Visiting the Eiffel Tower: Hours, Tickets and Getting There

Nine-thirty in the morning to a closing time that depends which closing time you mean, four official tickets between €14.80 and €36.70, and two security checks that everybody clears whatever they are holding. Here is the practical detail, from the monument’s own pages, and where the guided tours of the Eiffel Tower sit against it.

The three closing times, and the one that matters

The tower publishes three different closing figures and every one of them is correct. They are simply measuring different moments, which is why so much of the web contradicts itself about this.

Plan around the last ascent. It is the only one of those five that decides whether you get up at all, and it is the one nobody publishes. The tower puts each day’s hours on its own calendar, so check yours before you fix a time.

What a ticket costs in 2026

These are the monument’s own published adult rates. It sets them and it sells them; we do not.

The reduced rates need proof of age, and the disabled rate matches the child rate and covers one companion. Under-fours go free but still need a free ticket, and the adult with them pays the full fare.

Which ticket to buy

Stairs to the second floor — €14.80

Gets you to: 115 metres, via the first floor. Costs: the cheapest way into the monument. Best for: anyone comfortable on about 674 steps who would rather climb than queue for a lift.

Lift to the second floor — €23.50

Gets you to: the same 115 metres, seated. Costs: €8.70 more than the stairs. Best for: most people, most of the time — this is the floor the views of individual monuments are sharpest from.

Stairs, then the lift to the top — €28.00

Gets you to: 276 metres. Costs: €8.70 less than the all-lift route to the same place. Best for: climbers who want the top and would rather spend the saving on the champagne bar when they get there.

Lift to the top — €36.70

Gets you to: 276 metres, with no stairs at all. Costs: the top of the official range. Best for: anyone for whom the height is the reason for the visit.

Booking windows: 60 days, 30 days, and 29 September

Lift e-tickets go on sale 60 days ahead and stair e-tickets 30 days ahead. Book as early as you can for June to September, school holidays and public holidays, which is the tower’s own advice. Top-floor slots go first, and the ones around sunset go before those.

From 29 September 2026 a stairs ticket needs an advance reservation. That is new, it is on the monument’s own rates page, and almost nobody has published it. If turning up and climbing was your plan, it stops being an option on that date.

If it is sold out online

You are not out of luck. The tower keeps selling at its on-site ticket offices for an immediate visit and says so on every page of its own site, and the official online office releases same-day e-tickets, sometimes for the next thirty minutes. A guided departure is the third route, because the operator has already bought the ticket before you book.

What none of those three does is skip the security check. Every visitor goes through two of them, and what to expect on the day sets out how long to allow.

Getting to the Eiffel Tower

Trocadéro is the longest walk and the one to take anyway if it is your first visit: you come out of the station facing the tower across the river, which is the photograph everyone has seen. Bir-Hakeim is shut on seven Sundays this autumn while line 6 is modernised.

Entry 1 or entry 2, and the two kiosk colours

There are two ways in: entry 1 on the south side and entry 2 on the east. Each has separate queues for people who already hold a ticket and people who do not, so join the right one. The gardens and the esplanade underneath are free to walk into — there is no free entry to the Eiffel Tower itself, but the ground beneath it costs nothing.

Once you are through, the colour tells you where to go. Green kiosk for the lift, blue kiosks for the stairs. It is the single most useful thing to know before you walk in, and it is not signposted in English at the gate.

How long to allow

The part that varies most is the lift queue between the second floor and the top, because that is a separate queue for a separate pair of lifts. Reviewers of these tours mention it more than anything else about the ascent.

Who cannot go to the top

The top and the stairways are closed to visitors with reduced mobility, in a wheelchair or on crutches, and the reason the tower gives is evacuation — which can be by stairs. The first and second floors are reachable by lift, and wheelchair users get priority access at the desks and the pillars.

The second floor is not a consolation prize. At 115 metres it is where the Louvre, the Grand Palais, Montmartre, Invalides and Notre-Dame all resolve into things you can point at, and the tower’s own pages say so. What is on each floor sets out the difference.