Colosseum tickets

Oh my goodness! I just tried to go on the site as a trial run and was not able to get 5 tickets. They sold out in seconds! Maybe booking a tour for the Colosseum will be the best bet?

We were at the Colosseum 2 weeks ago and had pre-booked a tour through “Get Your Guide” (The Tour Guy). They provided clear instructions about where to meet and then our guide led us through the crowded lines into the colosseum, touring the arena and then palatine hill. The guided tour enhanced our experience of this incredible part of history; highly recommend.

In case you missed this last week:

Main ticket seller and six tour companies fined £17m for Colosseum price-fixing

Illegal practices included use of bots to hoard tickets for attraction in Rome for resale at inflated prices

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/08/italy-fines-seven-firms-17m-for-price-fixing-of-tickets-for-rome-colosseum

There may be some upcoming changes due to all of this, or maybe they'll just keep things the same and take care of bots better.

This reddit post gives a pretty good explanation of how to deal with the current system.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ItalyTravel/comments/1curjbg/colosseum_tickets_info_tips_and_a_question/

Tl;dr: The best strategy is to buy 30 days in advance TO THE MINUTE for each time slot.

I bought the 18E "standard" tickets without Arena or Attic because they weren't selling as fast and therefore easier to get the early 8:30 time slot I wanted. We had a great time with this - no regrets! I'm sure the Arena and Attic are fun too and probably worth it if you can get the tickets.

eli_va, the whole bot situation is outdated news. The vendor for Colosseum ticketing changed in the spring of 2024 from Coopculture - where much of the previous problem evidently originated - to the current seller to put an end to it + make the whole ticketing process easier. Per my post from June of 2024:
https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/italy/ticketing-for-the-colosseum-rome-is-not-coopculture-anymore

So no worries about bots or buying from the official ticketing vendor, which is....
https://ticketing.colosseo.it/en/

My best piece of advice is to accept that it is unlikely you will get underground tickets. They sell out almost immediately, but you can still see down into much of the underground from the "regular" areas. Attic tickets are slightly easier to get; the main advantage there is the lack of crowds once you get above everyone else. The arena tickets get you onto the large section of the arena floor, but there's still small platforms at arena level in the "regular" areas.