The Forbidden City (故宫, Gùgōng) sells no walk-up tickets in 2026. To visit, you book online exactly 7 days ahead, bind your passport number to the ticket, and show that passport at the Meridian Gate (午门, Wǔmén). This guide walks foreign visitors through the WeChat mini-program and the official English portal, and covers prices, hours, entry gates, and the mistakes that cost people their morning.

Do you need to book Forbidden City tickets in advance?

Yes — there is no other option. The Palace Museum stopped selling same-day paper tickets years ago and has not returned to walk-ups in 2026. Every visitor books online, on a rolling 7-day window, against a strict daily cap of 40,000 people. The cap applies to the whole site (general admission plus the paid galleries), and the ticket-release moment is 20:00 Beijing time (UTC+8) exactly 7 days before the visit date.

In practice that means:

• A Saturday visit opens for booking at 8:00 pm the previous Saturday.
• Weekdays in the off-season(November–March, excluding Chinese New Year) usually stay available for 3–5 days after release.
• Weekends and any date in May, July, August, or October are commonly gone the same night they open — sometimes within minutes for the 1–7 October National Day Golden Week.
• One ticket per passport per day. You cannot book two tickets on the same passport for the same date, and the system remembers no-shows and cancellations.

If your dates are fixed and you are traveling in a shoulder or peak window, either be logged in and refreshing at 20:00 Beijing time on release night, or book through a third-party reseller (Trip.com, Klook, KKday, GetYourGuide) that fronts the queue for a mark-up. There is no legitimate way to get a same-day ticket at the Meridian Gate ticket window in 2026 — anyone offering one is a scalper and the ticket will be a fake bound to someone else's ID.

How much is a Forbidden City ticket in 2026?

General admission is ¥60 in peak season (1 April – 31 October) and ¥40 in off-season (1 November – 31 March). The two paid galleries — the Treasure Gallery (珍宝馆, Zhēnbǎoguǎn) and the Clock and Watch Gallery (钟表馆, Zhōngbiǎoguǎn) — each cost an extra ¥10. Both galleries are worth the small add-on, and both must be added to the samecheckout as your general admission — their capacity is separate and often gone by the day of your visit if you go back to add them later.

Prices verified against the Palace Museum ticket page as of August 2026. USD conversions use ~7:1. Free entry for children still requires a ticket booked in an accompanying adult's name, with the child's details attached.

How to book Forbidden City tickets step by step

There are two official routes for foreign visitors: the WeChat mini-program (Chinese-language, faster on release nights) and the official English portal at intl.dpm.org.cn or bookingticket.dpm.org.cn (English-friendly, better for anyone new to WeChat). Both bind your passport and issue an entry QR — no paper ticket is printed.

Route A: WeChat mini-program (故宫博物院)

1. Install WeChat and register.WeChat accepts most foreign phone numbers on sign-up. If registration asks for a “friend to vouch”, use a WeChat contact who has been on the app for more than 6 months. Do this at home, not in the airport arrivals hall.
2. Add a payment method. Enable WeChat Pay for Tourists, which accepts foreign Visa and Mastercard for small purchases. Some banks reject the card on the Palace Museum checkout — if that happens, have Alipay Tour Card ready as a fallback (see the Alipay Tour Card vs WeChat Pay guide for setup).
3. Open the mini-program. Tap the Discover tab in WeChat, choose Mini Programs, and search 故宫博物院(“Palace Museum”). The official program has a red palace-roof icon and is labeled 官方 (guānfāng, “official”) — do not use lookalikes.
4. Save your passport details first.Before 7:55 pm on release night, add your passport to the mini-program's Frequent Visitors (常用观众) list: full name exactly as printed, passport number, nationality, date of birth. This shaves 60–90 seconds off checkout, which matters on holiday dates.
5. At 20:00 Beijing time, pick the date and slot. General admission is split into a morning slot (8:30–13:00 entry) and an afternoon slot (11:00–15:30 entry). Once you enter you can stay until final closing; the slot only controls when you go through the gate.
6. Add the Treasure Gallery and Clock Gallery in the same cart. Add-on capacity is separate and usually gone by morning if you go back later.
7. Pay.Confirm identity, submit, and pay through WeChat Pay. You will receive an in-app confirmation with a QR entry code — screenshot it, but the QR is not what the Meridian Gate scanners actually read: they scan your passport. The QR is only for staff at the accessible-entry lane and for lost-passport disputes.

