When's the best time to visit London in 2026?

If you can commit to one travel window, make it September. English schools go back in the first week, so the queue for the Jewel House at the Tower of London drops from an hour or more in August to roughly 20 minutes on a weekday at opening. The State Rooms at Buckingham Palace are usually open to visitors from late July to late September, making this your last chance to see them before the doors close for the year. Open House London takes over a September weekend, when several hundred normally private buildings let the public in for free, and the Proms end at the Royal Albert Hall in the second week. The plane trees along Victoria Embankment start to turn, and a wet-leaf smell rises off the pavement after a shower. September can swing from T-shirt afternoons to a raw, gusty Thames wind in the same week, so pack a light layer and a packable rain jacket rather than an umbrella: the wind on Westminster Bridge will turn an umbrella inside out.

Late May and June come second, and for jet-lagged first-timers they can be the better choice. In June the sun sets after 9pm, so you can sleep off a morning arrival at Heathrow and still walk the South Bank from the London Eye to Tower Bridge in daylight at 8pm. In May, wisteria hangs over the terraces of Kensington and Chelsea, and Hyde Park smells of cut grass on a warm Saturday; the Chelsea Flower Show runs in late May. On a Saturday in June, Trooping the Colour closes the Mall and Horse Guards Parade, and you can hear the drums from St James's Park. The cost is money. A Bloomsbury double room that might go for about £180 in February can pass £300 in June, and one US dollar currently buys 0.7499 pounds, so that June rate is roughly $400. Book a central hotel eight to ten weeks out, and buy timed tickets for the Tower of London and Westminster Abbey before you fly.

July and August are where most first-timers go wrong, because school holidays fill every queue and the Central and Bakerloo lines have no air conditioning. In a heatwave, a packed carriage smells of hot brakes and other people's sunscreen. Heathrow recorded 40.2°C on 19 July 2022, and many older hotels and flats in London still have no cooling, so if you do come in summer, ride the air-conditioned Elizabeth line wherever it fits your route and ask your hotel directly whether the rooms have AC. Over the August bank holiday weekend, Notting Hill Carnival fills west London with steel pans, jerk smoke and around a million people. Go for one afternoon, or stay away from the area and its stations entirely that weekend. In these two months, skip-the-line tickets are worth the price, above all at the Tower and the London Eye.

November, January and February are the months we would steer a first trip away from. In mid-December the sun sets before 4pm, and the sky over the Thames can stay low and grey for days. The cold is damp, the kind that gets into a wool coat. Winter has its points, though. The British Museum and the National Gallery are free to enter all year, so a wet afternoon costs you the Tube fare and nothing more, and January hotel rates tend to be the lowest of the year. December falls somewhere in between, with the Regent Street lights overhead and roasted chestnuts sold outside Covent Garden. On 25 December, Transport for London runs no Tube, bus or rail services, so plan Christmas Day around walking or a booked taxi.