Forbidden City reservation guide: release time, passport rules and no-show penalties

The Forbidden City is not hard to visit; it is hard to book. Every year visitors arrive at the Meridian Gate expecting a ticket window and find a barrier, because the palace sells online and not at the gate, releases tickets on a fixed evening a week ahead, and ties each ticket to one document and one date. This guide is about the reservation itself — the part you do before you pack.

We checked the official booking notice and the museum's visitor pages on 1 November 2026. The rules below are the museum's; the planning advice is ours.

The release window

Main-gate tickets, Treasure Gallery tickets and Clocks Gallery tickets all go on sale at 20:00 seven days before the visit date. There are no same-day tickets and no on-site window for foreign visitors. The ticket is valid for the date you booked.

That single sentence is the whole planning constraint. Decide your date, put a reminder in your phone for the evening exactly seven days earlier, and have every visitor's document details ready. Popular dates are taken early in the evening, and a ticket cannot be moved afterwards.

The official channel, and no other channel

The museum states that it has not authorised any third party to sell its tickets or exhibition reservations. Bookings are made through the official 「故宫博物院」 WeChat mini-program.

This matters more than it looks. Searches for "Forbidden City tickets" return a lot of sites that present themselves as official or as agents, and the museum's wording is blunt about the situation. Treat anything that is not the mini-program as a reseller. If a site offers to book on your behalf, you are relying on a stranger's booking, not the museum's.

The document rules

Non-mainland visitors can book and enter with a passport, a Hong Kong, Macau or Taiwan permit, or a Foreign Permanent Resident ID Card. One ticket per document per visit day.

Tickets cannot be rescheduled, transferred or reassigned. The document you book with is the document you carry — not a photograph, not a scan, not a friend's phone. If your group has three people, you need three documents and three bookings; you cannot buy "one for the group".

Visitors under 18 who are Chinese citizens — including Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan residents and foreigners with Chinese permanent residence — enter free but still need a booking. The published policy does not list foreign minors without permanent residence as free, so if you are travelling with children on foreign passports, ask at the ticket office or through the mini-program's service channel.

The slots decide the day

Booking is split into morning and afternoon slots, and the slot has teeth. Morning-slot visitors must clear the gate by 12:00. Afternoon-slot visitors can enter from 11:00.

That gap is the most useful planning detail in this guide. A midday arrival works with an afternoon ticket and fails with a morning one. If you want a long visit, take the earliest morning slot and be at the gate before it opens; if you are coming from another morning sight, book the afternoon slot and stop worrying about being late.

The gate rule

The Meridian Gate, on the south side of the complex, is the sole visitor entrance. The route is one-way: visitors walk south to north and exit through the Gate of Divine Prowess (north) or the East Glorious Gate (east). Those gates are exits, not entrances.

In practice, the gate rule shapes your whole day. Whatever you plan after the palace should be north or east of it, not back at Tiananmen. And because cars cannot stop at the Meridian Gate, the drop-off is the East Glorious Gate, followed by a walk along the moat.

There is also a shortcut with hours: the passage from Tian'anmen through Duanmen to the Meridian Gate is open Tuesday to Sunday, 08:00–16:00, and shut all day Monday. Outside those hours, use the east or west moat roads.

Cancellations and the no-show ban

Unused tickets can be refunded through the original channel until 24:00 the day before the visit. Refunding on the visit day counts as a no-show.

The penalty is the part people do not read. Three no-shows within 180 days trigger a 60-day booking ban, and the ban is per document — so it follows the passport. If your plans change, refund before midnight the day before rather than letting the ticket lapse.

Prices and extras

The main gate costs CNY 60 in peak season (1 April–31 October) and CNY 40 off-season (1 November–31 March). The Treasure Gallery and the Clocks Gallery are CNY 10 each, and students pay CNY 20 for the main gate. These are published prices; check them in the mini-program when you book, because a policy change would appear there first.

The two extra galleries are worth the small add-on if you have the time. They sit off the central axis, which is exactly why they stay calm when the main courtyards are full.

What the booking page does not tell you

The booking notice still displays a COVID-era line requiring a negative PCR test within 72 hours. You will see it if you read carefully, and it is stale: the museum has not published a replacement entry-requirement paragraph. Do not treat it as a current rule, and do not treat the page as irrelevant either — it is where a real change would appear first.

The other thing the page cannot tell you is what is open. The museum posts closure notices separately, including a notice of 12 October 2026 that closed Wuying Hall from 19 October for restoration. Check the notice board the week you travel; a room you crossed the city for can be behind a hoarding.

Turning the slot into a visit

Once the ticket is secure, the day is a question of pacing. The palace's route is one-way, entering south and leaving north or east, so the order you walk in is the plan: central axis first, then whatever the remaining time allows. There is no coming back for something you skipped.

Three hours is a straight walk along the axis with short stops. Five hours lets you add the east side, where the Treasure Gallery and the Clocks Gallery sit close together and the walled lanes around them are where the courtyards thin out. If you have a morning and no more, keep the axis and skip the side halls — the axis is the part you came for.

The slot rules shape the start, and the gate rules shape the end. Morning-slot visitors must be through by noon, which argues for arriving at opening rather than at eleven; afternoon-slot visitors can enter from 11:00, which makes a relaxed lunch beforehand possible. At the north end, the garden is the natural finish, and the exits there put you into Jingshan Park or onto the street by the East Glorious Gate.

Two changes on the museum's autumn 2026 notice board are worth checking before you build the day around a particular hall: Wuying Hall closed from 19 October 2026 for restoration, and Yanxi Palace reopened on 1 November 2026 after survey work. The notice board is where those changes live.

What most guides don't tell you

• Tickets go on sale at 20:00 seven days before the visit date. There are no same-day tickets, and the ticket is valid only for the date you booked.
• The museum states it has not authorised any third party to sell its tickets or exhibition reservations; bookings go through the official 「故宫博物院」 WeChat mini-program.
• A morning-slot ticket is not a morning-only visit: you must pass the gate by 12:00 but may stay until closing. An afternoon ticket lets you enter from 11:00.
• Unused tickets can be refunded through the original channel until 24:00 the day before the visit; refunding on the visit day counts as a no-show, and three no-shows in 180 days trigger a 60-day booking ban per document.
• The Meridian Gate is the sole visitor entrance and the route is one-way: you exit north through the Gate of Divine Prowess or east through the East Glorious Gate.
• The booking page still displays a leftover COVID-era 72-hour PCR clause. It is stale text, not a current entry rule — but it shows why you should read the mini-program rather than a copied screenshot.