The State Rooms at Buckingham Palace are open to the public for roughly ten weeks each summer. That’s it. Miss that window and you’re stuck looking at the building from behind a fence for the other 42 weeks of the year.
I didn’t know this the first time I visited London. Showed up in October, stood outside the gates with everyone else, took the obligatory photo, and left thinking I’d “done” Buckingham Palace. I hadn’t done anything. The real palace — the one with Rembrandts on the walls and a throne room that makes Versailles look modest — was locked behind closed doors.
The second time, I planned ahead. Booked tickets for a late July morning, walked through 19 State Rooms, wandered the gardens, and finally understood why this is the most important building in Britain. Here’s everything you need to know to do it properly.
Best overall: The State Rooms Entrance Ticket — $44. The full palace interior experience with multimedia guide and garden access. This is the one you want.
Best budget: Changing of the Guard Walking Tour — $26. A guided walk covering the royal landmarks without going inside. Perfect if you’re visiting outside the summer window.
Best combo: Westminster Abbey, Big Ben & Buckingham Tour — $55. Covers three London icons in one morning with Westminster Abbey entry included.
- How the Official Ticket System Works
- Ticket Types and Prices
- Free and Discounted Entry
- Official Tickets vs. Guided Tours
- The Best Buckingham Palace Tours to Book
- 1. The State Rooms Entrance Ticket —
- 2. Westminster Abbey, Big Ben & Buckingham Guided Tour —
- 3. Buckingham Palace & Changing of the Guard Experience —
- 4. The Royal Mews Entrance Ticket —
- When to Visit
- The Changing of the Guard Schedule
- How to Get There
- Tips That Will Save You Time
- What You’ll Actually See Inside
- More London Guides
- Building a Day Around the Palace
How the Official Ticket System Works
Buckingham Palace tickets are sold exclusively through the Royal Collection Trust at rct.uk. You pick a date, choose a timed entry slot, and pay online. No third-party sites sell the official entry separately — if they do, it’s bundled with a guided tour (more on that below).
The palace opens from mid-July through late September each year, coinciding with the King’s annual move to Balmoral in Scotland. Exact dates shift slightly year to year, but you’re generally looking at about 10 weeks:
- July 10 to August 31: Open daily, 9:30 AM to 7:30 PM (last entry 5:30 PM)
- September 1 to 28: Thursday to Monday only, 9:30 AM to 6:30 PM (last entry 4:30 PM)
- Closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays in September
Tickets are timed entry. You pick a slot, arrive 30 minutes before, go through airport-style security, and then you’re in. The whole visit takes about 90 minutes to two hours at a comfortable pace.
Ticket Types and Prices
There’s really only one main ticket: the State Rooms entry. It runs about $44 / EUR 40 for adults. Children under 5 are free. The ticket includes:
- Entry to all 19 State Rooms
- A multimedia audio guide available in 11 languages
- Access to the palace gardens (39 acres, with a lake and over 200 trees)
- The Garden Cafe, if you want to sit down after
Beyond the State Rooms, there are two smaller attractions on the palace grounds that have their own tickets:
The Royal Mews — about $23. This is where the royal carriages and horses live. You’ll see the Gold State Coach (used for coronations since 1762), the Windsor Greys, and the Cleveland Bay horses. It’s smaller than the State Rooms visit but fascinating if you’re into the behind-the-scenes side of royal life.
The King’s Gallery — rotating exhibitions from the Royal Collection. The art here rivals what you’d find at the National Gallery, but with far fewer people blocking your view.
Free and Discounted Entry
Under-5s get in free. Beyond that, there aren’t student or senior discounts on the official tickets. But here’s a trick worth knowing: if you donate the price of your ticket instead of buying it outright, you get a one-year pass. Same price, but you can come back unlimited times within 12 months. Only works if you’re buying directly from rct.uk.
Official Tickets vs. Guided Tours
This is the decision most people struggle with, so let me make it simple.
Official tickets from rct.uk get you into the State Rooms with a multimedia audio guide. You walk at your own pace, listen to the commentary on your device, and take as long as you want. It’s a polished, well-paced experience. The downside: you’re on your own. No one to ask questions, no one to point out the details you’d otherwise miss.
Guided tours from GetYourGuide or Viator typically include the State Rooms entry plus a walking tour of the surrounding royal landmarks — St. James’s Palace, The Mall, the Changing of the Guard viewing spot. You get a live guide who knows the history and can actually answer when you ask “is the King really in there right now?” The downside: fixed schedule, group pace, and usually more expensive.
