In this guide
A London itinerary works when it groups nearby places together and leaves room for queues and meals.
💡 The Short Version: Four days for a first visit — three covers the landmarks, the fourth stops it being a checklist. Two ticketed sights a day is the ceiling; Historic Royal Palaces asks you to allow three hours at the Tower alone. One booking needs a diary entry: Ceremony of the Keys tickets go at 13:00 on the first working day of the month before. A day costs £36–£54 without a paid attraction and £65–£92 with one, on top of your room. And Westminster Abbey is quietest before midday while the Tower is quieter after it, so the Abbey goes first.
How many days does London actually need?
Historic Royal Palaces recommends allowing at least three hours at the Tower of London. Westminster Abbey’s route plus its queue is most of a morning. The Churchill War Rooms sell a timed slot and you can only arrive within 30 minutes of it. Two of those make a day; three make a schedule you will abandon by three o’clock.
| Trip | Days | Plan to follow | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| First visit, adults | 4 | Three days, plus one day from the interest plans | Three days reaches the landmarks; the fourth day adds a neighbourhood |
| First visit with children under ten | 5 | Five days | Same ground, slower. Queues, lunches and toilets cost about an hour a day, and one attraction a day is the limit |
| A weekend | 2 | Two days of the three-day plan | Westminster and the West End on one, the Tower and South Bank on the other. Skip the museums rather than rush them |
| One day | 1 | One-day plans by interest | One theme. “The highlights” in a day costs you a third of the day underground |
| Return visit | 3 | Five days, days three to five | You have done the landmarks. Greenwich by river and a full neighbourhood day are what you came back for |
| Adding a day trip | +1 | Day trips from London | Windsor, Oxford, Bath or Stonehenge is a whole day, not an afternoon. Add one; do not borrow it from the city |
| A week or more | 7+ | Both of the above | Choose between more London and more England |
Take four days if you can. Three days is the minimum that covers a first visit, with a landmark in every day. The fourth is for walking a neighbourhood and eating somewhere that is not near a sight.
Choose your plan
| Time available | Guide | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| One day | One-day plans by interest | A theme each — first-timer, theatre, museums, families, food, royal, free, rainy, views, books, markets, film and low-walking |
| Three days | Three days in London | The first-visit plan: the landmarks, the river and one museum district, with walking times between the stops |
| Five days | Five days in London | The above, plus Greenwich by river and a full day in one neighbourhood |
Book before you fly
Every national museum is free and takes walk-ins. These are the bookings that need planning, with the horizon each operator publishes.
| What to book | How far ahead | The detail |
|---|---|---|
| Ceremony of the Keys | 13:00 on the first working day of the previous month | Historic Royal Palaces releases a whole month at once and says it “becomes fully booked very quickly”. Pay what you choose from £10 to £50, £30 suggested; maximum six tickets; non-refundable and non-exchangeable |
| Christmas at Kew | As early as you can | Selected dates 13 November 2026 to 3 January 2027, timed entry and limited capacity, from £25.50 on kew.org |
| Sky Garden | Up to three weeks | Free, and released weekly rather than all at once, so a date four weeks out is not bookable yet. Ticketed hours are 10am–6pm on weekdays and 11am–9pm at weekends |
| Westminster Abbey | Before you fly | A limited number of tickets may be sold on the door, but the Abbey advises booking online. £32 an adult and £14 for 6–17s, on its own site. An online ticket upgrades free to an annual pass — three visits for one price |
| Churchill War Rooms | A week ahead, more in school holidays | Timed entry: IWM lets you arrive within 30 minutes of your slot and no earlier. £34 an adult, £17 for 5–15s, under-fives free. Open 9.30am–6pm, last entry 5pm |
| The London Eye | Before you fly, for the price | From £29 online against £39 at the box office for an adult, from londoneye.com. The slot is when you join the queue, not when you board, and walk-up tickets can sell out at peak times |
| Horizon 22 | A week or two | Free, timed, and Level 58 of 22 Bishopsgate. Horizon 22 takes walk-ins by QR code at the door subject to capacity, but its own advice is to book |
| Tower of London | A few days; longer in school holidays | Not a timed ticket — it is valid for the whole day you choose. £38 an adult and £19 for 5–15s direct, or £41.80 and £21 with the optional 10% donation. HRP advises booking online in advance at busy times |
| A West End show | Whenever you decide | The booking window is long, not short: Les Misérables at the Sondheim is selling to October 2027. What runs out is the good seat at the price you wanted |
| Buckingham Palace State Rooms | Summer only | The State Rooms open to visitors each summer; tickets for summer 2027 are released in November on rct.uk. A guided East Wing tour runs 6 November 2026 to 31 January 2027 |
⚠️ Ceremony of the Keys tickets go on release day. The Tower locks up at 21:30 every night and the whole of the following month’s tickets go on release day at 13:00 UK time — if that day falls on a Friday, it moves to the Monday. Visitors are admitted at 21:30 precisely and you must be there by 21:25; late arrivals are turned away, and the tickets cannot be exchanged or refunded. Book it for the middle of your trip, never for the night you land.
