Last updated: 5 November 2026
Direct answer. The Palace Museum sells no same-day tickets: every visitor must book by real name, and passport holders use the passport they will carry. Booking opens 20:00 seven days before the visit, admission ends 15:30, Monday closure applies, and three cancellations in 180 days block booking for 60 days.
Forbidden City tickets are real-name only, released at 20:00 seven days ahead, and closed on Mondays — the official booking, ID, refund and cancellation rules.
Most guides to the Forbidden City explain which gate to walk through and where the good photo is. Almost none explain the part that actually decides whether you get in: the booking notice. The Palace Museum publishes that notice on its own ticketing site, in English, as a numbered list of twelve rules plus a short opening-hours block. This page is a close reading of that notice — what it obliges you to do, which of its sentences are easy to misread, and where it stops short.
Two things to be clear about before you read on. First, this page states no ticket price, because the booking notice itself publishes none; we are not going to fill that gap from memory. Second, we are not a ticketing channel and we cannot book for you. Everything below is a reading of the museum's own text, retrieved on 5 November 2026.
The notice opens with a warning rather than a welcome: the Palace Museum "does not authorize any third party institution or individual to act as agent for ticket business (large ticket, watch hall, treasure hall and exhibition)", and asks visitors to reserve "through the official channel". Read that sentence against the number of third-party listings that will sell you a "skip-the-line Forbidden City ticket" and the practical consequence is simple — a ticket bought through an unauthorised intermediary is not something the museum has agreed to honour, whatever the intermediary's page says.
The same opening paragraph names the three ticketed components you will meet on the booking screen: the large ticket (general admission), the Treasure Hall, and the Watch Hall. Exhibitions are booked separately again. They are not bundled.
Rule 1 is the one that ruins afternoons: "The Palace Museum does not sell one-day tickets. All visitors (including those who enjoy preferential policies and their escorts) must make real-name reservations." Annual-ticket holders are not exempt either — they "must register at least one day in advance."
The wording matters. It is not that same-day tickets sell out quickly; it is that the same-day product does not exist. A visitor who arrives at the Meridian Gate without a reservation is not joining a queue, they are turning around. The parenthetical about preferential policies closes the obvious loophole: a discounted visitor still needs a reservation, and so does the person escorting them.
Rule 5 sets the release window: tickets for the large ticket, the Treasure Hall and the Watch Hall "will be reserved from 20:00 before the 7th day of visit", and are "valid only on the day of visit."
The English on the official page is a translation, and this is the sentence where that shows most. Read literally it means the booking window opens at 20:00 on the date seven days before your visit — so for a visit on the 12th, the window opens at 20:00 on the 5th. That is how the sentence is best read, and it is consistent with the rest of the notice, which repeatedly uses 20:00 as a cut-off rather than an opening time. What the notice does not do is promise that inventory is still available when you arrive at the window; it gives you the earliest moment you may book, not a guarantee.
A ticket is valid only on the date booked. There is no "any day this week" admission, and no re-entry implied by the notice.
Rule 2 splits visitors by document type. Visitors from mainland China use the ID card. Everyone else uses one of: the Travel Permit for Hong Kong and Macao residents, the Travel Permit for Taiwan residents, the Residence Permit for Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan residents, a permanent resident ID card, or a passport.
For a foreign visitor on a short trip the last item is the relevant one: the passport. Rule 3 then requires that "all visitors must bring valid identification for booking and check in through Meridian Gate (South Gate of the Forbidden City)" — the same document used to book. Rule 4 is the mechanical step: check-in happens by reading the document.
The practical failure mode is therefore not a payment problem, it is a document mismatch. Booking with a passport number and arriving with a photocopy, a digital image, or a different passport is outside what the notice describes. The museum also warns, on the booking screen itself, when a passport number has already been used for a purchase — one passport, one booking.
The opening-hours block is short and worth reading twice, because the last-admission time is earlier than most visitors assume.
| Item | What the official notice states |
|---|---|
| Closing day | Closed on Mondays, except statutory holidays |
| Gates open for admission | 08:30 |
| Last admission | 15:30 |
| Morning session | Ticket checks by 12:00 |
| Afternoon session | Ticket checks start at 11:00 |
| Service windows (peak, 1 April – 31 October) | 08:30–16:10 |
| Service windows (off-season, 1 November – 31 March) | 08:30–15:40 |
| Ticket customer service line | 400-950-1925, 08:00–20:00, year-round |
Two things follow. A 15:30 last admission is not the same as a 15:30 closing time — the galleries stay open later than the gate does, and the notice does not publish a closing time at all, so we do not state one. And the morning/afternoon split is about ticket checking, not about two separate tickets: the afternoon check window opens at 11:00, which is why an early arrival and a midday arrival behave differently at the gate.
