"I am amazed by the beauty of the building's interior and the quality of its preservation. It's understandable that this is the case, as it is an active government building. It exceeded my expectations. Of course, I was completely disappointed that I couldn't take a single photo as proof that I was there, but what can you do?"
2027 Tickets Out in November · 19 Rooms · Summer Only
Buckingham Palace State Rooms
The interior of Buckingham Palace opens for eleven weeks a year and the visitor route covers 19 of its 775 rooms. This is what is actually in them, how long Royal Collection Trust says to allow, and the rules people find out about at the door.
From
$51
per person
- 4.6 / 5 157+ Reviews
- 19 Rooms Of 775 in the Palace
- 2–2½ Hrs Royal Collection Trust's Own Estimate
The Experience
What the State Rooms Ticket Covers
State Rooms entry bundled with a royal-London audio app, from Vox City Walks.
Highlights
- Enjoy entry to the State Rooms of Buckingham Palace
- Uncover 19 rooms filled with treasures owned by the Royal Family
- See chairs used for coronation ceremonies and art by Rembrandt and Rubens
- Continue exploring the royal side of London at your own pace with an audio tour
What's Included
- Buckingham Palace State Rooms entry ticket
- Buckingham Palace State Rooms audio guide in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Russian and Brazilian Portuguese
- Royal London’ audio guide app in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian and Chinese
- Any applicable fees and taxes
Good to know: After booking, you will receive an email or Whatsapp notification from VoxCity International. Click the link to check in for your trip and to download your audio guide app. · Visitors can head directly to the Buckingham Palace Ticket Office, located at Buckingham Palace Road · Please arrive 15 minutes before your booked timeslot, and have your ticket downloaded and ready to show · Entry is subject to a security check: no sharp objects, bicycles or luggage. Some items must be checked in, including pushchairs and long umbrellas · Photography and filming is strictly prohibited inside Buckingham Palace. You may take pictures or videos in the garden area · Your ticket is only valid for the date and time booked · Not Included: Guided tour, Headset and mobile device (for Royal London audio guide app)
How a State Rooms Visit Actually Works
One timed slot you cannot be late for, one security check, 19 rooms, and half a kilometre of garden on the way out.
Check That the Palace Is Even Open
The State Rooms are not a year-round attraction. The 2026 season ran 9 July to 27 September, and Royal Collection Trust releases summer 2027 tickets in November (rct.uk, checked October 2026). Outside the summer weeks there is no interior visit for general visitors, and the day becomes a Changing of the Guard morning instead.
Book a Timed Slot in Advance
Entry is by a selected time slot, and the listing is blunt about the consequence: late arrivals cannot be admitted. Book online, keep the voucher on your phone, and give yourself a buffer — you have to exchange the voucher before your slot, not at it.
Enter at Gate A and Clear Security
The State Rooms Visitor Entrance is Gate A, on the south side of the Palace at Buckingham Gate. There is an airport-style security check: no sharp objects, no luggage, and pushchairs must be checked in and reclaimed at the exit. Baby carriers are lent free of charge, subject to availability.
Walk the 19 Rooms, Then the Garden
You go room to room at your own pace with a multimedia guide in nine languages — the Grand Staircase, the Throne Room, the White Drawing Room, the Ballroom. Photography and filming are not permitted inside. The route exits through the garden, where cameras are allowed and the Garden Café is.
Photo Gallery
Inside and Outside — Through the Lens
The east front, the forecourt, the garden route you exit through, and the rooms the cameras are not allowed into.
Book Your Experience
Check Availability & Prices
Select your preferred date and time. The listing does not offer free cancellation, so check your date before you book.
Two Platform Tickets Into the Same 19 Rooms
Both get you through the door into the identical State Rooms route. What changes is what is bundled around it — and what you pay for the bundle.
| Feature | SELF-PACED Entry + Royal London Audio App | Entry + Guided Royal Walk |
|---|---|---|
| What You Pay | From about $51 per person (October 2026) | From about $92 per person (October 2026) |
| Who Sells It | Vox City Walks, a reseller bundling the palace entry with its own audio app | City Wonders, a tour operator bundling the palace entry with a live guide for the streets outside |
| Inside the Palace | Self-guided through the 19 State Rooms with the palace's own audio guide in nine languages | Identical route, identical audio guide. Guides are not permitted inside, so you go in alone |
| Outside the Palace | A self-paced audio app for royal London, for the rest of the day | A live guided walk past St James's Palace, Clarence House and The Mall before your timed entry |
| Photography | Not permitted inside the State Rooms. Allowed in the garden on the way out | Same rule — it is the Palace's rule, not the seller's |
| Cancellation | The listing does not offer free cancellation | Free cancellation up to 24 hours before |
| Reviews on the Platform | 4.6 from 157 reviews (October 2026) | 4.5 from 1,183 reviews (October 2026) |
| Best For | Independent travellers who want a self-paced commentary for the rest of the day too | First-time visitors who want the royal-London context explained by a person |
| Check Availability | See the Guided Version |
More Options
Other Ways Into the Same 19 Rooms
Every product here walks the identical route, because guides are not permitted inside. What changes is what is bundled around it.