Kew’s daytime entry needs no reservation — Kew sells every ticket type at the gate — but online is cheaper: £17 against £20 for an adult off-peak (1 November to 31 January), and £2 against £4 for a child aged 4 to 15. A £10 Tuesdays ticket runs every Tuesday from 8 September to 29 December 2026.
For theatre, the cheap route is the same-day one. Official London Theatre’s TKTS puts new on-the-day tickets online at 12.01am daily and opens its Leicester Square booth at 10.30am, Monday to Saturday. Disney’s The Lion King releases £29.50 Magical Monday seats at noon each Monday for that week’s performances. Our theatre guide covers day seats, rush tickets and where not to buy.
For restaurants, set a reminder for the day bookings open. The top kitchens release tables on a set date, and Normah’s in Queensway Market releases its bookings in monthly batches. Some of the most-recommended places take no bookings at all, among them José in Bermondsey and Sweetings in the City, so plan a queue rather than a reservation. Our special occasion restaurants and afternoon tea guides give each one’s booking window.
Almost everything else is free and needs no booking — the British Museum, National Gallery, Tate Modern, V&A, Natural History Museum, Science Museum and British Library all charge nothing to walk in.
What a day in London costs
A day in Zones 1 and 2 for one adult, accommodation aside.
| Line | Free-museum day | Landmark day | What it covers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Transport | £8.90 | £8.90 | The Zones 1–2 daily cap on contactless or Oyster, peak or off-peak, from TfL’s adult fares. Tap the same card all day or it does not apply |
| Admission | £0 | £29–£38 | The London Eye from £29, Westminster Abbey £32, Churchill War Rooms £34, the Tower £38. Every national museum is £0 |
| Lunch | £6–£12 | £6–£12 | A market or counter meal, which is where the cheap eats are — Seven Dials, Borough and Old Spitalfields all sit inside the sightseeing core |
| Dinner | £15–£25 | £15–£25 | A sit-down meal ten minutes’ walk from a landmark. Directly opposite one costs more |
| A pint | £6–£8 | £6–£8 | Central London. Outer zones and Wetherspoons are roughly half |
| Total | £36–£54 | £65–£92 | Before your room, and before anything you buy |
Two things move that total more than anything else. Walking instead of tapping takes the £8.90 off entirely on a well-grouped day — Covent Garden to Soho is five minutes on foot. And eating ten minutes from the sight instead of beside it is worth about a third of the food line. London on a budget has the full version, and transport costs and fares has every cap.
Does the London Pass change the arithmetic?
Rarely. A 2-day adult pass is £149, and the five attractions a first-timer actually names come to £144.00 booked direct — so you need a sixth paid attraction inside those two days before the pass starts to pay. If your trip is about the palaces instead, Historic Royal Palaces membership is £65 a year by Direct Debit and covers the Tower, Hampton Court and Kensington, which cost £92.70 at the gate for one adult. The full arithmetic is here, including the family case and the Explorer.
Your first day, off a long flight
Landing in the morning means a day you are too tired to use and too early to check into.
- Do not sleep. Stay upright until a local bedtime.
- Book nothing timed, in case of a delayed flight or a nap. If you must, the London Eye reschedules free up to an hour before, while Ceremony of the Keys refunds nothing at all.
- Go outdoors, in daylight. A park, the river, a walk.
- Pick something you can leave. A free museum lets you walk out after forty minutes; a £38 ticket does not.
- Deal with the bag first. The Tower of London bans suitcases and rolling luggage and has no storage of any kind, and most museum cloakrooms take a daypack rather than a case. Our luggage storage guide has the stations, the apps and the prices.
- Choose the train, not the fastest train. From Heathrow, the Elizabeth line is £15.50 and 28–45 minutes to the West End, City or Canary Wharf; the Piccadilly line is £4.00–£5.90 and 50–60 minutes and stops at South Kensington and King’s Cross. Every other airport has a guide of its own, linked from Getting around London.
