Bayeaux Tapestry tickets go on sale July 1st

We are hoping to see it this fall too.

I did find this on the membership page:
"Members will need to book a free, timed ticket in advance before visiting the Tapestry. These will be available to book online from June, before public tickets go on sale. In the initial booking period, dates from September to December 2026 will be available. Booking periods for 2027 will be announced subsequently."

Thanks, Allan. I'm going to have to figure out when I want to see it as well. 2026 is definitely not going to work for me, but maybe spring of 2027. Possibly even late spring. I've been toying with the idea of going to Japan, but I might put that off for another year or go to Japan in the fall and head to England in the spring. Maybe throw Scotland into the mix as well.

Sigh. I really miss the UK. It doesn't take much to get me over there.

Thanks Allan for the heads up. We will be in London for a couple days in September so I will definitely be trying to get tickets. I am sure it will be extremely competitive but I am hoping for some luck! I have a reminder already in my phone thanks to your post!

I may become a Museum member in order to try for early ticket sales and the other benefits it offers. Do you think a member will be able to request more than their own timed entry slot (for example request extra tickets for family) for this exhibit? I have my two adult kids going and I am not sure if they each want to get a membership on their own.

@Autumn, I read that too, what I'm wondering is if members can book a timed ticket for the day of their choice or will it be a more broad scope like sometime that week or that month.

I'm dying to see the Tapestry, and want to combine it with the RS South of England tour. The tricky part is timing, since exhibit tickets don't go on sale until July and now I'm hearing it's best to lock in airfare now due to likely rising fares. Any thoughts on juggling all this to make it work?

I see others here have become British Museum members to get an early crack at tickets. Any more info on how that works - do you get notified when tix go on sale as a member? Do you get to choose a specific day?

I can’t get Bayeux Tapestry tickets for Sept.

UPDATE: I was able to get tickets on the day I wanted. I just didn’t allow for the slowness because of the traffic on the site.

MY EXPERIENCE: On 7/1, I logged on at 4am EDT and there were already 85,000+ ahead of me and multiple hours wait time. Of course, I stayed in the queue, set an alarm for 7am to get up for work and got ready. Sure enough, at 8:42am, as I was driving to work my window opened up. I pulled over and booked two tickets for the late afternoon on 9/21.

I would be very surprised if there is much availability for September. Tickets went on sale two weeks ago for museum members and as the thread below states people were then waiting hours to get through.
https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/england/bayeux-tapestry-tickets

I logged on early and saw the status to get tickets 76k in the queue ahead of me and hours long waiting. I only could possibly see it with our September schedule for just one night, so I knew it was virtually impossible. Oh well. We may try to see the replica in Reading one day. Good luck to all who are trying for tickets!

To answer some questions, yes, when you book as a member, you do get to select specific day & time slots. As a member you can only buy as many tickets as you have status for, so no additional friends or family.

The ticket release for members on June 16th was very messy. I hope they have got a lot of their problems figured out but the lines are still long. I was in the queue for almost 8 hours but I did manage to get two tickets at two different time slots for my husband and myself (both members) in early September. We had to change our return flights to accommodate this. But if we had not managed this, I think we would have made a trip to Bayeux when the museum reopened.

Just logged on and there are 83,000 people in the queue ahead of me. I saw reports of a 9 hour ticket queue.

I saw the tapestry in Bayeux when I visited in 2009. I don’t think there were more than a dozen people in the museum when I saw it. It took me less than 9 hours to get from London to Bayeux when I visited. I think it would be easier to just wait until it returns to Bayeux and then travel there to see it.

@Laura We saw the tapestry many years ago in Bayeux and our experience was similar. There were very few people there. We will be in London in November and I wondered if we should attempt to see it again. After reading these reports of people trying to secure tickets I no longer have FOMO.

I want to add that though an 8-hr queue sounds awful, it was not too bad. The first 3 hours were frustrating because that is when all the problems happened. But after that, I could go off and do other things while waiting. I even managed to take a nap.

A bit of advice for those that are still thinking of trying for the tickets at the British Museum - get in the queue and keep checking back till it's your turn. You can even choose to get an email when it's your turn. Second, try when it is British nighttime. Much shorter queues, and you may be surprised with the options available, especially if you can be flexible with the date/time.

I am considering visiting in early November on an overnight LHR layover. Out of curiosity I logged in at 7 a.m. Pacific time and there were 75k in the queue with a wait time of "more than an hour". As of 10 a.m. there are still 37k ahead of me so definitely more than an hour wait! I took advantage of the ability to have them email when our place in the queue is open, so I'll see when that happens.

EDIT TO ADD: I got the "it's your turn" email at 12:40 pm. with a 10 minute window to purchase. Unfortunately I wasn't at a computer at that time so I missed the window. Alas, I will check again later.

I got in the queue at about 9:15 am (all times EDT) and it said there were about 76,000 ahead of me with wait time up to 9 hours. The queue website does a good job of giving updated estimates of how long the queue ahead is and expected wait time, and notifying when you're up. I got into the ticket site at 3:30 pm and got 2 tickets for the desired day, Nov. 12. Looked like there was still decent availability during that week but some time slots were listed as down to just a few available and Saturday Nov. 14 was sold out. It was advising new entrants when I completed my transaction that queue times are up to 3 hours currently.

