What’s Open in London on Christmas Day (+ What Isn’t)
If you are in London on Christmas Day, the city stops in a way that few visitors are ready for. No trains anywhere in the country, no Tube, no buses, every large shop closed by law, and most of the big museums and attractions shut for the day and often for the two days either side.
It catches people out because many cities run a reduced timetable on Christmas Day, and London runs none. A hotel three miles from the centre becomes a taxi fare each way, a Christmas lunch that was never booked becomes a sandwich from a corner shop, and the museum you were saving for the 25th is closed until the 27th.
More runs than the headlines suggest, though, and you can arrange it all in advance. Taxis, coaches from the airport, the Royal Parks, two Thames cruises, church services at St Paul’s and Westminster Abbey, and a fair number of hotel restaurants and Chinatown tables are all open on the day. The catch is that the best of them are booked by October, and the Abbey’s free tickets go in November within minutes of release.
This guide covers exactly what is open and closed in London on Christmas Day 2026, how to get in from the airports when nothing else is running, where to eat and what it costs, and the handful of things to book before you fly. We check every closure and rule here against the operators’ own announcements each year and update the specifics as they are confirmed.
Good to know: taxis are the only way around London on 25 December. Black cabs run on the late-night tariff all day plus a £4 festive surcharge, and Uber runs too, with surge pricing rather than a fixed rate.
TIP: the one booking that settles both lunch and the afternoon is the City Cruises Christmas Day lunch cruise from Westminster Pier, one of the few things in London that runs on 25 December.
The short version
| Closed on 25 December | Open/Available on 25 December |
|---|---|
| All Tube, Overground, Elizabeth line, DLR, trams and buses | Taxis and Santander Cycles |
| All National Rail services | National Express coaches, including from the airports |
| Every shop over 280 square metres | The Royal Parks, free and open as usual |
| Almost every major attraction | Church services, a few tours and cruises, a handful of cinemas |
| Winter Wonderland and Christmas at Kew | Hotel restaurants and much of Chinatown, booked ahead |
There is no public transport at all
No Underground, no Overground, no Elizabeth line, no DLR, no trams and no National Rail anywhere in the country. There are no buses either, and there have not been on Christmas Day since 1979. The cable car is closed too, though it does run on Boxing Day.
Four things do work:
- Black cabs, Uber and private hire. Fewer drivers than usual and Uber surges, so book ahead where you can. Every black cab has a wheelchair ramp, so this is also the accessible option on the day.
- Santander Cycles, the hire bikes, run normally.
- National Express coaches from Victoria Coach Station, which stays open.
Taxis cost more, and the amount is fixed rather than improvised. Black cab meters run on Tariff 3, the late-night rate, all day on public holidays. On top of that, there is a flat £4 surcharge on every journey between 8 pm on 24 December and 6 am on 27 December. Transport for London sets this, so it is the same in every cab.
If where you are staying is not within walking distance of where you want to be, a taxi arranged in advance is the only way there.
Arriving or leaving on Christmas Day
Flights run on 25 December. The trains that normally take you into London from the airports do not.
No Heathrow Express, no Elizabeth line, no Piccadilly line, no Gatwick Express, no Stansted Express, no Thameslink and no Luton rail link. All of them are part of the national shutdown.
That leaves three options, and whichever one suits you is worth arranging before you fly. National Express runs coaches on Christmas Day from Heathrow, Gatwick, Luton and Stansted into Victoria Coach Station, and has done so for years.
A pre-booked private transfer works. Or a taxi from the rank, at the rate described above, where the Christmas Day queue is long and drivers are scarce.
Left luggage is the other thing worth sorting in advance. Storage desks at the main railway stations sit inside stations with no trains that day, and app-based services depend on host shops and cafes being open. Ask your hotel to hold your bags and confirm it before you travel rather than assuming.