My take: if you’re visiting during the summer opening and only care about the palace interior, buy the official ticket directly. It’s cheaper and the audio guide is excellent. If you want the full royal London experience — the Guard ceremony, the walking tour, the storytelling — book a guided option. The guides are genuinely good, especially the ones who’ve been doing it for years and know every door, every painting, and every scandal.
The Best Buckingham Palace Tours to Book
I’ve gone through every Buckingham Palace tour available online — the palace-only entries, the combo walking tours, the Changing of the Guard experiences. These are the four worth your money, ordered by how much of the palace experience they actually deliver.
1. The State Rooms Entrance Ticket — $44
This is the one most people should book. You get access to all 19 State Rooms including the Throne Room, the White Drawing Room (the King’s secret entrance), and the Picture Gallery with works by Rembrandt and Rubens. The multimedia guide walks you through each room with enough detail to keep you engaged without dragging.
At $44 for about two hours inside the working headquarters of the British monarchy, this is genuinely good value. The garden access alone — 39 acres that most Londoners have never seen — would justify the price. Book morning slots for smaller crowds. Afternoon entries get busier but the light through the west-facing windows is worth the trade-off.
2. Westminster Abbey, Big Ben & Buckingham Guided Tour — $55
If you only have one day in London and want to knock out the royal highlights, this is the smart pick. You get inside Westminster Abbey (where every coronation since 1066 has happened), walk past Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, and end at Buckingham Palace. The guides on this tour are consistently excellent — the kind who make 900 years of history feel like gossip.
At $55 for three to four hours with Westminster Abbey entry included, the math works out heavily in your favour. Westminster Abbey alone costs over $30 at the door. The Buckingham Palace portion is exterior-only (you won’t go inside), but the guide covers more history standing outside than most people absorb during the self-guided interior tour.
3. Buckingham Palace & Changing of the Guard Experience — $26
This is the budget pick, and honestly, it delivers more than you’d expect for $26. You get a two-hour guided walking tour covering Buckingham Palace, St. James’s Palace, Clarence House, and the Changing of the Guard ceremony. No interior access, but you don’t need it to appreciate the spectacle.
The real value here is the guide’s knowledge of where to stand. The Changing of the Guard pulls enormous crowds, and most people end up stuck behind ten rows of travelers with zero visibility. The guided experience puts you in position early, at a spot most visitors don’t know about. For anyone visiting outside the summer opening when the State Rooms are closed, this is your best option.
4. The Royal Mews Entrance Ticket — $23
This is the add-on most people skip, and they shouldn’t. The Royal Mews is where the monarchy keeps its carriages, cars, and horses — it’s a working stable, not a museum. You’ll see the Gold State Coach (used for every coronation since George III), the Diamond Jubilee State Coach, and the Windsor Greys who pull them.
At $23, it’s the cheapest way to see something genuinely rare inside the palace grounds. The Royal Mews is open seasonally (longer than the State Rooms window), so you can visit even if the main palace is closed. Combine it with a State Rooms morning for the complete experience. Kids love this one — the horses are right there, and the carriages look like they belong in a fairy tale.
When to Visit
The State Rooms are open mid-July through late September. Within that window, your timing matters more than most guides let on.
Best time: The last two weeks of September. Crowds thin out dramatically once school holidays end. The Tuesday-Wednesday closures mean fewer visitors spread across the remaining days. And the weather in late September London is usually mild and overcast — perfect for walking without melting.
Worst time: The first two weeks of August. Peak holiday season, peak heat (by London standards), peak everything. Queues for security can stretch 30 minutes, and the State Rooms feel packed.
Morning vs. afternoon: First entry slot of the day gets the emptiest rooms. By early afternoon, every tour group in London seems to converge at once. But afternoon light in the west-facing rooms — the White Drawing Room especially — is genuinely beautiful.
The Changing of the Guard Schedule
The Changing of the Guard happens at 11:00 AM and lasts about 45 minutes. In summer (April to July), it runs daily. The rest of the year, it’s Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday — but this varies and gets cancelled in heavy rain.
Check the official schedule at changing-guard.com on the morning of your visit. Do not just show up and hope.
The ceremony itself is free and happens on the palace forecourt. But “free” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here — the crowd is enormous, the viewing angles are limited, and without arriving 30-45 minutes early you’ll see the tops of some bearskin hats and not much else.
How to Get There
Tube: The closest stations are Green Park (Jubilee, Victoria, and Piccadilly lines) and Victoria (Victoria, District, and Circle lines). Green Park drops you onto The Mall — a five-minute walk straight to the palace gates. Victoria station is about an eight-minute walk through the backstreets.