Route B: Official English portal (intl.dpm.org.cn)

1. Go to intl.dpm.org.cn on any browser, or the direct booking site bookingticket.dpm.org.cn.
2. Create an account with your email and passport number. A verification code is emailed — check spam. A foreign phone number is not strictly required to register, but some payment steps may still ask for one.
3. Choose your date, slot, and any gallery add-ons.
4. Enter passport details exactly as printed (spaces, hyphens, middle names). The system rejects near-matches.
5. Pay by Alipay, WeChat Pay, or a Chinese bank card. Foreign-issued Visa and Mastercard sometimes work through the Alipay Tour Card wrapper; if it fails, switch to a third-party reseller.
6. You receive an email confirmation and a booking reference. As with the WeChat route, the passport itself is what gets scanned at the Meridian Gate.

Palace Museum customer service (English): +86 400-950-1925, 8:00–20:00 Beijing time, all year.

Booking through third-party sites (Trip.com, Klook, KKday, GetYourGuide)

Third-party resellers exist because the official flow assumes you can read Chinese, hold a Chinese phone number, and be online at 8:00 pm Beijing time on the seventh day out. If you cannot, or if you are booking a peak-season date and do not want to gamble on the 20:00 release, resellers are the honest workaround. They accept foreign Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal without WeChat.

Rough mark-ups seen on major platforms in August 2026:

• Trip.com —from ~US$18–22 per general admission ticket vs face value ~US$8.50. Often bundles with a Beijing Airport Express add-on.
• Klook / KKday —from ~US$18–25 per ticket, sometimes with a live-guide upgrade at ~US$50–80/person for a 3-hour walking tour of the main axis.
• GetYourGuide / Viator —similar range, with more “skip-the-line” branding — note there is no actual skip-the-line at the Meridian Gate. Everyone queues the same security check. What resellers do skip is the booking queue at 20:00.

A reasonable strategy: book general admission through the official route for the base ¥60 if your dates are flexible enough to catch the release, and only pay the mark-up when you need confirmed tickets for a fixed peak-season date.

What to see inside: a 3-hour vs full-day route

The Forbidden City runs strictly south-to-north on a single central axis. You enter at the Meridian Gate (Wumen, 午门), walk north through the ceremonial halls, and leave at the Gate of Divine Prowess (Shenwumen, 神武门). Backtracking is possible but discouraged — crowd flow is one-way in most sections.

The 3-hour core route

1. Meridian Gate (Wumen, 午门)— passport scan and entry.
2. Golden Water Bridges (金水桥, Jīnshuǐqiáo) and the Gate of Supreme Harmony (太和门, Tàihémén).
3. Hall of Supreme Harmony (太和殿, Tàihédiàn)— the largest wooden hall in China; imperial throne inside.
4. Hall of Central Harmony (中和殿, Zhōnghédiàn) and Hall of Preserving Harmony (保和殿, Bǎohédiàn) — the two smaller ceremonial halls behind Taihe.
5. Inner Court (内廷, Nèitíng)— the emperor and empress's living quarters: Palace of Heavenly Purity (乾清宫), Hall of Union (交泰殿), Palace of Earthly Tranquility (坤宁宫).
6. Imperial Garden (御花园, Yùhuāyuán)— 400-year-old cypresses, artificial rockeries, and the north exit through Shenwumen.