What is closed
Attractions
Some close for three days, some for one, and the difference matters if you are in London for the whole week.
| Closed | Dates |
|---|---|
| British Museum | 24, 25 and 26 December |
| Natural History Museum | 24, 25 and 26 December |
| V&A South Kensington | 24, 25 and 26 December |
| Science Museum | 24, 25 and 26 December |
| Tate Modern and Tate Britain | 24, 25 and 26 December |
| National Gallery | 24, 25 and 26 December |
| Tower Bridge Exhibition | 24, 25 and 26 December |
| Churchill War Rooms | 24, 25 and 26 December |
| London Eye | 25 December only |
| London Zoo | 25 December only |
| Warner Bros. Studio Tour (Harry Potter) | 25 and 26 December |
| Hyde Park Winter Wonderland | 25 December only |
| Christmas at Kew | 25 December only |
| Sky Garden | 25 and 26 December |
Winter Wonderland and Christmas at Kew both run from mid-November to 3 January and take only Christmas Day off, so if those are on your list, any other date in the season works.
Westminster Abbey and St Paul’s are a special case. Both hold full services on Christmas Day, and neither takes sightseeing visitors, so you can go in to worship but not to look round. St Paul’s Christmas Day services are unticketed; the Abbey’s need one of the November tickets, covered below.
Assume anything not listed here is also shut and check its own site, because a few of the big ones do not publish a Christmas statement at all.
Shops
Under the Christmas Day (Trading) Act 2004, no shop in England or Wales larger than 280 square metres may open to customers on 25 December. The fine for doing it is up to £50,000, so this is not a matter of company policy. Every supermarket, department store, and large chain is shut.
The law exempts a few categories, including smaller shops, petrol stations, pharmacies, and shops inside airports and railway stations. In practice, the big chains close their small convenience branches too, so do not count on a Tesco Express being open.
Buy anything you might need, medicines included, by the afternoon of Christmas Eve, when the big stores also close early. For a pharmacy on the day itself, the NHS publishes a bank holiday rota each November, and NHS 111 will tell you which one near you is open.
What is actually open
Fewer are open than on a normal day, but more than most people expect.
The parks
Hyde Park, Green Park, St James’s Park, Regent’s Park and Greenwich Park are all open and free, with no booking and no closure. The Christmas lights are still on, and a deserted Regent Street is worth the walk.
The main paths in all of them are surfaced and broadly level, which matters on a day with no buses to fall back on.
The Christmas Day swim in Hyde Park
The Serpentine Swimming Club has raced on Christmas morning since 1864, and for the Peter Pan Cup, presented by J M Barrie, since 1904. It starts at 9 am at the Serpentine Lido and it is free to watch.
You cannot enter it on the day. The race is limited to club members who have swum in the winter series and hold a handicap.
Bear in mind that with no buses running, the Serpentine is a decent walk from anywhere you might be dropped off.
Cruises, tours and one bus route
A small number of operators run on 25 December, and they are busy for the obvious reason.
- City Cruises runs a Christmas Day lunch cruise and a Christmas Day sightseeing cruise from Westminster Pier. Lunch on the river solves the meal and the afternoon in one booking.
- Golden Tours runs a Christmas Day hop-on hop-off bus, with a ticket valid on 25 December only, past Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square, the London Eye, St Paul’s and the Tower. This one doesn’t include the river cruise or the walking tours bundled into the standard multi-day tickets.
- Golden Tours’ three-hour Sights and Sounds of Christmas coach tour runs on the morning and the afternoon of Christmas Day, and the morning departure includes entry to the Sung Eucharist at Westminster Abbey, which is the only way into that service without a November ticket. Both are covered in our guide to Christmas tours in London.
- A guided walking tour covers the Westminster sights on Christmas Day, with an optional St Paul’s extension. Check the meeting point on any walk, because some meet outside Underground stations that are closed that day.
- Coach day trips with Christmas lunch included run on 25 December itself. Golden Tours has three, each ten to eleven hours from Victoria Coach Station: Oxford, the Cotswolds and Stratford-upon-Avon; Windsor, Oxford and Avebury stone circle (Windsor Castle itself is closed on the day); and Canterbury and Greenwich. With no trains running, this is the only way out of London and back on the day.
