You have just paid 20 pounds for the privilege of entering Britain. The UK's electronic travel permit, the ETA, went up from 16 pounds to 20 on 8 April 2026, the second rise in two years, and every traveler in your party needs one of their own, children included. So here is the consolation, and it is a real one: once you are through the border, the most expensive rooms in London cost nothing to walk into.
Every national museum in the city is free. Not discounted, not free on Tuesdays: free, permanently, to the standing collections. The British Museum, the National Gallery, both Tates, the V&A, the Natural History and Science museums, the National Portrait Gallery, the Wallace Collection. This is not an accident of generosity. The museums that had started charging in the 1980s and 1990s dropped the fees on 1 December 2001 in exchange for government money to cover the loss, and admission has stayed free since. The same government review found visits to the V&A ran 180 percent higher a decade after the charge went.
The newest of them opened this spring. The V&A East Museum opened in Stratford on 18 April 2026, free and with no booking, its two permanent "Why We Make" galleries built around 500-odd objects and co-curated with east London youth groups. Its warehouse sibling a short walk away, the V&A East Storehouse, opened in 2025 and is also free; the David Bowie archive kept inside it is worth the trip on its own.
The catch is honest and small. Special exhibitions are ticketed separately: the V&A East's opening show, on Black British music, runs from 22.50 full price (24.50 at weekends), 11 for under-26s (less with a student or Art Fund concession), and free for members. Skip them if you are counting pennies. The standing collections are the reason people come, and they are the free part. Book a timed slot for the British Museum in summer, when the walk-up queue is real. Everywhere else you walk straight in.
Getting between them is capped. Tap the same contactless card in and out all day and London will never charge you more than 8.90 pounds for travel across zones 1 and 2, which hold nearly everything you came to see. (The figure you will still see quoted, 8.50, is last year's; it is 8.90 now.) Buses are cheaper still: a single fare is 1.75 pounds with an hour of free changes, held there by a separate City Hall freeze on bus and tram fares, and if you touch a train at any point the bus fares fold into that same 8.90 ceiling rather than stacking on top of it. The Mayor has frozen the pay-as-you-go caps until March 2027, so the 8.90 holds for the rest of your year. One rule catches people out: I keep the whole day on a single phone tap, not an Oyster for some trips and a card for others, or the system runs two separate tallies and neither one reaches the cap.
Then there is when you come. London hotels are cheapest in the depth of winter and dearest in high summer: PwC forecasts an average London room at roughly 160 pounds a night in the January-to-March quarter against roughly 220 at the summer peak, about a quarter less in the cold months. A winter weekday buys you the same free galleries in half-empty rooms.
Add it up. The 20-pound permit is the one line you cannot argue with. After that: a capped 8.90 for the day's transport, a few pounds for lunch, and the best of the city for nothing. Come in February, walk in without booking, and the day itself costs little more than the lunch and the permit that got you in.
