Forbidden City Tickets: How to Book Them (and What to Do When They Sell Out)

At eight o’clock every evening, Beijing time, the Palace Museum releases the tickets for the same day next week, and on a summer weekend most of them are gone within the hour. There is no ticket office at the gate, no extra release in the morning and no way to talk your way in. Forbidden City tickets are cheap, ¥60 at the very most, and they are the single most common reason a Beijing trip goes wrong in the planning: visitors assume they can buy on the day, arrive at the Meridian Gate, and spend the morning on Tiananmen Square instead.

This guide covers the booking mechanics only: the release schedule, the official channels, booking step by step on the English website and in WeChat, morning or afternoon, the refund and no-show rules, what to do when your date sells out, and the legitimate fallbacks. For the palace itself, the route through the courts and what to see, the Forbidden City guide takes over. Prices and rules were checked in September and October 2026; treat them as the right order of magnitude, since the Palace Museum adjusts its system from season to season.

Forbidden City tickets at a glance

How the release works

Every evening at 20:00 Beijing time, the booking system opens one new day: the date seven days ahead. If you want to visit on a Saturday, your moment is 20:00 on the Saturday before. There are no extra releases and no tickets held back for the day itself, so the inventory you see at 20:00 is, apart from returns, all there will ever be for that date.

How quickly it goes depends on the season. In the quieter months, off-season weekdays can stay available for days. On summer weekends, around the national holidays and in the school holidays, recent dates have sold out in about an hour, and the most popular morning sessions in a few minutes. The Palace Museum runs a risk-control system against bots and bulk buying, which may ask you to complete an extra check, and which means speed alone is not enough: the system rewards being ready rather than being fast.

Tickets also flow back. Between 20:00 and about 21:00 on a busy release, unpaid orders time out and returns from people who changed their plans reappear, so a date that showed sold out at 20:02 may have places again at 20:20. Keep refreshing for the first hour before you give up.

What 20:00 Beijing time is at home

Beijing is eight hours ahead of UTC all year and does not change its clocks, so the release falls at a different hour depending on where you are and the time of year:

For North Americans that is an early start, and for Australians a late night; either way, set an alarm ten minutes before.

The official channels, and only those

Tickets are sold through the Palace Museum’s own channels: its official ticket website, which has an English version; its official WeChat mini-program (search for 故宫博物院观众服务, the Palace Museum Visitor Service); its official app; and the official culture and tourism booking platform. That is all. The Palace Museum has repeatedly stated that it has authorised no third-party platform to sell tickets and no agency or individual to book on visitors’ behalf.

That matters because the market in “ticket grabbing” services is large. Touts and online sellers collect visitors’ passport details and use speed, manpower or software to book on their behalf, and in 2026 they were the single biggest source of tourist complaints in Beijing, typically charging ¥200 or more on top of the ticket and up to ¥500 in peak season. Some deliver. Some do not, and some leave you with a booking you cannot refund, a ticket in the wrong name, or nothing at all, having handed your passport details to a stranger. The legitimate alternatives are covered below.

Booking step by step on the English website

The English version of the official ticket website at bookingticket.dpm.org.cn is the easiest route for most foreign visitors, because everything is in English and it does not need WeChat.

1. Register in advance. Open the site, switch to English, and register with your email address; you will be sent a verification code. Do this days before the release, not at 19:59.
2. Log in before the release. At about 19:50 Beijing time, log in and have the date picker open.
3. Choose the date and session the moment it appears at 20:00: morning (enter by 12:00) or afternoon (entry from 11:00, before the season’s last entry).
4. Add each visitor. Choose passport as the document type and enter each person’s name and passport number exactly as printed. One passport can hold only one ticket per day, so every traveller’s details go in separately, up to five people per booking.
5. Add the galleries. Tick the Treasure Gallery and the Clock Gallery for each visitor if you want them; they are ¥10 each and best decided now.
6. Pay promptly. An order that is not paid in time is released back into the pool. Have your payment method ready before you start.
7. Check the confirmation and save it. Your passport is the ticket; there is nothing to print.

Booking in WeChat

The WeChat mini-program is the channel most Chinese visitors use and works well for foreigners with a verified WeChat account. Its most useful feature is the saved visitor list: under 个人中心 (personal centre) you can add every member of your party as a 常用观众 (frequent visitor) in advance, so that at 20:00 you only need to tick names rather than type passport numbers against the clock. The steps are otherwise the same: date, session, visitors, galleries, pay. The WeChat guide for tourists explains setting up the account and paying with a foreign card.

Paying

Alipay and WeChat Pay are the most reliable ways to pay. A foreign card may carry a fee, so check with your card issuer before you confirm. The Alipay guide covers the set-up.