Our guide to Christmas cruises in London covers the full festive programme, and Christmas Day is just one small part.
Cinemas and an ice rink
Both major cinema chains open a handful of London screens on Christmas Day, with films starting early afternoon and the last one finishing by early evening. Which sites open changes every year and the lists go up in mid-December.
The ice rink at JW3 on Finchley Road opens on Christmas Day.
Where to eat on Christmas Day
Four kinds of places open on 25 December: hotel restaurants, pubs doing a pre-booked Christmas lunch, restaurants that do not observe Christmas, mostly in and around Chinatown, and a handful of independents doing a single sitting.
Nearly all of them work the same way. A set menu, a fixed sitting time, a per-head price that includes service, and payment in full when you book.
The differences are in what you get for the money, so this is the price ladder as it stands for 2026, with last year’s price shown where a restaurant has not yet published this year’s.
What Christmas Day lunch costs in London
| Where | What | Per person |
|---|---|---|
| The top end | ||
| The Ritz | Six-course Christmas Day lunch, live band, jacket and tie | £670 adult, £365 child (2026) |
| Claridge’s Restaurant | Christmas Day lunch | £550 (2025) |
| The Landmark, Winter Garden | Christmas Day lunch under the palms | £425 (2025) |
| The Rubens at the Palace, English Grill | Five courses, sittings 1 pm to 7 pm | £325 adult, £162.50 child under 12 (2026) |
| The Ned | Christmas Day lunch, children six to twelve half price | £250 (2025) |
| The middle | ||
| The Guinea, Mayfair | Three-course pub Christmas lunch | £175 (2025) |
| The Landmark, Great Central pub | Christmas Day lunch, 12 pm to 3 pm | £150 (2025) |
| Oscar at the Charlotte Street Hotel | Christmas Day lunch with a glass of Champagne | £150 (2025) |
| Trafalgar Tavern, Greenwich | Christmas Day lunch by the river | £135 (2025) |
| The Windmill, Clapham | Christmas Day lunch | £125 adult, £15 child (2025) |
| Veeraswamy | Indian Christmas Day menu at London’s oldest Indian restaurant | £120 (2025) |
| Anglesea Arms, Kensington | Pub Christmas lunch | £107 (2025) |
| The budget end | ||
| The Rubens at the Palace, Curry Room | Indian festive menu, two or three courses | £60 or £70 (2026) |
| The Delaunay, Covent Garden | À la carte, three courses from | £64.50 (2025) |
| Thai Square, Trafalgar Square | Set menus, open every Christmas Day since 1998 | From £46 (2025) |
| Chinatown | Normal à la carte menus, no festive premium | Menu prices |
The top of the ladder is a full day out with entertainment and a dress code, and it sells out first.
Most of the pubs and restaurants on this list sit between £100 and £175 a head for a three- or four-course Christmas lunch with a set sitting time. That is the price most visitors will pay for Christmas Day in London, so it is worth booking early enough to have a choice at that level.
The Curry Room at the Rubens is worth a mention on its own. It is a hotel restaurant a five-minute walk from Buckingham Palace; it opens on Christmas Day, and the Indian set menu is £60 for two courses or £70 for three, with a lobster dish among the festive options.
If you are staying on past Christmas Day, First Table offers 50% off the food bill (drinks are full price) for the first table of a sitting at restaurants across London, for a small booking fee. First Table say availability on Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year’s Day is extremely limited, so it is one for the days either side rather than the day itself.
Pubs
A good number of London pubs open on Christmas Day for a pre-booked lunch, usually one sitting between 12 pm and 3 pm, set price, paid in advance.
Young’s and Fuller’s both open a selection of their pubs, and the well-known independents fill by September. A smaller number open for drinks only, from around midday to mid-afternoon, and some of those will do a sausage roll and nothing more, so it is worth asking before you set out.
Chinatown
Chinatown is the real budget answer. A dozen or so restaurants on and around Gerrard Street open on 25 December with their normal menus and no festive premium; some stay open late, and some take walk-ins.