A good arrival day: drop the bag, have a full meal, walk one riverside stretch in daylight, eat again early, sleep at a normal hour. The South Bank walk is flat, mapped and free, and you can stop whenever you like.
The season changes the plan
| When | What changes | What it does to a day |
|---|---|---|
| Until summer 2027 | Buckingham Palace’s State Rooms are closed to visitors; tickets for summer 2027 are released in November | The summer-only sight is not an option on a winter trip |
| From 25 October 2026 | The clocks went back; sunset moved from about 5.50pm to 4.48pm overnight | Every outdoor plan loses its last hour. Move the viewpoint earlier |
| Until 11 November 2026 | Kew closes at 4pm, last entry 3pm | A morning trip, not an afternoon one |
| 12 November 2026 to 3 January 2027 | Kew closes at 3.15pm, last entry 2.30pm | Kew plus anything else in one day stops working |
| Mid-December | Under 8 hours of daylight — sunrise about 7.57am, sunset about 3.53pm | Two outdoor things a day, not three |
| 25 December | TfL runs no service at all: no Tube, bus, Overground, DLR, Elizabeth line, tram or river boat | Everything has to be walkable from your room |
Against that, mid-June gives nearly 17 hours of daylight, sunrise about 4.40am and sunset about 9.21pm. The month-by-month detail — Met Office averages, school holidays, and every confirmed 2026–27 event date — is in the best time to visit London, and Christmas in London covers the festive weeks.
Work from last entry, not closing time: the gap is usually 30 to 60 minutes, and Kew’s last entry from 12 November is 2.30pm.
Planning rules
- Group by neighbourhood, not by landmark.
- Abbey in the morning, Tower after lunch. Westminster Abbey says it is quietest on weekday mornings, particularly Tuesday to Thursday before midday. Historic Royal Palaces says the Tower is quieter in the afternoons, after midday. In the week of 26 October 2026 the Tower is open 09:00 to 16:30 daily, with last entry at 15:00 and the last Yeoman Warder tour at 14:30.
- One timed attraction per half-day at most.
- Treat meals as part of the itinerary. Eating ten minutes’ walk from a major sight is cheaper.
- Check closing days. Borough Market is closed on Mondays and runs 10am–5pm Tuesday to Friday, 9am–5pm on Saturday and 10am–4pm on Sunday. Westminster Abbey opens for worship only on Sundays, with no sightseeing at all.
- Build a wet-weather alternative for each day. See London in the rain.
- Leave one hour a day empty for a delayed train or a longer queue.
- Allow more time than the journey planner says if you are travelling with children, luggage or a step-free route. Step-free London has the stations that work.
- Do not book dinner five minutes after the previous thing ends — and never book a curtain-up an hour after a restaurant reservation.
Getting around while you do it
Most visitors need no ticket at all beyond the bank card in their pocket. Contactless taps in and out the same as an Oyster and hits the same £8.90 Zones 1–2 daily cap. Use one card or one device all day; a phone and a plastic card count as two accounts and break the cap between them.
- Transport costs and fares — every 2026 fare and cap, and the three rules that stop you overpaying
- Oyster card guide — and when you need one, including the half-price Young Visitor discount for 11–15s
- Getting around London — the overview, and every airport route
- River boats — piers, fares and Thames Clipper routes, and the approach to Greenwich that arrives by water
- National Rail 2FOR1 — two-for-one on attractions if you arrive by train, including at Westminster Abbey on the door
Where to base yourself
Use the best areas guide to choose, but broadly: Covent Garden, Soho and the South Bank for walking; King’s Cross and Bloomsbury for rail links and better value. Best areas to stay is the version written around sleeping, not sightseeing.
Or build the day around a walk
Every one of these is free, mapped stop by stop, and says what is open on which day.