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The Interior
What Is Actually Inside the State Rooms
Nineteen rooms out of 775, a newly rehung Picture Gallery, no photography, no live guide — and an eleven-week window to see any of it.
Status, 22 October 2026: the 2026 season is over. Royal Collection Trust says tickets for summer 2027 will be released in November, and it had not published the 2027 dates when checked. This winter the only way inside is its East Wing Exclusive Guided Tour (6 November 2026 – 31 January 2027, £100, sold on rct.uk only); the winter guide covers what else is open.
In 2026 the State Rooms opened to visitors from 9 July to 27 September — seven days a week through July and August, then Thursday to Monday in September, closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays. That is the entire window of general public access to the inside of Buckingham Palace in a calendar year.
Everything on this page hangs off that date range. If your trip falls outside it, the interior is not an option and the honest advice is to skip straight to the Changing of the Guard, which runs through the seasons and costs nothing.
What the State Rooms actually are
They are the formal, public half of the building — the rooms used, in the operator’s own phrasing, to receive, reward and entertain guests on state, ceremonial and official occasions. Nineteen of them are on the visitor route.
For scale: royal.uk puts the Palace at 775 rooms in total — 19 State Rooms, 52 royal and guest bedrooms, 188 staff bedrooms, 92 offices and 78 bathrooms — behind a front 108 metres wide and 24 metres high. So the visitor route is genuinely a small, deliberate slice of the building, and the private apartments where the Royal Family lives are never part of it.
What you walk through: the Grand Staircase, the Throne Room, the White Drawing Room, the Ballroom and the Picture Gallery. What is in them: paintings by Rembrandt and Rubens, sculpture by Canova, Sèvres porcelain and some of the finest English and French furniture in existence, all drawn from the Royal Collection.
What is new for 2026
There is a genuine reason to go this year that did not apply last year. Royal Collection Trust announced on 8 July 2026 that the Picture Gallery has been rehung, with the number of paintings on display almost doubled from 63 to around 120 — including works by Rubens, Caravaggio and Zoffany — against new silk wall coverings and new lighting. RCT says the re-hang took roughly 875 hours and the intention was to bring the room closer to its historic appearance.
Two smaller additions this season: a Rolls-Royce Phantom IV displayed in the Grand Entrance Portico, and a new garden information trail included with standard admission.
How long to allow
Royal Collection Trust’s own published advice is between two and two and a half hours, and that is the number to plan against rather than any figure you see on a travel blog. Some guides quote 90 minutes for the State Rooms; RCT’s own practical-information page does not agree with them.
The part nobody warns you about is the exit. You do not leave by a door — the route out is a walk of roughly half a kilometre through the garden, on gravel. Wear shoes accordingly. It is also where the only toilets and baby-care facilities on the route are, which is worth knowing before you go in with children.
Real visits land either side of the estimate. One recent reviewer reports doing the whole thing in an hour and a half without feeling rushed; anyone who listens to every stop on the multimedia guide will use the full allowance comfortably.
Then add the queue. Multiple reviewers describe around thirty minutes of queuing even holding a pre-booked ticket, and admission is in narrow timed slots with the listing stating that late arrivals cannot be admitted. Arrive well before your slot, not at it.
There is no guide inside
This surprises people who have paid extra for a guided product, so it is worth stating clearly: guides are not permitted inside Buckingham Palace.
One tour operator says so in its own listing, in almost those words — after the guided walk outside, the guide leads you to the palace entrance, verifies your ticket, hands over an audio guide, and you go in alone. That applies to every product on the market. The $51 audio-app ticket and the $92 guided combination both put you through the same 19 rooms with the same handset.
The handset is good, to be fair. It runs in nine languages — English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Russian and Portuguese — with British Sign Language and audio-descriptive versions also available, plus a separate children’s version that reviewers travelling with kids single out as genuinely well made rather than a token gesture.
The one real guided option is Royal Collection Trust’s own East Wing Highlights Tour, and it is worth knowing about even though we cannot sell it to you.
