Kensington Palace Tours: Frequently Asked Questions

Yes, and you can walk through every open room. What you cannot have is a guide walking beside you: Historic Royal Palaces does not allow guided commentary inside the State Apartments, so admission includes a multimedia guide in nine languages and British Sign Language instead. Guided tours here take you through the gardens and hand you over at the door.

Allow about ninety minutes for the state apartments themselves, or two to three hours with the gardens and the exhibition. The bookable tours run from two hours for a garden walk and tea up to five and a half for a full royal day.

Wednesday to Sunday. It is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, and from 24 to 26 December. Kensington Gardens around it is a Royal Park and stays open every day, so a Monday still buys you the Sunken Garden and the Orangery.

Wednesday to Sunday, and closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. From 1 March to 31 October it opens 10am to 6pm with last admission at 5pm; from 1 November to 28 February it is 10am to 4pm with last admission at 3pm. Arriving before 11am is the reliable way to have the King's State Apartments to yourself.

Adult admission is £24.70, or £27.20 if you add the optional ten per cent donation at checkout. Children aged five to fifteen and young people aged sixteen to seventeen pay £12.40; seniors and concessions pay £20. Under-fives go free, and the guided tours here start at about $53.

Do the sum. Admission is £24.70 and the multimedia guide is already in it, so a $150 tour is buying you the gardens told out loud and a booked table at the Orangery. If those are what you came for it is worth it; if you only want the rooms, buy the ticket and keep the difference.

Entry to the palace, the multimedia guide, the Jewel Room and whichever exhibition is running. For visits between 26 March and 8 November 2026 that is The Last Princesses of Punjab, at no extra cost.

The King's State Apartments, the King's Grand Staircase, the Cupola Room, the King's Gallery, the Jewel Room and Victoria's childhood rooms. The Queen's State Apartments closed on 15 June 2026 for conservation and reopen in spring 2027, so a visit this year is the King's side of the building and Victoria's.

No. Apartments 8 and 9, where she lived from 1981 until 1997, are private and have never been open to visitors. What you can see is the Sunken Garden she was fond of and Ian Rank-Broadley's statue of her, unveiled there in 2021 and free to walk up to.

Self-guided, at your own pace, with the handset the ticket includes. You take the King's Grand Staircase first, then the Cupola Room and the King's Gallery, then Victoria's rooms, the Jewel Room and the exhibition. Room stewards answer questions and reviewers rate them as the best part.

Yes. One departure here is private by default, with a senior guide and a table of your own at the Orangery, and two more sell a private option at checkout. Private buys the gardens at your own pace and a guide who answers your questions, not access to rooms other people cannot enter.

Yes, at the Orangery, the greenhouse Queen Anne had built in 1704 to keep her citrus trees alive. Most of the guided tours here finish there on a table booked in your name, and there is a takeaway cream tea from the Palace Cafe if you would rather not sit down for an hour.

Queensway on the Central line and High Street Kensington on the Circle and District lines are both a ten to fifteen minute walk. Queensway is the one most tours meet at; High Street Kensington is the easier arrival if you are coming from the west.

For the guided tours, yes: they cap at anywhere from eight to twenty-five people and the tea tables are reserved in advance. Palace tickets are timed and sell out at busy times, so book a slot ahead in summer and on weekends.

Every tour listed here refunds in full if you cancel at least 24 hours before it starts, and most of them let you reserve now and pay later. That covers a change of weather, a delayed flight or a plan that shifts.

Kensington Gardens is a Royal Park and costs nothing to walk, including the Round Pond, the Italian Gardens, the Peter Pan statue and the Albert Memorial. The Sunken Garden is viewed from the Cradle Walk without a ticket, so Diana's statue is free to visit even on a day the palace is shut.

A formal garden laid out in 1908 on Edward VII's instruction, on ground that had held potting sheds, and modelled on the Pond Garden at Hampton Court. It was replanted as the White Garden in 2017 and is now the setting for the statue of Diana.

The covered walk of trained limes that runs around the Sunken Garden. The garden was designed to be looked at from it rather than walked through, which is why the arches frame the view down to the statue.

The palace itself is, and both entrance-ticket listings say so, with wheelchair-accessible surfaces and service animals welcome. Among the guided walks only the private tea tour and the Westminster combination state accessibility, so those are the two to book if you need it.

Yes. If you receive Universal Credit, Working Tax Credit, Pension Credit, Child Tax Credit, Employment and Support Allowance, Income Support or Jobseeker's Allowance you can book up to four £1 tickets per household. Book online in advance and bring your benefit statement plus one other form of identification to the ticket office.

The Last Princesses of Punjab, from 26 March to 8 November 2026, marking the 150th birthday of Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, suffragette and goddaughter of Queen Victoria. It covers her sisters, her mother and her grandmother, and it is included in general admission.

It does. Palace in the Park runs every Wednesday and Sunday until 20 December 2026, caps at ten people, and is the only walk that gets inside the Sunken Garden itself. It is sold at the on-site ticket office and cannot be booked online, so ask at the desk when you arrive.

The Duke Tour is a palace-run tour of rooms lived in by Edward, Duke of Kent, his daughter Queen Victoria and other royal residents. It runs every Saturday from 5 September to 19 December 2026 and is booked on site.

Several tours here do, and it works well. Bear in mind the Changing of the Guard runs on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays while Kensington Palace is shut on Mondays, so Wednesday, Friday and Sunday are the days that give you both.

Most meet at Queensway station, one at Green Park, one at the Guards Memorial on Horse Guards Road and one outside the Ritz on Piccadilly; the ticket products want the palace gate itself. Two operators say in capitals that they do not meet at the palace, so read the meeting point before you set off.

It runs from eight on the bike ride to twenty-five on the largest garden walk, with most of the tea tours between ten and fifteen. The private departure is your own group and nobody else.

Yes. Under-fives are free, several of the walks are stroller-accessible, and the Diana Memorial Playground is a few minutes away in the park. The bike ride is the one exception: riders need to be about eleven and 150cm to take part.

The Orangery Restaurant and the Palace Cafe are both in the grounds, and the Orangery is where the afternoon-tea tours sit down. Booking a table yourself is possible but the tours hold one for you, which is a large part of what they sell.

Visitors consistently say yes, and several note it as a difference from Buckingham Palace. Flash and tripods are the usual exceptions in a room with textiles or paintings, so watch for the signs.

Comfortable shoes, something for rain, and photo identification matching the lead traveller's name for the entrance-ticket products. Large bags and luggage are not allowed inside, and bag searches happen at the gate.

It takes over 400,000 visitors a year, which makes it the third most visited palace in the United Kingdom and markedly quieter than Buckingham Palace or the Tower. The first hour after opening is the emptiest, and winter afternoons are emptier still.

Their household is still based at Kensington Palace, but the family moved to Forest Lodge in Windsor Great Park in October 2025. The residential apartments have never been open to visitors in any case, so nothing about a visit changes.