How to Visit the Eiffel Tower: Hours, Tours and Everything You Need to Know (2026)

Most guides to this monument start with the height. That is the wrong end. What decides whether your visit works is a closing time nobody publishes, a booking window that just changed, and a bag rule with no way round it. Fares for the guided options sit with the guided tours of the Eiffel Tower, but read this first.

The three closing times, and the one that matters

The tower publishes three different closing figures and every one of them is right. They are measuring different moments, which is why the internet cannot agree about this.

Plan around the last ascent. Everything else is detail. The tower puts each day’s hours on its own calendar, and the full explanation is on the visiting page.

What it costs

Four official tickets, all published to the cent by the monument itself:

• €14.80 — stairs to the second floor. The cheapest way in.
• €23.50 — lift to the second floor. What most people buy.
• €28.00 — stairs to the second floor, then the lift to the top.
• €36.70 — lift all the way to the top.

Youth aged 12 to 24 pay roughly half and children 4 to 11 about a quarter, on proof of age. Under-fours are free and still need a free ticket. Note the third line: climbing the stairs first saves you €8.70 on exactly the same view from 276 metres.

How far ahead to book

Lift e-tickets go on sale 60 days ahead. Stair e-tickets go on sale 30 days ahead. For June to September, school holidays and public holidays, book as early as you can — that is the tower’s own advice, not ours. Top-floor slots sell first and sunset slots go before those.

If it is sold out

You are not finished. Three routes stay open, and the tower says so itself on every page of its own site.

• The on-site ticket offices keep selling for an immediate visit.
• The official online office releases same-day e-tickets, sometimes for the next thirty minutes.
• A guided departure, where the operator bought the ticket weeks ago.

What none of them does is skip the security. Everyone goes through both checks, and what to expect on the day sets out how long that takes.

Two security checks, and a bag rule with no workaround

The first check is at the entrance to the site. The second is at the pillar, before you board. Allow 15 to 20 minutes for the first one; that is the tower’s own figure.

Then the rule that ruins more last days in Paris than anything else: there are no lockers, no storage and no cloakroom in or near the Eiffel Tower. A luggage sizer at the check turns away anything over the limit. Leave the suitcase at your hotel or a station. The published list of refusals also covers drones, glass objects, non-folding strollers, walking sticks, padlocks and anything that could be a weapon — a pocket knife counts, and nobody will hold it for you.

Getting there, and which entrance

The nearest station is Champ de Mars – Tour Eiffel on RER C, five minutes on foot. Bir-Hakeim on line 6 is eleven, École Militaire on line 8 is sixteen, and Trocadéro on line 9 is twenty-two — take Trocadéro anyway on a first visit, because you come out facing the whole tower across the river.

There are two entrances, one on the south side and one on the east, each with separate queues for ticketed and unticketed visitors. Once you are through, the colour tells you where to go: green kiosk for the lift, blue kiosks for the stairs. Every approach, including the seven Sundays when Bir-Hakeim is shut, is on the map page.

Which floor to buy

The tower’s own pages name what the second floor shows you: the Louvre, the Grand Palais, the bends of the Seine, Montmartre, Invalides and Notre-Dame. From 161 metres higher those become shapes. If the view is the point, the second floor is the better floor and the cheaper one. The full comparison is on the second floor and summit page.

How long to allow

About two hours for the second floor and closer to three if you are going to the top, plus 15 to 20 minutes of security before either. The wait that varies most is the second lift queue at 115 metres, which is separate from the one on the ground and is the thing travellers mention more than any other part of the ascent.

And a warning about your ticket time, because it does not mean what it looks like: it is the time you must already be beneath the tower, in the ticketed queue. Not the time to arrive at the gate.

Go in the evening

The tower’s own recommendation, and it is right. Numbers thin out after 8pm, the golden lighting comes up at nightfall on sensors, and the tower sparkles for the first five minutes of every hour until it closes. Book an hour before sunset and one ascent gives you the city in daylight, then lit.

Sunset moves more than four hours across the year here, so the same 6pm slot is a night visit in December and an afternoon one in June. Month by month is on the weather page, and the lighting mechanics are on evening visits.

What changes on 29 September 2026

Two rules land the same day. Stairs tickets start requiring an advance reservation. And any group of more than nine people, guide included, has to buy online rather than at the ticket office — with a guide allowed only one group of up to eight per 30-minute slot, and any guided visit mandatory at least as far as the second floor.

If you are travelling with a party of ten or more this autumn, that is worth knowing before you plan anything else.

Tours that fit a first visit

Eiffel Tower Guided Tour by Stairs with Optional Summit by Lift

674 steps to the second floor with a guide, and the top by lift if you add it.

From $53 per person

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Paris: Eiffel Tower Summit or 2nd Floor Reserved Access

A timed ticket collected before you arrive, and a host who walks you to the pillar.

From $65 per person

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Paris: Eiffel Tower Summit Small-Group Guided Tour Max 6 People

Six people, the top floor included outright, and Gustave Eiffel's office explained.

From $152 per person

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