The full-day route (add-ons)

With the ¥10 Treasure Gallery (珍宝馆)ticket you access the north-east corner — the Hall of Imperial Peace, the Nine-Dragon Screen, and the imperial jewelry, gold, and jade collections. The ¥10 Clock and Watch Gallery (钟表馆) sits in the Hall of Ancestral Worship and holds Qing-era mechanical clocks from Europe and Guangzhou — some run demonstrations at 11:00 and 14:00 daily. Together the two add-ons roughly double the time you spend inside.

A comfortable pace for the whole complex — core axis plus both galleries plus a decent look at the west and east palaces — is 4–5 hours. Toilets and simple food kiosks are inside; bring water, because the mid-summer courtyards are the hottest place in Beijing.

Opening hours and closed days

The Forbidden City opens Tuesday to Sunday and closes every Monday except during major public holidays. In peak season (1 April – 31 October) the museum runs 8:30–17:00, with last entry at 16:00. In off-season (1 November – 31 March) it runs 8:30–16:30, with last entry at 15:30. Your booked slot controls when you may pass the Meridian Gate; once through, you can stay until final closing announcement.

The Palace Museum also closes ad-hoc for state occasions — usually with 1–2 weeks' notice on the official site. Once a year, in late January or early February, there is a full week of closure for the Chinese New Year deep-clean — verify at intl.dpm.org.cn before booking dates in that window.

How to get to the Forbidden City

The Meridian Gate sits at the north end of Tiananmen Square. The metro is the easiest way in.

• Metro Line 1 — Tiananmen East (天安门东), Exit A. Walk north through Tiananmen Square (~10–15 minutes with the Tiananmen security check) directly to the Meridian Gate. This is the route you want.
• Metro Line 1 — Tiananmen West (天安门西), Exit B. Symmetric to the above from the west side. Same walking distance.
• DiDi (滴滴)can drop you at Donghua Gate (东华门), the east-side non-visitor gate — from there it is a 5–10 minute walk south along the moat to the Meridian Gate. Do not ask a taxi to drop at Shenwumen — that is the exit.

Important:do not try to enter through the north Shenwumen (神武门) gate — it is exit-only, and staff will send you back around the entire complex on foot (a 25-minute walk). Similarly, Donghua Gate (东华门) and Xihua Gate (西华门) are staff/service gates that do not admit tourists.

Note that Tiananmen Square itselfnow also requires a separate free passport-based reservation to enter. The reservation is made on a separate WeChat mini-program (search 天安门广场预约, “Tiananmen Square booking”) up to 10 days ahead. It does not affect Forbidden City entry — but if you plan to walk across the Square first, book it too. See the Beijing Travel Guide 2026 for the full workflow.

Common mistakes that cost people their morning

• Showing up without a booking. There is no ticket window at the Meridian Gate that will sell you a same-day general admission. You will be turned around at security.
• Forgetting the passport.A driver's licence, a photocopy, or a photo of the passport on your phone is not accepted. The scanner reads the passport chip and MRZ — you need the physical booklet.
• Booking under one passport, entering with another. Renewed the passport between booking and travel? The old number is on the ticket, the new number is on the passport you carry. The scanner rejects the mismatch. Cancel and rebook, or bring both passports (if you still hold the old one).
• Going to the wrong gate. Enter at Meridian Gate (Wumen, 午门) on the south side only. Exit at Shenwumen on the north.
• Visiting on a Monday.Closed. Full stop — unless it is a national-holiday Monday, which the Palace Museum flags on the official site.
• Missing the slot.The morning slot runs 08:30–13:00 for entry; the afternoon slot 11:00–15:30. There is a grace window (about 15 minutes past your slot in practice), but arriving 90 minutes past your booked window can get you turned back — especially on busy days.
• Buying from a scalper outside the Meridian Gate. “Guaranteed tickets” sold by touts near the security checkpoint are either fakes or bound to someone else's ID. They will not scan. This is a scam that persists because tourists show up without bookings.
• Adding the Treasure Gallery on the day. The gallery add-ons have their own quota. If you did not add them at 8 pm on release night, they are usually gone by the morning of the visit.

