How to Book Beijing’s Free Museums: The Real-Name Reservation System

The most common way to be turned away from a free museum in Beijing is to arrive with a photo of your passport on your phone. The second most common is to arrive without a booking at all, on the assumption that a free museum must be a walk-in museum. For most of the past five years, Beijing museum booking has meant a real-name reservation, made in advance through a Chinese-language app, tied to one identity document and checked at the door, and at the most popular museums it still does. In the summer of 2026 the rules began to loosen, unevenly, which makes it more important than ever to know which museum expects what.

This guide explains how the system works with a foreign passport, what you need before you start, a step-by-step walk through the National Museum’s booking, how the other major museums differ, the Chinese words you will meet on the forms, what to do when the tickets are gone, and the mistakes that get people turned away. Booking rules and release times were checked in September and October 2026; they change more often than most travel information, so treat them as the right order of magnitude and check each museum’s official account the week you travel.

The short version

If you remember three things, make them these. Book the National Museum the moment its window opens, seven days ahead at 17:00 Beijing time. Bring the physical passport you booked with, every time. And check the museum’s own official account in the week you travel, because closing days and booking rules move.

Why Beijing’s free museums make you book

China began a phased programme of free entry to public museums in 2008, widened it in 2009 and left museums in historic buildings and archaeological sites out of it, and the trade-off has been crowd control. Real-name booking became widespread from 2020, when many public venues moved to timed, named reservations. The system stayed after the pandemic for the same reasons it began: it caps numbers in galleries that would otherwise be overwhelmed at weekends, it smooths the arrival of visitors across the day, and at the museums around Tiananmen Square it fits with the security arrangements that apply to the whole area.

For a foreign visitor the effect has been a real barrier. The booking platforms are mainly in Chinese and run inside WeChat. Passports are accepted at museums such as the National Museum, but entry needs the exact document you booked with. Most booking forms now offer a passport option, and the big museums have staff at the entrance used to checking foreign passports by hand.

The 2026 change

On 20 July 2026, China’s National Cultural Heritage Administration told museums to stop requiring reservations where they did not need them. Museums with the capacity to handle visitors safely were to drop booking limits in principle, and those that kept reservations were to simplify the process and keep traditional options open: a staffed window and telephone booking alongside the apps. The Capital Museum had already gone further: since 20 December 2025 visitors have been able to turn up with a valid identity document and register at the north entrance, with no online booking needed.

Two cautions. The change is uneven: the National Museum, the Palace Museum and the other heavily visited sites near Tiananmen still require booking, and are likely to go on doing so. Where a museum still offers booking, a passport holder who has booked will get through faster than one who has not. So the practical advice for a foreign visitor in late 2026 is unchanged: book wherever booking exists.

What you need before you start

• A working WeChat account. Almost every museum booking runs through WeChat, so install it and register well before you travel. New accounts are sometimes asked to have an existing user verify them by scanning a code; the WeChat guide for tourists covers setting it up.
• Your passport details, exactly as printed. Name, passport number, nationality, and sometimes date of birth and sex. Use the passport you will be carrying in China.
• A data connection in Beijing. You will need to book and show confirmations on the move; a roaming eSIM is the simplest option, and the eSIM guide explains how it works.
• Beijing time. Release times are in China Standard Time, eight hours ahead of UTC all year. Set an alarm in the right time zone.
• Details for everyone in your group, including children, who need their own passports and their own place on the booking.
• A translation app with a camera function, for the moments when a form or a message makes no sense.

Step by step: booking the National Museum

The National Museum is the hardest booking in Beijing’s museum world and the one most visitors want, so it is worth walking through. Other museums work in broadly the same way.