The East Wing tour, and why you cannot book it here
Since July 2025 the East Wing Highlights Tour has offered the first-ever public access to the Centre Room — the room that opens onto the famous balcony — along with the Yellow Drawing Room and the Principal Corridor. Royal Collection Trust confirmed in July 2026 that East Wing tours continue this summer.
It is guided, lasts about an hour by RCT’s own figure, and afterwards you are escorted to the start of your self-guided State Rooms visit — so budget three to three and a half hours for the combination. It is capped at 20 places per tour, and RCT prices it at £90 per adult, which includes the 60-minute guided tour of the East Wing. For comparison, standard State Rooms admission on its own is £32 in advance (£35 on the day), and the £15-per-adult Garden Highlights Tour is an add-on that has to be booked alongside a State Rooms ticket rather than bought separately.
You cannot buy it through us or through any platform. RCT’s listing is explicit that it is not a group product and is not for purchase or resale by third parties, with any such orders cancelled. It goes on sale on rct.uk on a first-come, first-served basis, and it sells out fast. There is no ballot, whatever you may have read elsewhere.
The rules people find out about at the door
No photography. Royal Collection Trust states flatly that you cannot take photographs within Buckingham Palace, and the platform listing extends the ban to video, filming and wearable devices even for non-commercial use. The garden is the exception — non-commercial photography there is actively encouraged, and since the garden is the exit route, that is where every visitor photograph of Buckingham Palace you have ever seen was taken.
Bags. Maximum size 45 × 20 × 30 cm, carried at your side rather than worn on your back. Suitcases and oversized bags are refused entry outright; RCT itself points visitors at the luggage storage in Victoria Station. Knives, scissors, long umbrellas, aerosols and sealed alcohol must be checked in and reclaimed. Bicycles, scooters, skateboards and drones are not admitted at all.
Pushchairs. Not permitted in the State Rooms for safety reasons — they are checked in at the door and collected at the exit. Baby carriers and hip seats can be borrowed free of charge, subject to availability.
Access. If you need a step-free access route, Royal Collection Trust’s own ticket terms say you must book directly with Royal Collection Trust rather than through a platform, and the same applies to complimentary companion tickets. Green Park is the nearest step-free Underground station.
Food. No eating or drinking inside except bottled water. There is a café on the garden route at the end — one reviewer’s only complaint about the entire visit was a stale muffin, which tells you something about how good the rest of it is.
Which ticket, then?
Every route into the building walks the same rooms, so the choice is about what is bundled outside. As listed in October 2026:
- Entry plus a royal-London audio app, about $51 — the admission with a self-paced commentary for the rest of the day. 4.6 from 157 reviews; no free cancellation.
- Entry plus a live guided walk, about $92 — the same admission with a guide past St James’s Palace, Clarence House and The Mall beforehand. 4.5 from 1,183 reviews; free cancellation up to 24 hours before. See dates
Royal Collection Trust’s own standard ticket is sold direct on rct.uk (£32 in advance, read 1 August 2026), and there is one reason to buy it there: Royal Collection Trust lets you convert a ticket into a 1-Year Pass by asking for the purchase to be treated as a donation, and its terms exclude tickets booked through a tour operator or ticket agent. If free re-admission for twelve months is worth more to you than a guide or an audio app, buy at source. Our tickets page works through the full price ladder.
Ready to book a slot inside the eleven-week window? Check availability and prices.
Written 1 August 2026. The 2026 dates (9 July – 27 September) and the July/August-daily versus September-Thursday-to-Monday pattern come from rct.uk and its 8 July 2026 press release. “Allow 2 to 2½ hours”, the half-kilometre garden exit, the photography ban, the pushchair rule and the 45 × 20 × 30 cm bag limit are quoted from Royal Collection Trust’s own practical-information page. The Picture Gallery re-hang figures and the East Wing tour details are from RCT’s own 2026 event page and press release. The pound prices — £90 per adult for the East Wing Tour, £32 advance / £35 on-the-day standard admission and the £15 Garden Highlights add-on — were read at source on rct.uk / tickets.rct.uk and re-confirmed 1 August 2026; RCT revises prices between seasons, so confirm before booking. The 775-room breakdown and building dimensions are from royal.uk. Tour prices, ratings, review counts and reviewer quotes come from the tour listings, captured in 2026, and change over time. Opening dates and entry rules change without notice — confirm on rct.uk before booking flights.
