How Much Does It Cost To Go Ice Skating In London?

How Much Does It Cost To Go Ice Skating In London?

Expect to pay about GBP 12.65 to GBP 28.50 for an adult ticket at London's main seasonal rinks, with child tickets roughly GBP 9.35 to GBP 15, plus small booking fees at some venues. Hyde Park Winter Wonderland is the cheapest of the headline rinks when you book off-peak in advance, Somerset House is the most flexible on timing, and Hampton Court Palace publishes its dates but holds prices on its own listing.

That range covers the three rinks most visitors actually skate at: the Winter Wonderland rink in Hyde Park, Skate at Somerset House, and the Hampton Court Palace ice rink. Each prices differently, and each throws in something the others do not. Winter Wonderland sells 45-minute sessions in three price bands that move with demand, so the same skate costs GBP 12.65 on a quiet Monday in late November and GBP 19.25 on a Saturday in mid-December. Somerset House uses dynamic pricing inside a published band, adults GBP 13 to GBP 28.50, and adds a flat GBP 1.50 per-ticket fee at checkout. Hampton Court Palace runs from 20 November 2026 to 3 January 2027, excluding Christmas Day, and sells its tickets through its own rink site. If you're planning your trip around the Hyde Park rink, our guide to Winter Wonderland's return in 2026 covers the confirmed dates, ticket prices and what's new this year.

One thing worth knowing before anything else: the rink that used to anchor most "skating in London" lists no longer exists. The Natural History Museum ice rink has closed permanently and there is no 2026 season, a fact the museum states plainly on its own page. Ice Rink Canary Wharf is also not operating for the 2026 winter season. The market has consolidated around fewer, bigger rinks, which makes planning simpler but concentrates demand on peak evenings, so the price you pay is increasingly a function of when you book, not just where you skate.

If you are building a full evening around a skate rather than treating the rink as the whole night out, the walking tours on this site slot in neatly. The Lights and Bites Routemaster Bus, from $60 per person and rated 4.1 from 185 reviews, runs 1.5 hours through the West End lights with festive bites along the way, and an early-evening skate at Somerset House followed by that walk is a realistic single itinerary.

What Does Skate At Somerset House Cost?

Somerset House charges adults GBP 13 to GBP 28.50 and children GBP 11 to GBP 15, plus a GBP 1.50 fee per ticket, with the exact price set by date and time slot. The rink runs 11 November 2026 to 10 January 2027 in the Edmond J. Safra Fountain Court, and entry to the courtyard is free for non-skaters, so companions can watch without paying.

The band is wide because Somerset House prices dynamically: a midweek daytime slot in November sits near the bottom of the range, a prime Saturday evening in the run-up to Christmas sits near the top. General sale opened at 10am on 25 September 2026, with a pre-sale for newsletter subscribers before that, which tells you something about how demand is managed: the cheapest slots are the ones bought earliest. Under-12s must be accompanied, one adult per five children, and family tickets save 10%.

New for the 2026 season, Somerset House has extended its sessions, doubling the skating time for the standard price on selected slots, and added a first K-Pop Party on 23 November with the Korean Cultural Centre UK. Skate Lates run Wednesday to Friday evenings from 12 November with DJs, and the rink also runs reduced-capacity relaxed sessions and dedicated wheelchair sessions, both worth checking on the venue's page if either applies to your group. The official Skate at Somerset House page carries the live calendar.

How Much Is Winter Wonderland Ice Skating?

The Winter Wonderland ice rink, the UK's largest open-air rink, sells 45-minute sessions at advance adult prices of GBP 12.65 off-peak, GBP 17.05 standard and GBP 19.25 peak, with child off-peak at GBP 9.35. Entry to Winter Wonderland itself is a separate ticket: Off-Peak GBP 1.00, Standard GBP 5.50, Peak GBP 8.25, booking fee included, and rides and attractions cost extra.

The rink sits around the Victoria bandstand under a canopy in Hyde Park, and Winter Wonderland runs 19 November 2026 to 3 January 2027, closed only on Christmas Day. Two separate costs trip people up here. First, the entry ticket: everyone aged 2 and over needs one, it must be pre-booked for a specific date and a one-hour arrival slot, and the off-peak bands apply every Monday to Thursday in November, when entry is GBP 1.00. Second, the rink ticket, which is bought on top. Book the rink in advance and the adult price is GBP 12.65 off-peak, GBP 17.05 standard, GBP 19.25 peak; buying on the day costs more. The official tickets guide lays out the full slot-by-slot price map.

