it does not grant drone permissions in Vatnajökull National Park or Þingvellir National Park.

The practical problem for visiting shooters is the bureaucracy that now sits between a flight plan and a usable aerial. The agency’s current permit page lists a processing fee of 83,200 ISK for recreational drone applications covering three or more protected areas, and the same 83,200 ISK fee for cinematography and photography in protected areas. It also says the fee is the same for recreational and professional drones regardless of size and weight, with processing time set at 15 days, or 30 days for the Mývatn area.

This is not a brand-new conservation language. The agency has long issued site-specific permits for places such as Fjallabak, Gullfoss, Geysir, Goðafoss, Skógafoss, Háifoss, Dynjandi, Dyrhólaey and Snæfellsjökull, often with conditions that sound familiar to anyone who has worked a sensitive location: notify rangers in advance, keep flights brief, and stay away from busy visitor periods. A 2025 Fjallabak permit said drone use there from June 15 to September 15 was subject to a permit from the Nature Conservation Agency. Another 2025 permit said special permits for recreational drone use were not issued in some Vatnajökull National Park areas, though rangers could still give verbal permission in category II zones based on ecosystem conditions or lower tourist traffic.

Dynjandi shows how targeted Iceland’s system can be when it wants to be. The agency says drones there are allowed without a permit from September 16 to April 30, but require permission from May 1 to September 15. Its own page points to 35 recorded bird species and says winter disturbance is insignificant because there are few visitors and few or no birds. That kind of seasonal, site-by-site logic makes the new refusal of recreational and educational permits across 25-plus protected areas look less like an unavoidable conservation rule than a policy choice that adds friction for responsible aerial shooters. Iceland is still open to drones, but the old assumption that a highland itinerary or waterfall day will work the same way no longer holds.