Guest Reviews
What Visitors Say
4.6/5
from 157 verified guests
"We had bought our tickets a few days before the visit. We didn't have to wait to get in, even fifteen minutes before the indicated time. How wonderful!We really enjoyed how it worked with the live guide, which really allowed us to move at our own pace. The staff are friendly. Well-organized tour."
"It was a beautiful experience and very well put together on the audio speaker. I really enjoyed this and it was well worth the money. Don’t miss this one."
"Really great. Easy booking, instructions to get tickets. Very well organized and I like that there’s a limited amount of people to go through the rooms at a time."
"Very interesting. A bit warm, and there could be more rooms to see."
"Very strict security check. Again, a lot of people despite the time slot…(?) The feeling in the palace was very special, since otherwise only invited guests are allowed to enter. (It's just not an everyday thing.) Photos were not allowed. I liked the Gemäldegalerie the best. Unfortunately, I didn't find any reference to Lady Diana. (Too bad)"
"The absolute highlight of my trip to London! Didn’t expect to actually be able to walk around inside the rooms. The grounds were lovely and the restrooms were even meticulously cared for! Gift shop had a wide range of items and lines moved along nicely even though it was fairly busy. If you are a fan of the Royals, don’t miss this!"
"Overall, the premises were impressive. Especially considering that they are actually still in use. Nevertheless, in relation to the existing rooms, you only saw a small part, namely only the state rooms. A subsequent coffee in the garden is the grand finale. I recommend booking the garden tour as well; otherwise, you will only see the garden during a 10-minute walk to the exit. It's a completely different side. It is also advisable to bring only a small bag, as the admission check is carried out very carefully."
Read all 157 verified reviews
See All ReviewsEleven Weeks a Year, and Slots Are Timed
The State Rooms open each summer (9 July to 27 September in 2026; summer 2027 tickets go on sale in November) and entry is by timed slot — you need to arrive 15 minutes before yours. This ticket bundles State Rooms entry with a royal-London audio app: rated 4.6 from 157 reviews, from about $51 (as listed in October 2026). It does not offer free cancellation, so book once your dates are fixed. Starting from $51 per person.
Check Availability & BookCan't Make These Dates?
Browse More Available Options
Find a tour that fits your schedule. Dates and cancellation terms are on each listing.
Buckingham Palace State Rooms FAQ
When they open, what is actually in them, how long the route takes, and the rules that surprise people at the door.
Yes — 19 State Rooms open to ticketed visitors each summer, and Royal Collection Trust lists the 2026 dates as 9 July to 27 September. The Palace opens seven days a week through July and August, then drops to Thursday–Monday in September, closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Outside that window only a limited programme of small-group guided tours runs on selected dates. The private apartments — where the Royal Family actually lives — are never open to the public at all, in any season, on any ticket. Since the season shifts a little each year and closures can be announced at short notice, confirm the dates on rct.uk before booking flights.
They are the formal, public rooms of the Palace — the half of the building used to receive, reward and entertain guests on state, ceremonial and official occasions, as the operator's own listing puts it. There are 19 of them on the visitor route, out of 775 rooms in the building as a whole; royal.uk breaks the rest down as 52 royal and guest bedrooms, 188 staff bedrooms, 92 offices and 78 bathrooms. What you walk through: the Grand Staircase, the Throne Room, the White Drawing Room, the Ballroom, the Picture Gallery. What is in them: Rembrandt and Rubens paintings, sculpture by Canova, Sèvres porcelain, and some of the finest English and French furniture anywhere, all drawn from the Royal Collection.
Royal Collection Trust suggests allowing between two and two and a half hours — its own published figure, and the one to plan against. That covers the 19 rooms at your own pace with the multimedia guide plus the exit, which is not a door but a walk of roughly half a kilometre through the garden on gravel. Actual visitors land either side: one recent reviewer finished in an hour and a half without rushing, while anyone listening to every audio stop will use the full allowance. Add the queue on top — several reviewers describe around thirty minutes even holding a pre-booked ticket. If you add the East Wing Highlights Tour, Royal Collection Trust says that is about another hour.
The Picture Gallery has been rehung, and it is a substantial change rather than a marketing line. Royal Collection Trust announced in July 2026 that the number of paintings on display has been almost doubled, from 63 to around 120, including works by Rubens, Caravaggio and Zoffany, hung against new silk wall coverings with new lighting, and that the re-hang took roughly 875 hours. The stated intent is to return the room closer to its historic appearance. Also new for the 2026 season: a Rolls-Royce Phantom IV displayed in the Grand Entrance Portico, and a garden information trail included with standard admission.