1. Find the official mini-program. In WeChat, search for 国家博物馆 (the National Museum’s Chinese name) and open the official mini-program or account. Be wary of lookalikes and of third-party “booking services”; the official channel is free.
2. Choose an individual booking rather than a group booking, and pick your date from those open, which run up to seven days ahead. A new day appears at 17:00 Beijing time.
3. Pick a time slot. The museum has used three entry windows: 09:00–11:00, 11:00–13:30 and 13:30–16:00, with the last window running to 16:30 from 1 June to 31 October. You enter within your window and can stay until closing, at 17:00, or 17:30 from 1 June to 31 October.
4. Add each visitor. Set the document type to passport (护照), enter the name exactly as it appears in the passport, the passport number and the nationality. You do not need a Chinese phone number, by recent accounts, though you may be asked for a contact number.
5. Submit and check the confirmation. The booking appears in the mini-program, usually with a record or code. Screenshot it, but remember the passport is the real ticket.
6. On the day, go to the entrance in your time slot with the physical passport for every person on the booking. Staff check the passport against the booking at security. Photocopies and phone photos are not accepted.

Getting the slot you want

On a summer weekend the morning slot can go within minutes of release, so treat the release like a concert ticket sale. Open the mini-program at 16:55 Beijing time exactly seven days before your chosen date, with everyone’s details already entered as frequent visitors if the form allows it, and book the moment the date appears. If the morning is gone, take the afternoon: the galleries are just as good after lunch, and the first wave of school groups has usually left. Weekday dates outside the school holidays are much easier, and on many days in the off-season there is no competition at all.

Booking the other big museums

The Palace Museum

The Forbidden City is the one museum on this list that charges, and the one that never sells at the gate. Tickets cost ¥60 from April to October and ¥40 from November to March, with the Treasure Gallery and the Clock Gallery at ¥10 each on top, and they are sold only online, through the official site or the WeChat mini-program, seven days ahead. Each booking can cover up to five people, each with a passport number, and popular dates sell out in minutes. The galleries inside are covered in the Palace Museum treasures guide, and the palace itself in the Forbidden City guide.

The Capital Museum

The Capital Museum is the easiest of the big museums. It has an English-language website at en.capitalmuseum.org.cn, and it has offered reservation-free visits since 20 December 2025. Bring a valid identity document, your passport if you are a visitor, and register at the north entrance.

The Military Museum

Booking is through the museum’s WeChat account, under its visitor services menu, or its booking mini-program, and the system accepts passports along with Chinese and other identity documents. You can book up to eight days ahead, and entry is free.

The China Science and Technology Museum

The one big museum where you are paying for something. The main hall costs ¥30, or ¥20 for under-18s and full-time undergraduates, and children aged eight and under, or 1.3 metres and under, go free. Tickets open on the museum’s WeChat account seven days ahead at 18:00, and the school holidays are competitive, so families should book on the evening the window opens.

The National Natural History Museum and the National Art Museum

Both are free and both use booking through their official accounts. Neither is usually hard to get into on a weekday, but the Natural History Museum’s dinosaurs make it a family favourite at weekends and in the holidays, and the National Art Museum can be busy for a big exhibition. Check each museum’s account a few days ahead.

Tiananmen Square

Not a museum, but it catches out many museum visitors, because the National Museum sits on the square’s east side. Entering the square needs its own free real-name reservation, made one to nine days ahead through the official WeChat mini-program, with time slots for the dawn flag-raising, morning, afternoon and evening. The Tiananmen Square guide explains how the two bookings fit together.

A worked example: booking a week in Beijing

Because each museum releases on its own schedule, the bookings for a trip have to be made on different evenings in the week before you travel. Say you land on a Wednesday and want the Forbidden City on Thursday, the National Museum and Tiananmen Square on Friday, and the Military Museum on Saturday:

In practice that means three or four short sessions on your phone in the week before you fly, each at a particular hour of Beijing time, which may be the middle of your night. It is worth it. If you cannot face the alarms, book the museums that release earliest first, plan the National Museum for later in your stay, when you can book it from Beijing in the early evening, and keep the Capital Museum as the fallback.

Booking for a family or a group of friends

Each person needs their own place on the booking, entered under their own passport, so collect everyone’s details before the release and enter them in advance where the system allows: many mini-programs let you save travellers to a visitor list and then tick them at booking time, which turns a frantic minute of typing into a few taps. Limits on the number of people per booking vary by museum; the Forbidden City caps it at five, so a larger party needs two bookings made in quick succession. Book for everyone at once rather than one at a time, since a popular slot can fill between your first booking and your second. The group booking option on museum forms is for registered tour groups with a guide, not for families.