A release-night checklist

Getting a busy date is mostly about preparation. Work back from 20:00 Beijing time on the day seven days before your visit:

• Several days before: register on the English website or set up WeChat, and make sure the account works. Add a payment method and make a small test payment somewhere if you have never used it with your card.
• The day before: log in once to check the password, save every visitor’s passport details in the system if it lets you, and confirm the passport numbers against the documents themselves, not a photo of last year’s passport.
• An hour before: make sure you have a fast, reliable connection. A roaming eSIM or good home broadband is better than patchy hotel WiFi. Chinese booking sites can stall through a VPN, so switch it off or exclude the browser or app from it.
• At 19:50: log in, open the booking page and have your chosen date’s session in mind, with a second choice ready.
• At 20:00: refresh, choose the date and session, tick the visitors and galleries, and pay without pausing.
• From 20:05 to 21:00: if you missed out, keep refreshing every few minutes for returned and unpaid tickets.

Planning your trip around the release

Because the window is exactly seven days, you can book the Forbidden City from home before you fly, as long as your visit falls within a week of the release. For a trip that starts on a Wednesday, the earliest palace date you can secure before leaving home is the Wednesday, booked the Wednesday before. If you want the palace later in your trip, you will be booking from Beijing, which is easier on the time zone: 20:00 is after dinner, not the middle of the night.

Some practical rules of thumb. Avoid making the Forbidden City the first thing you do: if anything goes wrong with the booking, you want spare days to try again. Weekdays outside the school holidays are much easier than weekends. Off-season dates, from November to March, are easiest of all, and the palace under a clear winter sky or a rare fall of snow is spectacular. And the Golden Week holidays at the start of May and October are the hardest dates of the year; if your trip overlaps one, book the palace for a day outside it.

The same evening can work for the National Museum too. The museum releases its free tickets at 17:00 Beijing time, also seven days ahead, so the two bookings for a single day on Tiananmen Square can be made three hours apart on the same evening. The museum booking guide walks through that one.

Morning or afternoon?

The morning session, entry from 08:30, is the better visit: you can be at the Meridian Gate as it opens, walk the great courts before the tour groups fill them, and finish with the galleries and the Imperial Garden before lunch. It is also the session that sells out first.

The afternoon session, entry from 12:00, is far easier to get and is a perfectly good visit, provided you go in promptly. You have until closing at 17:00 in peak season (16:30 off-season), which is enough for the central axis, the eastern palaces and both galleries if you do not dawdle; last entry is 16:00 in peak season and 15:30 off-season, but arriving that late leaves you too little time. The session is fixed once booked, so choose with care. If the morning has gone, take the afternoon rather than a different day.

What the ticket covers

The standard ticket covers a single entry on the booked day, in the booked session, to the palace grounds: the great courts and halls of the central axis, the palaces of the Inner Court, the Imperial Garden and most of the permanent displays along the way. The Treasure Gallery and the Clock Gallery are the two extras, at ¥10 each, and they are the ones most worth adding; the Palace Museum treasures guide explains what is in them. Some special exhibitions have their own reservation, which is why the no-show rule mentions exhibitions as well as tickets. Audio guides are rented at the entrance for a separate fee. There is no re-entry once you leave, and the ticket is not valid on any other day or in the other session.

Ramps give step-free routes through parts of the palace. If anyone in your party needs a wheelchair or step-free access, ask the Palace Museum’s visitor services before you go.

Concessions

The Palace Museum offers reduced or free entry for some students, seniors and children, and the concession has to be selected for that visitor when you book, with the document to prove it shown at the gate. The categories and the documents accepted change from time to time, and some concessions are tied to Chinese documents, so check the current rules in the booking system rather than assuming. Every child needs their own place on the booking, under their own passport, whether or not they pay.

Booking for a group of more than five

Each booking holds up to five visitors and each passport can hold only one ticket per day, so a family of six or a group of friends needs two bookings. The easy way is to split the group between two people, each with an account and their half of the passport details saved in advance, booking the same date and session at the same moment. Agree beforehand what happens if one booking succeeds and the other fails: for most groups the answer is to take the afternoon or a different day together rather than split up. A group of ten or more travelling together is usually better served by a licensed tour, which books through the group channel.

Refunds, changes and the no-show rule

Plans change, and the rules are reasonable if you know them. You can cancel a booking free of charge up to midnight on the day before your visit. You can still cancel on the day itself, up to 20:00, but that counts as a no-show. And once your ticket has been scanned at the gate, it cannot be refunded.

The no-show rule is the one to respect. Three no-shows within 180 days, whether you simply fail to turn up or cancel on the day, bring a 60-day ban on booking tickets or exhibitions, starting the day after the third. For a visitor on a single trip that is unlikely to bite, but it is a good reason not to book several dates as insurance and abandon the spares. If you have booked a backup date, cancel it the evening before.

Sessions cannot be swapped after booking. To change from afternoon to morning, or to a different day, cancel and book again, which in practice means hoping there are places.