No live guide — guides are not permitted inside the Palace at all. One tour operator states it explicitly in its own listing: after the guided walk outside, the guide takes you to the entrance, verifies your ticket, hands over an audio guide, and you go in alone. Every ticket type works this way. What you get instead is a multimedia guide in nine languages — English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Russian and Portuguese — with British Sign Language and audio-descriptive versions also available, and a separate children's version that reviewers with kids single out as a success. The one genuine guided option is Royal Collection Trust's own East Wing Highlights Tour, run by RCT staff, about an hour long, capped at 20 people, sold only on rct.uk.
No. Royal Collection Trust states flatly that you cannot take photographs within Buckingham Palace, and the platform listing extends the ban to video, filming and wearable devices, even for non-commercial use. It is the Palace's rule, so no ticket type gets around it. The garden is the exception: non-commercial photography and filming there are actively encouraged, and since the garden is the exit route, that is where you get your pictures. It is also, incidentally, where the toilets and baby-care facilities are — there are none earlier on the route.
It is Royal Collection Trust's guided tour of the East Wing, which since July 2025 has included first-ever public access to the Centre Room — the room that opens onto the famous balcony — plus the Yellow Drawing Room and the Principal Corridor. RCT confirmed in July 2026 that East Wing tours continue this summer. It lasts about an hour, after which you are escorted to the start of your self-guided State Rooms visit, and it is capped at 20 places per tour. RCT prices it at £90 per adult, which includes the 60-minute guided tour of the East Wing. You cannot book it through us or through any platform: it is not a group product and is not for purchase or resale by third parties, with any such orders cancelled. It goes on sale on rct.uk on a first-come, first-served basis — there is no ballot, whatever you may have read — and it sells out quickly.
State Rooms entry with a royal-London audio app starts around $51 per person (October 2026). At the gate, Royal Collection Trust's standard adult admission for 2026 is £32 booked in advance and £35 on the day, with reduced rates for 18–24s and children, free entry for under-5s (a ticket is still needed), and a £1 ticket scheme for visitors on qualifying UK benefits. The Garden Highlights Tour is £15 per adult, and it is an add-on rather than a ticket of its own — RCT requires it to be booked together with a State Rooms ticket, so the pair comes to about £47 in advance. The guided East Wing Tour is £90 per adult, and the Royal Day Out covering the State Rooms, The King's Gallery and the Royal Mews is £65.70 for an adult in advance, with Young Person (18–24) at £42.70 and Child (5–17) and disabled rates at £32.80. Those pound figures were read on rct.uk on 1 August 2026; RCT revises prices between seasons, so confirm before booking. Full ladder on our tickets page.
If you like interiors, paintings and the machinery of state ceremony, yes — and reviewers back that up, with both platform tickets rated 4.5 to 4.6 out of 5 (October 2026). If you are hoping to glimpse how the Royal Family actually lives, no. You are seeing the reception half of the building, extremely well presented, with a good audio guide and no photography. The most useful review is the practical one: get there considerably earlier than your start time, because the queue with tickets runs about half an hour. The second most useful notes that no map is included, and that the printed guidebook costs £7 on site.
Less than you think. Royal Collection Trust publishes a maximum bag size of 45cm × 20cm × 30cm, and bags must be carried at your side rather than worn on your back. Suitcases and oversized bags are refused entry outright; RCT itself points visitors to luggage storage at Victoria Station. Knives, scissors, long umbrellas, aerosols and sealed alcohol must be checked in and reclaimed. Bicycles, scooters, skateboards and drones are not admitted at all. Pushchairs cannot go into the State Rooms for safety reasons and are checked in at the door, though baby carriers and hip seats can be borrowed free subject to availability. No eating or drinking inside except bottled water.
Only on a small-group guided tour on selected dates, and only if you book direct. Royal Collection Trust's own wording is that during the rest of the year the Palace opens on selected dates for exclusive guided tours — these include an Exclusive Guided Tour of the State Rooms while the Palace is otherwise closed, and a separate 90-minute East Wing Exclusive Guided Tour where visitors enter through the front gates and across the forecourt, as guests do for official events. Numbers are tiny and they sell fast. If your trip falls outside 9 July – 27 September 2026, the realistic plan is the Changing of the Guard plus the Royal Mews and The King's Gallery, which have much longer seasons.
No. The Royal Collection Trust sells tickets direct at rct.uk, and the opening dates, prices and rules on this page are cited from rct.uk and royal.uk. Tickets shown here are sold through GetYourGuide; if you want the option to convert your ticket into a 1-Year Pass, buy direct from rct.uk, because its terms exclude tickets bought through agents.
Still have questions? Email us at info@buckingham-palace-tour.com