If you do not use WeChat

It is possible, but harder. The Capital Museum has an English-language website. The Palace Museum sells through its official website as well as WeChat. For the rest, ask your hotel to book for you, or use the staffed window or telephone booking that, since the 2026 notice, museums keeping reservations are supposed to offer. The honest advice is to set up WeChat before you travel: you will need it for far more than museums, and the apps guide covers what else to install.

Chinese words you will meet on the forms

Many booking forms have no English, and a translation app does not always render the short labels well. These are the words that matter:

When the tickets are gone

Sold out is rarely the end of the story. Try these, roughly in order:

• Check again later. Places occasionally reappear. The evening before and the morning of the visit are both worth a look.
• Change the slot or the day. An afternoon slot, or a Tuesday instead of a Saturday, is often wide open when the weekend morning is gone.
• Ask about the window. Since the 2026 notice, museums that keep reservations are meant to keep a staffed window and telephone booking for people who cannot use the apps. It is worth asking at the visitor services desk, especially if you are older or travelling without a smartphone that works in China.
• Switch museums. The Capital Museum is the natural substitute for the National Museum, with superb bronze and porcelain galleries and far less competition for places. The guide to Beijing’s museums suggests others by interest.
• Ask your hotel. Many front desks will make the booking for you in the mini-program. They cannot create places that do not exist, but they remove the language problem.

What not to do: pay a stranger on social media to “get you a ticket” by sending them your passport scan. Third-party booking services exist, and some are legitimate, but for free museums they are charging for something that costs nothing, and your passport details are worth more than a museum visit.

Mistakes that get people turned away

• The wrong document. If you booked with one passport and arrive with another, after a renewal or with dual nationality, the names and numbers will not match. Book with the passport you will carry.
• The wrong name order. Enter the name exactly as it appears on the passport’s photo page, in the same order. A mismatched name order is the commonest cause of a failed check.
• A photo or photocopy instead of the passport. Not accepted, anywhere.
• The wrong time zone. A release at 17:00 Beijing time is 10:00 in London and 05:00 in New York while those cities are on summer time, an hour earlier in their winter.
• Arriving outside your slot. Early arrivals usually wait; late arrivals may be refused.
• Forgetting the children. Every person needs a place on the booking and a passport at the door.
• Forgetting the closing day. Most museums close on Mondays, but some move the day around big exhibitions, as the Capital Museum did in 2026.
• An unofficial mini-program. Lookalike accounts and resellers turn up in WeChat searches. The official one is free.

At the door

On the day, the booking does its work in about thirty seconds; the security check takes longer. Queue at the entrance for your time slot, hand over your passport, and staff will check it against the booking, sometimes with a scanner and sometimes by eye. Bags go through an X-ray, as at an airport, and lighters, knives and oversized luggage may be refused, so pack light and leave the suitcase at the hotel. Some museums check water bottles. Inside, the passport has done its job, but keep it with you; you may need it again for a special exhibition or the cloakroom.

Is it worth the effort?

Yes, and by a wide margin. A few minutes on WeChat a week before your trip buys you free entry to some of the greatest collections of Chinese art and history in the world, and the system, once you have used it once, is not hard. The museums that are hardest to book are hard precisely because they are the best.

The honest caveat is that it rewards planning, and Beijing trips are often planned in a rush. If you are reading this in your hotel the night before, the National Museum may already be gone for the next few days; take the Capital Museum instead, and book the National Museum for the end of your stay. If you are reading it a week before you fly, set the alarm for 17:00 Beijing time and you will very likely get the day you want.

The Palace Museum’s system is the strictest of all, with a 20:00 release, fixed morning and afternoon sessions and a ban for repeated no-shows. How to book Forbidden City tickets covers it in full, including what to do for a group of more than five.

Frequently asked questions