Staying connected: why the eSIM matters for the WeChat mini-program

The booking flow depends on your phone being online at 20:00 Beijing time, and on WeChat Pay accepting a foreign card. Both of those steps break in specific ways on a Chinese local SIM.

A local China Mobile or China Unicom SIMgives you 4G/5G data behind the Great Firewall. WeChat, Alipay and the Palace Museum mini-program all work fine on that data — but the moment you want to check a Google Maps route to Tiananmen East, look up a Wikipedia entry on the Hall of Supreme Harmony, or ping WhatsApp with a photo, you need a VPN. And if you are booking from your home country before you fly, the Chinese-language WeChat Pay for Tourists binding step sometimes fails on foreign cards issued by banks the Chinese payment rails do not recognize.

A home-routed travel eSIMsidesteps both problems. Your data connects to China Unicom or China Mobile locally at Beijing speeds, but exits mainland via a gateway in Hong Kong or Singapore — so Google Maps, WhatsApp, Instagram, Gmail and ChatGPT load without a VPN, and payment-gateway checks from foreign banks are not automatically flagged as originating from a mainland IP. Deep dives:

• Best eSIM for China in 2026 — carrier comparison and pricing.
• Alipay Tour Card vs WeChat Pay for tourists — which payment wrapper to load first.
• How to pay in China as a foreigner — cash, card, QR, and the fallback stack.

The honest benchmark: your home carrier's daily roaming pass in Beijing runs C$12–15 / US$10–12 per day for capped 4G that usually does not tunnel out to Google without extra VPN work. A home-routed travel eSIM lands at a fraction of that with the Firewall problem solved out of the box.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• Palace Museum — official English site (intl.dpm.org.cn)
• Palace Museum — official English booking portal
• China Daily — How to buy advance general admission tickets for the Forbidden City (August 2026)
• Travel China Guide — Forbidden City opening hours
• China Discovery — How to book Forbidden City tickets 2026
• Beijing municipal 12345 hotline — foreign phone number issues with Palace Museum booking payments

Photo credits

• Meridian Gate (Wumen) of the Forbidden City — Wikimedia Commons contributor, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Forbidden City from Jingshan Park — Wikimedia Commons contributor, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Forbidden City — Shenwumen Gate — Wikimedia Commons contributor, CC BY-SA 4.0

The Forbidden City in the wider Beijing trip

A Forbidden City visit pairs naturally with Jingshan Park (景山公园, Jǐngshān Gōngyuán) for the view down over the yellow rooftops, and with a Great Wall day at Mutianyu the day before or after. The full cluster of guides:

• Beijing Travel Guide 2026 — airports, subway, hutongs, Peking duck, four-day itinerary.
• Great Wall of China Tickets 2026 — Mutianyu vs Badaling vs Jinshanling, booking and transport.
• China Travel Guide 2026 — visa, payments, rail, eSIM overview for the whole country.
• Alipay Tour Card vs WeChat Pay for Tourists — which payment wrapper to load first.
• Best eSIM for China in 2026 — the connectivity call.

Bottom line

The Forbidden City in 2026 is one of the most tightly rationed sights on the planet: 40,000 tickets a day, released 7 days ahead at 20:00 Beijing time, bound to your passport, and scanned at the Meridian Gate — with no walk-up option. If you can catch the 8 pm release, the official WeChat mini-program or the intl.dpm.org.cn portal gives you a ¥60 general-admission ticket plus ¥10 each for the Treasure and Clock galleries. If your dates are fixed and peak, pay the US$10–15 mark-up on Trip.com or Klook and skip the queue. Bring the passport you booked with, enter at Wumen, exit at Shenwumen, and give yourself four hours inside.