Open House Festival Visitor FAQs

Open House Festival 2026 will take place Saturday 12 - Sunday 20 September.

The programme will be published on the Open House Festival website on Wednesday 15 July 2026. Up to that point, the website will display the programme for the 2025 festival.

Absolutely everything in the Open House Festival is free to attend.

Some open days and events are ‘drop-in’. There is no maximum number of attendees for drop-in open days or events, although you might be required to queue at busy times. We strongly recommend you click the ‘add to my itinerary’ button, which registers your interest in the open day or event and means the organisers will contact you if there are any changes to the published programme.

Other open days or events are ticketed. Ticketed events have a maximum capacity, so can become fully booked. You will need to book in advance for all ticketed events.

You will need an Open House Festival visitor account to add open days or events to your itinerary and to book tickets.

Bookings go live at midday on Wednesday 19 August. To book ticketed activities, you will first need to register for an account. This account will also allow you to add drop-in open days or events to your itinerary, which we recommend doing in case we need to contact you regarding any changes to the activity as advertised.

Go to the Open House Festival website to register for an account. If you’ve registered for an account in previous years - including a volunteer account - you don’t need to register again. Your existing account will allow you to book tickets this year.

Go to the Open House Festival website and click on the ‘log in’ icon in the right-hand corner of the page. Alternatively, you can go directly to the login page via this link.

Follow the above steps to log in, but select ‘I’ve forgotten my password’ under the login button and you’ll be sent an automatically generated email to reset your password.

If you don’t receive an email to reset your password and it isn’t in your junk folder, you might need to adjust your antivirus settings.

You will find a list of all your bookings on the ‘My itinerary’ tab.

As usual, we expect to allocate tickets for the most in-demand and high security sites in the festival programme via public ballots. We don’t yet know which buildings will be included in the ballots this year, but we will announce that  both here and in the Open City newsletter later this year.

We expect to open the ballots on Wednesday 29 July and draw them on Monday 17 August. To enter the ballots you must first register for an account.

When viewing the calendar page of the Open House Festival website, use the ‘facilities’ filter (on the right-hand side of the page) to only view listings that have particular facilities available.

In the top right-hand side of each individual listing page is the heading ‘Access’, under which will be listed the facilities available at that open day or event. You’ll also find two headings, ‘Accessibility notes’ and ‘What to expect’, containing additional information which you might find useful. Please note that individual contributors are responsible for the information included here.

If you have any further questions about accessing festival activities please contact access@open-city.org.uk

There is no minimum age requirement for attending festival open days or events, unless where specified in an individual listing. If you’re planning on bringing children to an open day or event, please make sure you read all the information on the listing in detail.

When viewing the calendar page of the Open House Festival website, use the ‘facilities’ filter (on the right-hand side of the page) and select ‘family-friendly event’ to view only open days and events that have identified themselves as being suitable for children.

From midday on Wednesday 12 August, registered volunteers will be able to choose from a list of hundreds of different buildings that have requested volunteer support. If you don’t yet have a volunteer account, you’ll need to register for one. Please note, if you have volunteered in previous years, you do not need to register again.

Find out more information about being an Open House Festival volunteer.

Open House Festival is an annual celebration of London's architecture and neighbourhoods, and the people and communities behind them. Previously, the festival has been known simply as Open House or, when it was a shorter festival, Open House weekend. As one of a network of over 50 festivals worldwide, the festival is sometimes known as Open House London.

Open House Festival is run by Open City, a charity dedicated to making architecture and neighbourhoods more open, accessible and equitable. Our mission is to enable communities to learn about, experience and have a role in shaping places where they live. We collaborate with people from diverse communities to widen access to spaces, neighbourhoods, knowledge and careers they are often excluded from. We do this by creating educational and cultural programmes discussing, celebrating and opening up historic and contemporary buildings and landscapes.