2019 cinque terre pass needed?

Jessica, can you provide a source for these reports on restrictions and required tourist pass?

If you intend to hike any open section of the Sentiero Azzurro (Blue Path/SVA2) trail, you must purchase a trekking pass but that requirement has been in place for many years. There was a story running around the net some years ago about limiting tourists to the region that got a lot of press (and a lot of worried posts on travel forums!) but it came to nothing.

https://cinqueterreinsider.com/2016/02/19/limit-on-the-number-of-visitors-to-the-cinque-terre-in-2016-nope-not-happening/

The Cinque Terre Insider is a good source of local info as is "A Path to Lunch":

https://www.apathtolunch.com/p/area-infolinks.html

This quote from APTL's FAQ page:

"Will I need a ticket or reservation to visit the Cinque Terre? Are
there limits or quotas on the number of visitors to the Cinque Terre?

There are no general restrictions of any kind on visitors to the
Cinque Terre villages or Park. No reservations are required and no
admission is charged except for a few popular trails. The news stories
of limitations on visitors were based on misinterpreted information
and has been firmly refuted at every level."

Thank you for this useful information. This is one of the links I found online. https://www.incinqueterre.com/en/trail-number2-blue
As you said, I’m hoping this was proposed a few years ago but nothing came of it.

As the text in that article states:

An app which was created in 2017 with a map of the trails (Apple
Store, Google Play) will be improved. It is planned that with this app
it will be possible to create a virtual waiting list for walking the
paid routes in the future. For the moment there is no additional
information, nor do we know in which year this will take effect. Keep
checking our website because we will be the first to inform you as
soon as this information is available.

It is important to note that this limit (if and when it ever goes into effect) will be applied only to the paid routes, while you will still be able to visit the villages and the free walking trails with no limitations."

By "paid routes" they're referencing the four segments of the very popular SVA2/Blue Path I mentioned in my first post. Two of those segments are currently closed and the other two will be extremely busy. It's the amount of foot traffic on this route that they're looking to reduce at some point.

Thank you for your help!!