Prime minister's questions

In order to attend one of the Wednesday noontime Prime Minister’s question time, one must be a U.K. Resident and apply for tickets through the Member of Parliament representing you.
Anyone can attend a parliamentary session when it is in session in either the House of Commons or House of Lords by lining up with your passport along the sidewalks adjacent to St. Margaret Street, on the northern side of the Houses of Parliament.

The above is not entirely accurate.

This is the official Parliamentary page on the matter- https://www.parliament.uk/visiting/visiting-and-tours/watch-committees-and-debates/prime-ministers-questions/

Tickets (for guaranteed entry) are only available to UK residents, but anyone can queue up for if there is space available on the day. You may or may not get in, even if you arrive at the crack of dawn, depending on space available.

Or you might get lucky, arrive at 1145 and get straight in.

On the map on the above file it is the Cromwell Green Entrance- point 9

It is shown live on BBC 2 / BBC Parliament at noon on Wednesdays when Parliament is in session.

If you decide to go and get disoriented, just ask, there are plenty of security folks
around to help direct you.

I believe that PMQ is held in the chambers of the House of Lords, so, if you just
want to see the place it takes place in, you can attend a session of the House of
Lords.

I have not attended PMQ, but have attended a session of Parliament. Once you
go in the Cromwell St entrance, you will go through a long hallway and then reach
a rotunda, go left for the House of Commons and right for the House of Lords. My
guess is that you will wait somewhere near the rotunda, depending on the size of the
line.

when you see pictures of Prime Minister's Questions, or any other debate in Parliament, look at the benches being sat upon. The House of Commons is green, the Lords, red.

Prime Minister's Questions (and questions of other Ministers) is a Commons activity, the benches are always green, it occurs in the House of Commons.

The only time that MPs normally move to the House of Lords is for the State Opening of Parliament and the King's Speech.

Firstly PMQs takes place in the House of Commons, not the Lords.

Secondly, to all intents and purposes @kenko's post is correct, I'll you why now.

I applied via my MP umpteen times for tickets for PMQs and it took quite a while before I was successful. Its quite a small gallery and what I did not realise was, a proportion of the seats are already allocated and taken up by:

The lobby journalists;

Respective 'guests' (I assume spin doctors, SPAds and the like) of each of the front benches (mainly the opposition when I was there) take up more of the seats;

Then there is an allocation for visiting dignitaries and diplomats;

However, in my view it was definitely worth the effort, as went I attended it was spine tinglingly good. Even though you watch behind a big glass screen and look down on the floor, watching on telly does not hold a candle to being there in person, maybe I was lucky as the PMQs I attended was after Partygate, when Starmer was going after Johnson and with the aid of history and hindsight trapped him and given hindsight and history was part of his eventual downfall, it was the best theatre ever!

When I was there asked how many tickets were generally available to the public for PMQs and they said it varies, but generally any where between 200 and 150, the norm at the time I attended they said it was nearer the 150 mark. There are a 650 MPs, so doing the maths its harder than obtaining Premier League tickets. I would say just turning up and hoping to get in, one has very slim chance as you are relying on a no show. I was let in just after 11:45 if memory serves and by the time I was seated proceeding got underway very quickly after that.

Today was my day to try to get into PMQ and was successful. I thought I'd share my observations/experience.
1. I got there about 8:30 and was willing to wait it out for 3+ hours. The police on duty shooed me away, though, said to come back at 11. I came back at 10:30, and there were a few others. We made a line and around 11:30 a group of 25 of us were ushered through security and shepherded to some benches inside.
2. The order we were in outside didn't carry-over to our new placement (I was #3 outside but because of delays in my security line dropped back to #10 or so when we found our way to our final placements on the benches).

3. It seems as if 1-10 tickets become available weekly. I wouldn't count on more.
4, Totally worth it!

And thank you to all who commented on my question!

If you don't want to queue for three hours and still want to see Parliament in action you can go and line up for a Commons or Lords chamber peak.

We went later in the day to see the House of Lords and unless you are really interested in UK politics, 20-30 minutes was enough for us. It was mostly just a chance to see the inside of the chamber. We then went and ate a pub nearby.

Alicia - thanks so much for sharing your experience and how you did this ! I would love to go some day,