Tickets for prehistoric caves in Dordogne

You are too early! Only August is showing, nothing beyond. I just booked Font-de-Gaume English tour tickets for 8/23 this week! But I did so using the French site, which showed tour at 11:30 in Anglais because when I clicked on EN here was the message:
GUIDED TOURS ARE ONLY IN FRENCH FOR THE MOMENT. PLEASE CONTACT THE MONUMENT FOR MORE INFORMATION:
BY PHONE: 05 53 06 86 00,
WEBSITE: HTTP://WWW.SITES-LES-EYZIES.FR/
But I booked them as below!
https://tickets.monuments-nationaux.fr/fr-FR/accueil clicking on Sites Prehistorique de la Valee de la Vezere.
I booked Pech Merle for 8/24 in mid-April.
Be diligent! To me, there seemed to be no discernable technique to snagging tickets!
The one concern I do have is that tickets must be printed on A4 paper, which we luckily have a supply of!

book whatever Font du Gaume you can get when it opens up -- it doesn't matter what language, read up so you know what to look for -- there are so few daily tickets that you just jump when it is available.

There should be no problem getting Lascaux II or IV tickets a few weeks or even a couple of days out. I have visited several times over the years and always just bought them the day of. The site is set up to channel lots of people through every day.

I checked the monuments website daily until the June dates opened up. They were finally available on May 4th for the month of June. There was one English language tour available per day, so I jumped on it for the seven of us. Be aware that Font de Gaume tours are in the original caves, so tours are limited to thirteen persons per tour, and there are only 6 or 7 tours per day, to protect the site from contamination and destruction. The daily checking was worth the effort. We were in awe of the place, especially my 9 year old granddaughter and 12 year old grandson. We went on a Tuesday, planning to visit the prehistory museum in Les Eyzies afterward, but it was closed all that day, so you might take that into consideration when you decide which day to order your tickets for the cave.
Tickets for October will probably not be available until at least September 1. Bookmark the web page for the monuments site, and plug in your number of tickets each time and then see if the month you want opens up. As soon as it does, buy your tickets!

Lascaux II and IV are pretty easy to get tickets for, but pre-order them so you can be sure to get the English language tour. I believe there are two a day. I have been to Lascaux II several years ago, which was fantastic, but chose Lascaux IV because of the interactive section. It was a change-up from Font de Gaume. Lascaux IV will take more of your time than Font de Gaume. We spent almost two hours there, AFTER the tour. The cafe on site is a good place for lunch, by the way. Keep trying on the Lascaux website. You are probably just too early for that one too.

Good luck!

For Lascaux II I never got tickets in advance. Just go to the TI in Montignac and get them there.

Lascaux sometimes requires purchase in Montignac and sometimes requires purchase on site -- I am sure it is somehow seasonal. Last time we went was in a September about 6 years ago and we had to go to the cave sites to buy the tickets. On an earlier visit we had. bought them in Montignac. So pay attention to what the website tells you to do. Getting them should not be difficult. They are set up for mass tourism and to put hundreds through a day.

Font du Gaume on the other hand restricts admission to about 80 or so a day.

LC

RE: Font de Gaume, it is just about one km or one mile outside of Les Eyzies. You may well want to also go to the National Museum of PreHistory in Les Eyzies that same day. https://musee-prehistoire-eyzies.fr/en/museum-history We quite enjoyed the museum.

RE: getting tickets, as someone else said, the site for the next month opens up several weeks before the start of the next month. See https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/france/dordogne-cave-tickets and, more importantly, https://tickets.monuments-nationaux.fr/fr-FR/familles?site=2117969240920404140 So, do NOT wait until October to start to look for early or mid-October tickets. Instead, start ithe first of September (or very late Aug?) and then check every few days until it actually opens up. As of today (7/24), August tix are available, but not Sept. For our visit in mid-to-late May, I started in April and I somehow missed being able to get an English language tour for the day that we would be there. Fortunately, our French language tour guide was gracious and even if I could not have understood a word, it still would have been great. Although we were on a French language tour (and I understood just a little of the French), the guide spoke in English for about one-third of the time for the benefit of the five (out of 12? or 15?) of us who were not French speakers. (3 US; 2 Dutch)

The Font de Gaume tour will take about 1-1/2 hours. A similar time in the museum in nearby Les Eyzies is well spent. In between the two, walk around the town and enjoy lunch.

Our trip took us to Font de Gaume and the Musee PreHistoire the day before we went to Lascaux IV. You could do that either way and it would be fine. Not quite sure why you want Lascaux II rather than IV, but I do not have the knowledge base to comment on which is preferable, or why.

Perhaps with a car you could do Lascaux and the Museum and Font de Gaume all on the same day, but that sounds more like a marathon and less like visiting. We biked, so any such effort was out of the question, especially since we started the day further down the Vezere river in Le Bugue.

Also, FYI, we stayed a couple of nights in Montignac at a hotel called La Roseraie. https://www.laroseraie-hotel.com/en We very much enjoyed it, the hotel gardens and our dinner at the restaurant there on the second night of our stay.

Bon Voyage.