London’s NYE fireworks tickets go on sale Friday, prices start at £20
If you want to stand on the banks of the Thames and watch London see out 2026, the clock starts ticking at midday this Friday. That is when the first batch of tickets for the capital’s NYE fireworks goes on sale, and if recent years are any guide, a lot of it will be gone within hours.
Tickets go live at midday on 23 October, exclusively through Ticketmaster. Nowhere else sells genuine tickets, whatever a resale site or a stranger on social media might claim, and City Hall has been explicit that anyone turning up without one will not get into the designated viewing areas along the river.
Prices have not moved from last year. Londoners pay £20 or £35 depending on where they want to stand, while everyone else pays £40 or £55. The cheaper tickets cover the Red, Green and Orange zones, which run from Victoria Embankment near Temple down to the accessible viewing area on Albert Embankment, opposite the London Eye. The pricier Blue, Pink and White zones take in the stretch from Westminster Bridge up past Waterloo Bridge, generally considered the better sightlines. None of those prices include Ticketmaster’s own booking fee.
Around 100,000 people are expected to pack into those zones on the night, with the display itself built around the London Eye. It opens with Big Ben’s chimes, runs through thousands of fireworks and hundreds of lighting cues set to music marking the year just gone, and closes, as it always has, with the crowd singing Auld Lang Syne. A second, smaller batch of tickets will follow later in the year for anyone who misses out this week, though it tends to be a much tighter squeeze than the first release.
City Hall frames the NYE fireworks as a showcase for the city as much as a party, and the numbers around it bear that out. Laura Citron, chief executive of Visit London, has pointed to the fireworks as a genuine boost to hospitality and tourism in the capital, with millions more watching on television and online around the world. Whatever the merits of that pitch, it is not an exaggeration that this is one of the most heavily broadcast nights London has each year, and one that plenty of the city’s restaurants, bars and hotels plan their own New Year’s trade around.
For anyone who has watched a previous release vanish within the day, the practical advice barely changes year to year. Decide which side of the river suits you, have payment details ready before midday, and do not wait until the second batch unless you are prepared to take your chances on a far smaller pool of tickets.
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