Louvre Museum Tickets: Prices, Fast-Track Entry & Hours

How to Visit the Louvre — Tickets, Skip-the-Line & Opening Hours

The Louvre is the most visited museum on earth — close to nine million people walk through it every year — and it is also one of the easiest places in Paris to get wrong. The €22 (EU/EEA) and €32 (non-EU) figures you’ll see quoted are the box-office prices, and buying at the counter means joining the standard ticket queue, which on a summer Saturday can swallow two hours before you’ve seen a single painting. Booking ahead online is what avoids that. If you want the smoothest entry, the most popular options are a guided evening tour when the museum is not full of people, a reserved-entry ticket with hosted access to the Mona Lisa or — the most economical way to have a real guide — a semi-private guided tour in certain languages (max 6 people).

The on-site ticket line at the Louvre regularly runs 60–90 minutes in peak season. A booked-ahead time slot lets you skip straight to the entry lane.

Terms like skip-the-line, fast-track, priority access, timed entry and reserved entry all describe the same benefit: you skip the ticket-purchase queue and walk straight to your reserved lane. None of them, though, skips the mandatory security screening — every visitor goes through an airport-style check regardless of ticket type.

I. M. Pei’s glass pyramid is the Louvre’s main entrance. A timed ticket lets you head straight for the security check.

Louvre Museum ticket prices in 2026

The Louvre operates a two-tier pricing system introduced on 14 January 2026. EU and EEA residents pay the standard rate, while visitors from outside the European Economic Area pay a higher entry fee. The standard adult ticket covers the entire permanent collection — all three wings (Denon, Sully, Richelieu), every floor and all 35,000+ works on display — plus most temporary exhibitions inside the museum.

A few things worth knowing before you pay. Temporary exhibitions in the Hall Napoléon usually require a separate ticket (typically €4–6 extra) and are not always included in standard or pass entry. Visitors in groups led by an accredited guide pay a reduced €28 non-EU rate. The Louvre’s own website and its authorised partners all charge the same face value for standard tickets, so be wary of resellers marking tickets up. The genuine difference between options isn’t the headline price — it’s what you skip and what’s included: a plain online ticket simply secures your slot, while a reserved-entry ticket with hosted Mona Lisa access gets you to the famous portrait without the bottleneck.

What “fast-track” really means at the Louvre

The Louvre runs a mandatory timed-entry system: every ticket — even free ones — is tied to a 30-minute arrival window. When you book online you choose that slot, and on the day you go straight to the reserved-entry lane rather than the general walk-up queue. In peak season (April–October) this saves most visitors 60–90 minutes of waiting, and on busy weekends the difference can be even larger because morning slots routinely sell out.

The one queue nobody skips is security screening. All visitors pass through an airport-style check, so even with the best ticket allow 15–20 minutes for this and arrive a little before your slot. Choosing a quieter entrance helps a lot here, which brings us to the doors most people don’t know about.

Which entrance should you use?

The glass Pyramid is the iconic main entrance — and the slowest, because everyone heads there by default. If you hold a pre-booked ticket, the Carrousel du Louvre entrance (reached from 99 Rue de Rivoli or directly from the Palais Royal–Musée du Louvre metro) almost always has a shorter security queue and is the default for most skip-the-line tours. The Porte des Lions entrance opens directly into the Denon Wing, closest to the Mona Lisa, but its hours are limited and unpredictable, so only count on it if you’ve confirmed it’s open that day.

The Carrousel du Louvre entrance, reached from 99 Rue de Rivoli or the metro, usually has the shortest security queue.

Louvre opening hours & closed days

The Louvre is open every day except Tuesday. Standard hours are 9:00am to 6:00pm, with late-night opening until 9:45pm on Wednesdays and Fridays — the calmest windows of the week if you want fewer people around the Mona Lisa. Last admission is one hour before closing, and staff begin clearing the galleries 30 minutes before closing time.

The Louvre is also closed on three annual holidays: 1 January, 1 May and 25 December. Note that if a public holiday falls on a Tuesday the museum stays closed as usual. Hours occasionally change for special events, so it’s always worth a final check on the official site before you travel.

When is the Louvre free?

Beyond the always-free categories (under-18s and EU residents under 26), the Louvre opens its doors to everyone free of charge on the first Friday of each month after 6:00pm — though this is suspended in July and August. Entry is also free for all on 14 July (Bastille Day). The catch: free entry still requires a reserved time slot, and these vanish within hours of release, so book the moment they open. Expect heavy crowds on free evenings — if your priority is a calm visit, a paid timed ticket on a weekday morning is the better trade.
👥 Small Group · Your Language
Semi-private guided tour (max 6) — the economical way to have a real guide →

How to get to the Louvre

The Louvre sits on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement, dead centre in Paris and very easy to reach by public transport.

Best time to visit & how long you need

The single biggest upgrade to a Louvre visit isn’t which ticket you buy — it’s when you arrive. The crush is heaviest between 11:00am and 3:00pm, and worst on weekends from June to September. The two sweet spots are right at 9:00am opening on a Wednesday or Thursday, or the late-evening window (after about 5:30pm) on Wednesday and Friday, when day-trippers have left and the galleries breathe again. Shoulder seasons — April–May and September–October — are noticeably calmer than midsummer.

As for how long to budget: the Louvre is genuinely enormous, and seeing everything would take days. Most first-time visitors get a satisfying experience in 3 to 4 hours focused on the headline works plus one collection that interests them. If you only have a couple of hours, the three “anchors” — the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo and the Winged Victory of Samothrace — can be seen in under two hours if you move efficiently. Wear comfortable shoes; people routinely log 15,000–20,000 steps inside.

The Mona Lisa hangs in Room 711 of the Denon Wing. Crowds are thickest between 11am and 3pm — go first thing or during a late-night opening.

What to see inside the Louvre

With over 35,000 works across eight curatorial departments, the Louvre rewards a focused plan more than an attempt to see it all. A handful of pieces draw nearly everyone:

Beyond the headliners, the Egyptian antiquities in the Sully Wing, the Code of Hammurabi, the sculpture courts of the Richelieu Wing and the vast halls of French and Italian painting are all worth your time. A practical tip: download the official Louvre app before you arrive — its map alone saves a lot of wrong turns in a building that confuses even locals.

Visit the Louvre with a private licensed guide

A timed ticket gets you through the door, but a licensed private guide turns 35,000 works into the 30 that matter for you — reading the room, sequencing the route and handling skip-the-line access so you spend your hours looking at art rather than maps. As a rough guide, a private licensed guide in Paris costs around €80–100 per hour for the group (not per person), with museum entry tickets usually paid separately. Guides set their own rates and you book them directly, with no agency mark-up in between. The profiles below show licensed guides available for private bookings; message them directly to check availability and price.

Louvre tickets — frequently asked questions

🌙 Quietest Time to Visit
Dedicated-entry guided evening tour — skip the queue and beat the crowds →

🌐 This page is also available in:
Arabic, 简体中文 (Chinese), Czech, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, 日本語 (Japanese), 한국어 (Korean), Latvian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Türkçe (Turkish), Ukrainian.