On foot from Westminster: If you’re coming from Big Ben or Westminster Abbey, it’s a 10-minute walk through St. James’s Park. This is the scenic route and genuinely one of the nicest walks in London. Cut through the park, cross the bridge over the lake, and you’ll come out right at the Victoria Memorial.
Bus: Routes 11, 211, C1, and C10 stop near the palace. The 11 bus from Liverpool Street is a classic London route that passes Trafalgar Square, Whitehall, and Westminster before reaching Buckingham Palace Road.
Tips That Will Save You Time
- Book early. State Rooms tickets sell out weeks in advance during peak summer. If you’re visiting in August, book the moment they release dates (usually March/April).
- Arrive 30 minutes before your slot. Security is airport-style. Bags are checked, and the queue moves slowly. If you’re late to your slot, they won’t turn you away, but you might wait for the next available entry.
- Combine State Rooms + Royal Mews in one day. The Mews is right on the palace grounds. Do State Rooms in the morning, grab lunch at the Garden Cafe, then walk over to the Mews. Two to three hours total for both.
- Skip the Changing of the Guard on your State Rooms day. The ceremony draws massive crowds to the forecourt, which means longer security lines and a more hectic arrival. Do the Guard on a separate day, or catch it at Horse Guards Parade on Whitehall instead — same ceremony, smaller crowd.
- Free cancellation is available up to 72 hours before your visit on most tickets. So book even if your plans aren’t final.
- The audio guide is included — don’t buy one from a third-party app. It’s built into the ticket price and available in 11 languages.
- The palace is nearly fully wheelchair accessible. Baby carriers and hip seats are available free at the entrance.
What You’ll Actually See Inside
The State Rooms are the working heart of the British monarchy. This is where state banquets happen, where foreign ambassadors are received, where knighthoods are awarded. These are not museum rooms preserved under glass — they’re used regularly, and the furnishings reflect that. Everything is maintained, polished, and very much alive.
You’ll walk through 19 rooms in total. The highlights:
The Grand Staircase sets the tone immediately. It’s designed to impress, and it works. Gilt bronze balustrades, portraits staring down from above, and a ceiling that makes you stop walking and look up.
The Throne Room is where investitures take place — when someone gets knighted, this is the room it happens in. The two thrones at the far end are marked “ER” and “P” for Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip. The room is vast but somehow intimate, with crimson silk walls and a theatrical proscenium arch.
The Picture Gallery runs 50 metres down the centre of the palace. Rembrandts, Rubens, Van Dycks, Canaletto — hung casually, as if having a Rembrandt in your hallway is normal. This one room contains more valuable art than most national galleries.
The White Drawing Room looks like a standard (if incredibly ornate) reception room, but it has a secret: behind one of the cabinets, there’s a concealed door that the Royal Family uses to enter. The guide points it out, and it’s one of those details that makes the visit feel less like a museum and more like peeking behind a curtain.
The gardens, included with your ticket, are the other half of the visit most people rush through. Don’t. The 39-acre grounds include a three-acre lake, a tennis court, a helicopter landing pad, and over 1,000 plant species. In late July, the herbaceous border is at its peak and worth the walk to the far end of the garden.
More London Guides
Buckingham Palace sits at the centre of a cluster of London’s best attractions, and most of them are walkable from each other. The Tower of London is the other must-do royal landmark — it’s grittier, darker, and covers a very different side of the monarchy’s history. If you want to stay in the Westminster area, the London Eye is right across the bridge and gives you the best aerial view of the palace and its gardens from above. A Thames river cruise connects all the riverside landmarks without the Tube crowds, and it’s one of the better ways to spend a London afternoon. For something completely different, the Harry Potter Studio Tour is about an hour outside central London and sells out even faster than the palace does — book that one well in advance. And if you’ve got an extra day, Madame Tussauds is a short walk from Baker Street, though I’ll be honest: after seeing the real palace, the wax royals feel a bit anticlimactic.
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Building a Day Around the Palace
Westminster Abbey is a natural companion to a Buckingham Palace visit — they are barely 10 minutes apart on foot through St James’s Park, and both are tied to centuries of royal ceremony. The coronation chair alone connects the two sites directly.
From the palace, you can walk down The Mall to Trafalgar Square and then continue to the British Museum, which is free and holds treasures from across the former empire. Or head south to Westminster Pier for a Thames river cruise that takes you east past Parliament and under Tower Bridge.
If the royal theme appeals to you, Windsor Castle is the Queen’s weekend residence and an easy day trip by train from Paddington. It is older, larger, and still a working royal household. The State Apartments there rival anything at Buckingham Palace, and the town of Windsor itself is worth exploring.