When your date sells out

It happens to a lot of people. Before you pay a stranger, work through these in order:

1. Keep refreshing in the first hour. Returns and unpaid orders flow back between 20:00 and about 21:00 on release night.
2. Check again the evening before. People who change their plans must cancel by midnight the day before to avoid a no-show, so it is worth looking again then.
3. Take the afternoon. If the morning session is gone, the afternoon is often still open, and it is a good visit.
4. Move the day. A weekday, or the end of your trip rather than the start, may still be available.
5. Book a licensed tour that includes entry. Travel agencies book through a separate group channel, and a reputable tour or private guide with tickets included is the one reliable fallback when the individual tickets are gone. You get a guide too, which at the Forbidden City is no bad thing. Book through a platform with recent reviews, or through your hotel, and confirm in writing that entry is included.
6. Ask at the Meridian Gate. Some travellers report a staff-assisted help point for foreign visitors who have struggled with the booking. Treat it as a long shot in peak season, not a plan.

What not to do: hand your passport details to a tout on the street or a seller on social media. The guide to Beijing tours and tickets covers how to tell a legitimate tour from a ticket-grabbing service, and the safety tips guide covers the street scams around the palace.

If you cannot get in at all

It is a real loss, but not the end of the world, because much of the Forbidden City can be seen from outside. Climb Jingshan, directly opposite the north gate, for the classic view over the golden roofs; it costs ¥2 and needs no advance booking outside the peony festival crowds. Walk the moat to the north-west corner tower at dusk. The parks flanking the approach to the palace, Zhongshan Park to the west of Tiananmen Gate and the Imperial Ancestral Temple to the east, are old imperial grounds you can enter for a few yuan. And the National Museum on Tiananmen Square has some of the greatest objects from China’s imperial past, with a separate, free booking.

On the day

Bring the passport you booked with for every visitor; it is the ticket. Aim to arrive about fifteen minutes before your session opens to allow for security. The palace is entered from the south, through the Meridian Gate, so the simplest approach is Line 1 to Tiananmen East, then north through Tiananmen Gate and across the courtyard to the Meridian Gate. Allow time for your route and the security queue; the palace measures 961 metres from north to south. You do not need the separate Tiananmen Square reservation for this route; the Tiananmen Square guide explains when you do.

At the Meridian Gate your passport is checked against the booking, bags go through an X-ray, and you are in. You leave by the north gate, the Gate of Divine Prowess, which brings you out opposite Jingshan, or by the East Glorious Gate (Donghuamen) on the east side. There is no re-entry, so finish what you want to see before you leave.

Troubleshooting the booking

The passport number is rejected. Check that you selected passport as the document type rather than the default Chinese identity card, and enter the number exactly as printed, with no spaces. Some systems want capital letters.

The name will not fit or does not match. Enter it as it appears on the passport’s photo page, in the same order. If you have several given names and the field is short, follow what the system allows, and make sure the passport number, which is what the gate checks first, is exactly right.

The payment fails. A foreign card may be declined the first time by your own bank’s fraud check. Approve the alert in your banking app and try once more; repeated attempts in quick succession can trip the payment app’s risk controls and make things worse. Meanwhile your unpaid order may time out, so if the payment will not go through within a few minutes, start again.

The verification code does not arrive. Check your spam folder, and register well before release night so that this is a problem for a quiet afternoon rather than for 19:59.

The page freezes or will not load. Refresh rather than waiting, and if the website will not respond, try the WeChat mini-program, which draws on the same inventory.

The booking shows as pending. It usually resolves within minutes. Do not book again for the same visitors until you are sure the first booking has failed, or you risk a duplicate that will count as a no-show if you do not cancel it in time.

Mistakes that cost people their visit

• Assuming you can buy at the gate. You cannot, and touts outside will tell you otherwise.
• Booking a Monday. The palace is closed every Monday except public holidays; the booking calendar will not offer Mondays, but itineraries written in advance often assume them.
• The wrong passport. If you renewed your passport, or carry two, book with the one you will bring.
• A typo in the name or number. There is no flexibility at the gate. Check each entry before you pay.
• The wrong session. An afternoon ticket will not get you in at 08:30.
• The wrong time zone. 20:00 means Beijing time.
• Leaving the children off. Every visitor needs a place under their own passport.
• Confusing the square with the palace. The Tiananmen Square reservation and the Forbidden City ticket are separate things.
• Booking spares and not cancelling them. Three no-shows bring a 60-day ban.

Is a tour with tickets worth it?

If the individual tickets for your dates are gone, yes: a licensed guide with entry included is the most reliable way in, and a good guide makes the Forbidden City a far richer visit. If tickets are available, the decision is about the guide rather than the ticket. A first-time visitor who wants the history told well will get a lot from one; a visitor happy with an audio guide and a bit of reading can book the ticket alone and save the money. Either way, the booking itself is simple once you know the rhythm: register early, be ready at 20:00 Beijing time a week ahead, and bring the right passport. The guide to booking Beijing’s museums covers the same system at the National Museum and elsewhere.

The palace is the strictest example of a system that now covers most of Beijing’s big sights, from Tiananmen Square and the Lama Temple to the Great Wall at Badaling. Our guide to the wider real-name booking system sets out what each one needs and when it releases, so the rest of your week can be booked in the same few evenings.

Frequently asked questions