There is a genuine discount lever built into the 2026 pricing: spend GBP 25 or more on attractions, rides, games, packages or food and drink in a single pre-booked online transaction and your entry ticket is free. New for 2026, Ride and Game Credit can be pre-booked standalone at GBP 20, GBP 30 or GBP 50, at up to 10% savings versus buying on the day, and the GBP 30 and GBP 50 options qualify for the free entry unlock. For a family planning to skate and ride anyway, that arithmetic matters more than the headline rink price. If you're budgeting for a full festive day out, our guide to Santa grotto prices in London for 2026 shows what those visits typically add to the bill.

Here is the full cost picture for the 2026 season's headline rinks, in GBP, with everything that is separately chargeable made explicit:

Hampton Court Palace Ice Rink Dates And Tickets

The Hampton Court Palace ice rink runs 20 November 2026 to 3 January 2027, excluding Christmas Day, with sessions typically from 10am to 8pm daily, and skate hire is included in the ticket price. The palace publishes current prices on its own rink listing rather than in a fixed band, so check the live page before booking; the dates themselves are confirmed.

Two details make this rink worth the trip out to Richmond. For 2026 the ice has been expanded by 8 metres, under a canopy of 18,000 fairy lights, with a central Christmas tree returning to the middle of the rink, and organisers expect up to 100,000 skaters across the season. It also runs reduced-capacity relaxed sessions daily from 10am with static lighting and softer music, a genuinely rare offering among London rinks, and the official Historic Royal Palaces page confirms the dates and the accessibility sessions.

The palace itself adds a second seasonal draw this year: the Winter Palace installations and performances run 28 November 2026 to 3 January 2027 and are included in palace admission, so a skate plus a palace visit is a full day out rather than a single activity. If you are pairing the trip with central London plans, the Dickens Small-Group Walk, a year-round 3-hour walking tour that runs through the Christmas season, from $120 per person, covers the Covent Garden and Dickens geography that a Hampton Court day leaves untouched. The rest of the planning pages sit on Christmas In London.

Which London Rinks Are Closed In 2026?

The Natural History Museum ice rink has closed permanently, with no 2026 season, and Ice Rink Canary Wharf is not operating for the 2026 winter season. Both venues state this on their own pages, so any guide listing either rink as bookable this winter is working from an old brochure, and the practical effect is that demand concentrates on Somerset House, Hyde Park and Hampton Court.

The Natural History Museum rink was for years the default "Christmas skate" image of London, the one with the tree in the middle and the museum facade behind it. The museum's own page reads "has now closed", the gardens having been redeveloped for urban wildlife, and the museum is additionally closed 24 to 26 December. Canary Wharf's rink confirmed its 2026 absence in a September update. No rink has been announced at the Tower of London for the 2026 season either.

For a family whose plans were built around one of the closed rinks, the honest substitutes are the ones above, plus Alexandra Palace, the year-round north London rink that adds a tree and festive music in winter and sells spectator tickets at GBP 2.50 to GBP 3.00 for those who would rather watch. The family angle is covered in more detail in our guide to Santa grottos and family days out, and the full rink-by-rink rundown, including booking mechanics, sits in our ice skating guide for London.

How Can You Pay Less For Ice Skating In London?

The three reliable savings are booking off-peak and in advance, exploiting Winter Wonderland's free-entry unlock at GBP 25 of pre-booked spend, and using non-skater free entry at Somerset House so only part of the group pays to skate. A fourth lever is timing: off-peak rink pricing at Winter Wonderland applies every Monday to Thursday in November, when the same ice costs GBP 12.65 instead of GBP 19.25.

Booking early is not just advice here, it is the pricing mechanism. Winter Wonderland's advance prices hold until 23:59 the day before your visit, after which on-site prices apply, and the half-million GBP 1.00 off-peak entry slots are released for the whole November run of Mondays to Thursdays. Somerset House's cheapest slots went first when general sale opened on 25 September 2026. Hampton Court expects up to 100,000 skaters this season against limited session capacity, so late December weekend sessions are the ones that disappear.

The free-entry unlock deserves its own arithmetic. A family that pre-books GBP 30 of Ride and Game Credit at Winter Wonderland saves the 10% credit discount and gets the entry ticket, worth up to GBP 9.50, free; a family that books a package such as Festive Favourites, from about GBP 36.50 child and GBP 44.50 adult advance, gets entry bundled in. Compare that against paying GBP 8.25 peak entry plus GBP 19.25 peak skating per adult separately and the package wins on most December weekends. Our Winter Wonderland tickets guide works through every band in detail.