Rule 6 governs refunds, and Rule 8 governs the penalty for not using them. Together they are the most consequential part of the notice for anyone booking a fixed-date itinerary.
Rule 6, in order:
Rule 8 then caps the behaviour: "No more than one cancellation per person per day, three cancellations within 180 days. From the day after the third cancellation, no tickets or exhibitions can be booked for 60 days."
That is a 60-day block triggered by three cancellations across roughly six months — and a cancellation is generated not only by a deliberate refund request but by simply not showing up after 20:00 on the day. A traveller who books three separate days "to decide later" and lets two of them lapse is one lapse away from being unable to book at all for two months. For a multi-city itinerary, that is a bigger risk than the ticket price.
Refunds are returned "to your payment account within 5 working days", per Rule 9 — a processing window, not an instant reversal.
The booking screen offers four payment routes: credit card, WeChat/Alipay, an application for on-site payment, and payment with an international bank card. The notice does not rank them, does not state fees for any of them, and does not describe how the on-site application is assessed — so this page does not either.
Rule 10 covers invoices: if you need one, go to the "Comprehensive Service window" at the Meridian Gate, or call customer service, with the valid ID used at booking, "within one month from the date of appointment." Rule 7 adds that some exhibitions require their own reservation and that exhibition reservations must be cancelled before 24:00 the day before, on pain of the same cancellation count.
Three silences are worth naming, because secondary guides routinely fill them in and are routinely wrong:
We keep those gaps open rather than close them with plausible-sounding numbers.
Not stated on this page, and why: admission price, daily capacity, gallery closing time, and the assessment criteria for on-site payment — none is published in the booking notice, and none has been inferred here.
No. The official notice states the museum "does not sell one-day tickets" and that all visitors must make real-name reservations, including those using preferential policies and their escorts. Arriving without a reservation means you cannot enter that day.
The notice says tickets are reserved "from 20:00 before the 7th day of visit" — in practice, the booking window opens at 20:00 on the date seven days before your visit date, and the ticket is valid only for the day booked.
Yes. Passports are one of the accepted documents for visitors who are not from mainland China, alongside the various mainland travel and residence permits. You must bring that same document to check in at the Meridian Gate.
Before 24:00 on the day before, an unbooked ticket is refunded with no penalty. From then until 20:00 on the visit day, a refund counts as one cancellation; after 20:00 on the visit day nothing is refundable but it still counts as one. Three cancellations within 180 days block new bookings for 60 days.
No — the museum closes on Mondays except statutory holidays. Last admission is 15:30, and ticket checks for the morning session close at 12:00 while the afternoon check window opens at 11:00.
All sources retrieved 5 November 2026. This page is an independent reading of the sources listed; the official pages themselves are the specification.
| Fact used on this page | Source |
|---|---|
| S1 — No same-day tickets; real-name reservation for all visitors including preferential categories; annual-ticket holders register at least one day ahead | The Palace Museum, Ticket Purchase Notice (retrieved 5 November 2026) https://bookingticket.dpm.org.cn/ |
| S2 — Accepted identity documents, including passports for non-mainland visitors; Meridian Gate check-in with the booking document | The Palace Museum, Ticket Purchase Notice (retrieved 5 November 2026) https://bookingticket.dpm.org.cn/ |
| S3 — Booking release at 20:00 seven days before the visit; ticket valid only on the day of visit | The Palace Museum, Ticket Purchase Notice (retrieved 5 November 2026) https://bookingticket.dpm.org.cn/ |
| S4 — Cancellation and refund sequence, 20:00 and 24:00 cut-offs, checked-in tickets not refundable | The Palace Museum, Ticket Purchase Notice (retrieved 5 November 2026) https://bookingticket.dpm.org.cn/ |
| S5 — Three cancellations within 180 days triggers a 60-day booking block | The Palace Museum, Ticket Purchase Notice (retrieved 5 November 2026) https://bookingticket.dpm.org.cn/ |
| S6 — Refund to the payment account within 5 working days; invoice at the Meridian Gate service window within one month | The Palace Museum, Ticket Purchase Notice (retrieved 5 November 2026) https://bookingticket.dpm.org.cn/ |
| S7 — Opening hours, last admission 15:30, session ticket-check times, Monday closure, service-window and customer-service hours | The Palace Museum, Ticket Purchase Notice and Opening Hours block (retrieved 5 November 2026) https://bookingticket.dpm.org.cn/ |
| S8 — Museum does not authorise third-party agents; ticket components (large ticket, Treasure Hall, Watch Hall) and separately booked exhibitions | The Palace Museum, Ticket Purchase Notice (retrieved 5 November 2026) https://bookingticket.dpm.org.cn/ |