Windsor Castle & Holyroodhouse To Launch £1 Tickets For 2025

The British Royal residences will be more accessible than ever before next year, thanks to a new £1 ticket scheme, more opportunities to explore Buckingham Palace’s East Wing, and new exclusive tours of St James’s Palace. Here’s what you need to know.

Royal Palaces 2025 Tour Tickets Are On Sale Tomorrow

Touring the British Royal Palaces is a hot ticket, with Buckingham Palace’s East Wing tours and exclusive tours of Balmoral both a sell-out for visitors over the summer this year – both a new offering for 2024. In 2025, both tours will return, with tickets on sale tomorrow (5 November). Added to the roster for 2025 are tours of St James’s Palace, a smaller and lesser-known Tudor red brick palace located just a stone’s throw from Buckingham Palace. Likewise, new £1 tickets will be available for tours of Windsor Palace and the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh.

Visitors in the Centre Room during an East Wing Highlights Tour. (© Royal Collection Enterprises Limited 2024 | Royal Collection Trust)

Buckingham Palace 2025 Tours

Buckingham Palace’s annual summer opening will return next year from 10 July to 28 September, following a record-breaking 2024. Visitors will tour the opulent State Rooms used by the Royal Family for official entertaining, including the White Drawing Room, Throne Room and Ballroom. There’s also the Garden Highlights Tour which takes in areas of the Palace Garden including the Herbaceous Border, Summer House, Rose Garden and Waterloo Vase.

Meanwhile, tours of The East Wing will also return in 2025, after making their debut this summer, welcoming almost 6,000 visitors into the opulent spaces for the first time in history. These tours are led by an expert guide and encompass the building’s iconic front façade, the East Wing’s Principal Floor (with examples of the finest Chinese and Japanese porcelain, 19th-century furniture and paintings in the Royal Collection), and features the famous central balcony from which the Royal family typically steps out before the crowds below in times of celebration, from birthdays to weddings to jubilees. In 2025, visitors will have the special experience of entering through the Palace’s front gates and across the famous Forecourt, just as guests do for official royal events. The East Wing will be open four 90-minute tours from mid-January to late-May, and for shorter 45–60 minute tours during the Summer Opening, tacked onto the standard State Rooms tour.

St James’s Palace. (© Royal Collection Enterprises Limited 2024/Royal Collection Trust/Will Pryce)

St James’s Palace 2025 Tours

Following successful trials in 2022 and 2023, new guided tours of St James’s Palace will be available on select weekends in spring 2025. Steeped in 500 years of fascinating royal history, guests will witness:

• The Palace’s surviving Tudor architecture, such as its courtyard and gatehouse
• Paintings, furniture and decorative arts from the Royal Collection, including Mortlake tapestries acquired by Charles I
• The Throne Room and Picture Gallery, where the Accession Council of King Charles III was held on 10 September 2022
• A view of the Chapel Royal, where Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were married, and where the christenings of Prince George and Prince Louis took place more recently

These tickets are still to be announced, so won’t be on sale on 5 November. Sign up to the Royal Collection Trust’s newsletter to stay up to date.

Palace of Holyroodhouse (© Royal Collection Enterprises Limited 2024/Royal Collection Trust/Jane Massey)

Windsor Castle & The Palace of Holyroodhouse 2025 Tickets

Windsor Castle and the Palace of Holyroodhouse are open to the public year-round, but in 2025 a new scheme of £1 tickets will welcome more visitors than ever. People receiving Universal Credit and other named benefits will be eligible for the £1 tickets, which will initially be available between 1 January and 4 April 2025. Those eligible can bring up to five members of their household along with them to explore Windsor Castle or Holyroodhouse for £1 each.

The scheme is a first for Windsor Castle and Holyroodhouse, and follows a similar scheme launched at The King’s Galleries in London and Edinburgh, which will continue to offer £1 tickets for exhibitions in 2025.

BOOK IT

Most tickets are on sale tomorrow (5 November) at rct.uk

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