The savings stack up differently depending on who is skating and when, so here is how the main levers compare for a typical family of two adults and two children:

A slightly different saving is to make the skate the cheap half of the evening and spend nothing on the entertainment around it. The Markets Walk, Mulled Wine Included, from $61 per person and rated 5 from 72 reviews, is a 1.5-hour guided walk through the lights and markets with a mulled wine in hand, and it pairs with a cheap off-peak skate on the same night better than two ticketed attractions would.

What Should You Know Before You Book A Session?

Know the session length, the arrival window and the hire policy before you pay: Winter Wonderland sessions are 45 minutes, Somerset House has extended selected sessions to double time for the standard price in 2026, and Hampton Court includes skate hire in the ticket. Book the rink and the venue entry as separate items where they are separate, and expect timed arrival slots at both Hyde Park and Kew-style attractions.

Practical points, in the order they bite. At Winter Wonderland, your entry ticket locks you to a one-hour arrival slot, 10am to 8pm, and the rink session is a separate timed product, so the two need to line up; the site's rescheduling tool exists if plans move. At Somerset House, the GBP 1.50 per-ticket fee applies to every ticket including children's, and under-12s need an accompanying adult on the ice at a ratio of one to five. At Hampton Court, relaxed sessions run daily from 10am, and the palace's Winter Palace programme needs pre-booking separately if you want it on the same day.

Clothing is the other quiet cost. December in London runs daytime highs of about 8 to 10 C, dropping to 3 to 5 C at night, so gloves are not optional on an outdoor rink and most venues expect them. Layering advice for the whole season, not just the rink, is in our piece on how to dress for London in December. One more planning note: the rinks sit inside the wider November-to-early-January window, with Regent Street's lights on from 5 November 2026 and Covent Garden's from 12 November, so a skate in late November catches the lights without peak-December pricing.

If you book early and the cost is less than you feared, the answer to the evening question is often a combination: a cheap off-peak skate, then a walk through the lights. The Lights and Bites Routemaster Bus covers the West End's lit streets with festive food stops, and the Live Guide 1.5-Hour Ride from $33 per person, rated 4 from 5,439 reviews, does the same streets seated and warm, which has its own appeal after an hour on the ice.

Skating is one line in a December budget that also holds markets, lights and a possible day out of town, and the honest total depends on how many of those lines you fill. The rinks themselves, though, are the cheapest of the big seasonal experiences in London per hour of doing something, and the off-peak end of each range is genuinely attainable for anyone who plans a fortnight ahead rather than two days.

Common Questions About Ice Skating Costs In London

How Much Does It Cost To Go Ice Skating In London?

Adult tickets at the main seasonal rinks run from about GBP 12.65 for an off-peak advance session at Winter Wonderland to GBP 28.50 at Somerset House's top slots, with child tickets from about GBP 9.35. Somerset House adds a GBP 1.50 per-ticket fee, and Winter Wonderland requires a separate entry ticket of GBP 1.00 to GBP 8.25 on top of the skate.

Is Ice Skating At Winter Wonderland Included In The Entry Ticket?

No. Entry to Winter Wonderland is a separate ticket, Off-Peak GBP 1.00, Standard GBP 5.50, Peak GBP 8.25 with the booking fee included, and the ice rink's 45-minute sessions cost extra: GBP 12.65, GBP 17.05 or GBP 19.25 for an adult in advance depending on the slot. Rides and attractions are also charged separately.

Do You Have To Book Ice Skating In London In Advance?

At the seasonal rinks, effectively yes. Winter Wonderland requires a pre-booked date and arrival slot for entry, Somerset House's cheapest slots sold first when general sale opened on 25 September 2026, and Hampton Court expects up to 100,000 skaters this season against limited session capacity. Advance prices are also lower than on-the-day prices at Winter Wonderland.

Is The Natural History Museum Ice Rink Open In 2026?

No. The rink has closed permanently and there is no 2026 season; the museum's own page confirms it. The museum is additionally closed 24 to 26 December. The open seasonal alternatives are Somerset House, Hyde Park Winter Wonderland and Hampton Court Palace, plus the year-round rink at Alexandra Palace.

Can You Watch Skating Without Paying?

At Somerset House, yes: entry to the courtyard is free for non-skaters. At Alexandra Palace, spectator tickets cost GBP 2.50 to GBP 3.00. At Winter Wonderland, every visitor aged 2 and over needs an entry ticket even to watch, though off-peak entry is GBP 1.00 on Mondays to Thursdays in November.

Is Skate Hire Included In The Ticket Price?

At Hampton Court Palace, yes, skate hire is included in the ticket. At Somerset House and Winter Wonderland, check the live listing for the current hire policy before you book, as the details sit on each venue's booking page rather than in a published price band.