Like some others here, I also saw the tapestry in Bayeux (in my case, in 2017)- we booked no tickets in advance and there were very few other people there. Something I am curious about is why it being at the British Museum is generating such an order of magnitude more interest? For visitors coming from abroad, it's not much harder to get to Bayeux that it is to London, and for people in the UK it's just across the channel. I was expecting this exhibition to be very popular but nine hour online queues are almost unheard of.

I think it’s all the publicity. I also saw the Bayeux Tapestry (or to be pedantic about it, the Bayeux Embroidery) many years ago in Bayeux and it was a pretty low key attraction. But my wife has not, she’s interested in medieval history also and wanted to see it. And I certainly don’t mind seeing it again. So that’s one reason why we decided to visit London this November. It’s true that Bayeux isn’t exactly inaccessible for visitors from the US or elsewhere, but it is a bit remote compared to Paris or London with their nonstop flights and wealth of other attractions. We’ve been to the UK enough that we do focus on particular special exhibits or other attractions we haven’t seen before, rather than the usual line up of Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, etc. as we’ve seen all those. This trip will include the Churchill painting exhibit at the Wallace Collection (I know he’s not a great artist, although capable enough, but that has a lot of historical interest for me), and the Duxford aviation museum near Cambridge which I’ve been wanting to see, as well as the Tapestry and as always a London Walk or two, ideally with our favorite guide Rick Jones.

Ticket availability for The Bayeux Tapestry between September and December 2026 is now limited, and tickets may have sold out when you reach the front of the queue. If you miss out, don’t worry, there will be further ticket releases – bookings for January to July 2027 will open later in the year.

Just saw this message. Sounds like it's been a Very Big Day for their sales.
Trying to hold my April goal of seeing it lightly. I have kids who haven't been to Bayeux so I guess I can use it as another reason to return to Bayeux?

I got tickets yesterday for November (as described above) but out of curiosity looked at the BM website just now. All tickets sold out through December 31! (And 2027 not released yet for sale). Wow.

Holy Moly. I didn't expect that. I'm going to need to be prepared when the 2027 tickets go on sale. I've got a small window in April. I may have to become a member.

*does anyone have any news of what the new and improved museum in Bayeaux is going to look like?

Edit to add. Answered my own question. https://www.bayeuxmuseum.com/en/actus/what-will-the-new-bayeux-tapestry-museum-look-like/

I'm assuming the British Museum exhibition will have a focus on English history side of things while I expect the opposite when it returns to Bayeaux. Thus, my plan is to see it twice to get different perspectives. A 2 week trip to Normandy has been in the pre-planning stage for a couple of years with no firm date set yet.

Allan, I was just looking at the museum site and noticed that for non-members, it says that tickets for 2027 will be "released later" and to sign up for the newsletter to get notice of it. So basically it's still pretty open.

However, on the Members' section, it says:
1. Each Member will need to book a timed ticket in advance of visiting.
2. Member priority booking opened on 16 June, for visits from 10 September to 31 December
3. Priority booking for January 2027 to March 2027 dates will open in October.
4. Booking for April to July 2027 dates will open in January 2027.

It looks like they might be opening up ticket slots for members first, which is encouraging.

I'm planning a trip to Scotland (not sure when yet) but now I'm thinking I will combine it with a quick trip to London so I can see the exhibit.

As a member you can only buy as many tickets as you have status for, so no additional friends or family.

Also, pursuant to the comment above, it looks like members can add one additional member card AND up to 2 guest tickets for an extra cost, which sounds like you can get up to 4 tickets total. https://www.britishmuseum.org/membership

Thanks Mardee, a trip-plan is coming together for next April. It starts with a couple of days in London to visit the Tapestry and also the Queen's Life in Fashion exhibit at Buckingham Palace. That's how I bribed my wife to go to London again. From there we head north to York, Newcastle area and Bamburgh for a couple of weeks (I just reread your trip report).

After that we think we're flying from Newcastle to Amsterdam and then a few days in Delft (maybe) before hopping on a cruise (maybe) into Dennark and Norway.

Anyway, the timing works out that we have a very narrow few days in London to make the two exhibits in London work into the schedule.

As a member you can only buy as many tickets as you have status for,
so no additional friends or family.

Also, pursuant to the comment above, it looks like members can add one
additional member card AND up to 2 guest tickets for an extra cost,
which sounds like you can get up to 4 tickets total.
https://www.britishmuseum.org/membership

This "head count" does not include children. Each member cardholder is/was allowed up to 4 children under 16, but children also need tickets.

I originally had an individual membership, but that would not have let me buy a ticket for my husband, so I had to upgrade my membership to the two cardholders level.

Allan, that sounds wonderful. I really want to visit Delft on my next trip to the Netherlands.

I'm still trying to figure out when I will be going to Scotland next year, but it probably wouldn't be until early May. So it sounds like both of us would need to wait until January to book tickets for the exhibit (if we become members). I'd be curious to know how much earlier members get access to buying tickets.

We saw the Bayeaux Tapestry while in Normandy several years ago.
I had read a book about the tapestry and its history.
It is amazing, it is very long and beautiful. The 900 year old tapestry is so colorful and well preserved.
It tells the history of the Norman conquest of England.