- Westminster — Big Ben to Trafalgar Square
- South Bank — Westminster to Tower Bridge along the river
- City of London — Bank to Tower Bridge
- Covent Garden — Seven Dials to the Piazza
- Shoreditch and Spitalfields — Brick Lane and the markets
- King’s Cross to Camden — along the Regent’s Canal
- Hampstead Heath and Primrose Hill — Kenwood and two free skyline views
- Chelsea and Belgravia — a walk between blue plaques
- Baker Street to Marylebone — through Regent’s Park to Marylebone High Street
- Fitzrovia to Mayfair — Fitzroy Square to Savile Row, the arcades and Green Park
- Wapping to Canary Wharf — four historic riverside pubs, the Ornamental Canal and Limehouse Basin
- Canary Wharf to Greenwich — under the river through the foot tunnel
- The Banksy route — ten surviving originals, St James’s to Stoke Newington
All walks → · Thames walks · Canal walks · Guided walking tours
Plan by interest
| If you came for | The guide | What it gives you |
|---|---|---|
| Museums | The best museums in London | Compared side by side, most of them free, with what each one is actually good at |
| Art | The best galleries | The collections that cost nothing, and which exhibitions are the ticketed ones |
| Views | The best views in London | The viewpoints with their prices, including the ones that charge nothing |
| Theatre | London theatre | How to pick a show and pay less — TKTS, day seats and where to sit |
| Food | Where to eat in London | The hub for every cuisine guide, each ranked by how many sources name a place |
| Eating cheaply | Cheap eats | Full meals under £15, including a £3.95 pizza in Fitzrovia |
| Markets | London’s best markets | Which days each one actually trades, which is what ruins market plans |
| Parks | Parks and gardens | Which green spaces are worth a journey rather than a detour |
| Children | London with children | Free city farms, a zoo scaled for under-tens, and the museum built around children |
| Rain | London in the rain | The areas that work indoors, so a wet day is a change of plan and not a lost one |
| Spending nothing | Free things to do and London on a budget | Free viewpoints, free music and free courtrooms, and what the rest costs |
| Royal and historic London | Historic houses and churches | The buildings you can go inside, with the Tower and the Abbey in guides of their own |
| Film and television | London filming locations | Places you have already seen on screen, grouped so you can walk between them |
| Harry Potter | Harry Potter in London and the Studio Tour | What is free, what is ticketed, and how the Watford trip works |
| A book or a character | Sherlock Holmes · The Beatles · Bridgerton | Themed days that hold together geographically rather than as a list |
| Street art | Banksy and London street art | What is still on the wall, and what has gone |
| The parts nobody sees | Hidden London | Places most visitors never find, and how to get into each |
| Shopping | Shopping in London | Streets, markets and stores sorted by what you are buying |
| A night out | Live music · Comedy · Immersive shows | Which rooms and which nights, and which immersive shows are still running |
| Step-free travel | Step-free London | Getting around without stairs, station by station |
| A day out of town | Day trips from London | Windsor, Oxford, Cambridge, Bath, Stonehenge and the Cotswolds, priced and timed |
| A specific month | The best time to visit | Weather, crowds, cost and every confirmed event date, month by month |
Continue planning your London trip
- 🗓️ Three Days in London
- 🗓️ Five Days in London
- 🎯 One-Day Plans by Interest
- 🏘️ Best London Areas to Visit
- 💷 London on a Budget
- 🎟️ Is the London Pass Worth It?
- 🛂 The UK ETA — who needs one before flying, and what it costs
- 🧳 Luggage Storage in London — where to leave a bag between checking out and flying home
Opening days and transport change around public holidays — check before you travel.
Common questions
How many days do you need in London?
Four for a first visit. Three covers the landmarks — Westminster, the Tower and South Bank, one museum district — and the fourth is what stops the trip being a checklist. Five is where it stops feeling rushed. Two big ticketed sights is the ceiling for one day: Historic Royal Palaces asks visitors to allow at least three hours at the Tower of London alone.
What is the biggest mistake in a London itinerary?
Grouping by fame instead of by geography. The famous sights are scattered, so a list-driven plan sends you across the city repeatedly. Grouping by neighbourhood removes almost all of the transport and adds hours back to the trip.
What should I book before travelling to London?
One booking needs a diary entry: the Ceremony of the Keys at the Tower, whose tickets are released at 13:00 on the first working day of each month for the month after, and which Historic Royal Palaces says becomes fully booked very quickly. Sky Garden releases free tickets weekly, up to three weeks ahead. Westminster Abbey, Churchill War Rooms and the London Eye should be booked before you fly because they use timed slots and cost more at the door. Everything else, including every national museum, can be decided on the day.
How much does a day in London cost?
£36 to £54 on a day built around free museums, and £65 to £92 with one paid landmark, excluding your room. The fixed part is the Zones 1–2 daily transport cap at £8.90; the variable part is what you eat. A pint is £6–£8 in the centre.
Do I need a London Travelcard or Oyster card?
Usually neither. A contactless bank card taps in the same way and hits the same £8.90 Zones 1–2 daily cap, so most visitors need nothing extra. See our fares guide for the exceptions, including children aged 11 to 15.
How much walking should I plan for in London?
A well-grouped London day is four to six miles, almost all flat. That is more than most people expect and it is why ambitious itineraries collapse by mid-afternoon. Build in one empty hour a day.