Chinatown London publishes its list each December (in 2025 it included Canton, Golden Phoenix, Lotus Garden, Orient London and China Modern), and Plum Valley and Rasa Sayang have opened on the day for years. Ring ahead on the day rather than relying on a list, because the line-up changes and tables go fast.
The same goes for Thai Square on Trafalgar Square, Veeraswamy and the Cinnamon restaurants, Tayyabs in Whitechapel, and a growing number of West End restaurants that have started opening on the day, including Hawksmoor at St Pancras and Burger and Lobster.
Booking and deposits
The good tables go in September and October, earlier than almost anything else in London. The Ritz sold its 25 December menus in mid-September.
Almost everything at this end is prepaid in full and non-refundable, with no transfer to another date. The Ritz requires full, non-refundable prepayment in writing. Several Christmas Day cruises cannot be cancelled once booked.
Book Christmas lunch after the flights, not before. If the trip moves, the lunch does not.
Check the dress code before you pack. The Ritz requires a jacket and tie at lunch and black tie at dinner, and does not admit jeans or sportswear at either. Many people arrive in London with a suitcase packed for walking round in December.
Church services, and the November deadline
St Paul’s Cathedral holds Midnight Eucharist on Christmas Eve and a Choral Eucharist and Choral Evensong on Christmas Day, and none of those need a ticket. Arrive early, because they fill. Its carol services at 4 pm on 23 and 24 December are the ones allocated by free ballot, which opens in the autumn.
Westminster Abbey works the other way round. Its two carol services on 23 and 24 December, Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve and the Sung Eucharist on Christmas morning all need a free ticket, released in four batches over two days in mid-November through Eventbrite, two tickets per booking. They go within minutes. The Abbey’s other Christmas services are unticketed.
If you miss the November release, Golden Tours’ Christmas morning coach tour includes entry to the Abbey’s Sung Eucharist as part of the tour, and is the only other route in that we know of.
If a Christmas service at the Abbey matters to you, put a November reminder in the diary to watch for tickets, not a December one to turn up.
Every parish church in London holds free Christmas services that need no booking, and several of the smaller central churches are beautiful. Southwark Cathedral, St Martin-in-the-Fields and Brompton Oratory are all worth a look at their own websites in December.
Christmas Eve and Boxing Day are both different
Christmas Eve runs more or less normally during the day and then stops early. Transport winds down through the evening and there is no Night Tube. Big shops close early in the afternoon. If you are out for a carol service or Midnight Mass, assume you will walk home or take a taxi, and note that the £4 taxi surcharge starts by 8 pm.
Boxing Day is a different day again. Shops open and the sales start. The West End reopens too, and the Boxing Day pantomime matinee is the most popular performance of the season, covered in our London theatre guide.
The Tube, buses and trams run a reduced Sunday service. The Elizabeth line and the Overground run a reduced service or none at all depending on the year’s engineering work, most train operators run nothing, and Transport for London uses the day for work that closes sections of line.
So Boxing Day works for central London on foot or by Tube, but not for a day trip out of the city unless you have checked that specific route.
If you are planning Christmas in London now
- On 25 December, being able to walk to things is what matters. Book somewhere central.
- Book your flights first, then Christmas lunch in September or October, since the lunch will be non-refundable and cannot move.
- Set a November reminder for Westminster Abbey service tickets and the St Paul’s carol service ballot.
- Arrange your airport transfer before you fly if you land or leave on the day.
- Shop on Christmas Eve morning for anything you might need, and earlier for medicines.
- Put the big attractions on 27 December or later, or earlier in the trip. Several of the major museums close from 24 to 26 December.
For the rest of the season, see our guides to events in London in December, our guide to London in December, Christmas things to do in London and New Year’s Eve in London, and if you are staying on for the 31st, the New Year’s Eve cruises are the other thing to book early.
Transport for London publishes its festive timetables in early December, and cathedral service times and cinema listings go up in November and December. The closures and rules above are the settled annual pattern, and we update the specifics each year once they are confirmed.
