Plan your visit to the Metropolitan Museum, New York

Planning a visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York comes down to a handful of facts, and most of the confusion online comes from pages that got one of them wrong years ago. Here they are, checked against the museum's own pages on September 29, 2026. You don't need to book. One ticket is good for both of the museum's buildings on the same date, the Met Fifth Avenue and the Met Cloisters. Both are closed on Wednesdays. Fifth Avenue stays open until 9 pm on Fridays and Saturdays. And the only line nobody avoids is the security check.

This page is the map of our visitor section. Below you'll find each of those facts explained, how the two sites fit together, a checklist for the days before you go, and a link to the page that covers each topic in depth.

No. The museum's Plan Your Visit page says it in one sentence: "Tickets can be purchased online, but advance tickets are not required." There is no time slot either. The hourly tickets you may remember were a Covid measure from the 2020 reopening and they're gone. Buying online has one practical advantage, which the museum spells out: with an online ticket "you may proceed directly to any gallery entrance", so the desks in the Great Hall are no longer your problem. Pages that sell "timed" or "reserved" Met entry are describing a system that no longer exists.

As of September 2026 the museum's own ticketing page charged $30 for adults, with reduced rates for seniors 65 and over, visitors with a disability and students, and nothing for children 12 and under. Pay-what-you-wish now covers two groups: New York State residents, and students from New York, New Jersey or Connecticut, who may pay as little as a cent. Tourists from elsewhere pay the posted price. There are also free-entry programs (Bank of America's first full weekend of the month for its cardholders, military ID in summer, IDNYC and others) and a cheaper membership level that only people living more than 200 miles from the museum can buy. All of it, with the rules behind each case, is on our page about Metropolitan Museum admission, prices and free entry.

Yes, on the same date. The museum's wording is "All tickets include exhibitions and same-day entry to both Met locations for the date printed on your ticket." Two consequences: special exhibitions cost nothing extra, and you can leave for lunch and come back. What you can't do is spread the ticket over several days. The old three-day ticket ended in September 2020, even if some pages still promise it.

Every Wednesday, at both sites. Fifth Avenue also shuts on four dates a year: Thanksgiving, Christmas Day, New Year's Day and the first Monday in May, the day of the Costume Institute benefit. The Cloisters keeps the three holidays but opens on that Monday in May. The rest of the week, Fifth Avenue runs from 10 am to 5 pm, stretching to 9 pm on Fridays and Saturdays. Up at the Cloisters the doors also open at 10, and the closing time moves with the seasons: 5 pm through the warm half of the year (March to October), 4:30 pm from November to February. The museum publishes nothing on its quietest hours, and we don't invent them: our page on opening hours and the best time to visit works from what the calendar does tell you.

Keep Wednesday out of your plan: both sites are shut every week. Travel guides updated as recently as September 2026 still get the closing day wrong, so trust the museum's calendar over theirs.

Not a ticket line. Since no booking is needed, and an online ticket takes you straight to a gallery entrance, the queue that matters is security. The visitor guidelines are blunt about it: "all visitors and members must pass through a security check. Please plan for lines at the entrances." Members and tour groups queue there too, and nothing you can buy gets you around it. What does speed it up is arriving with little to inspect.

Less than people expect. Luggage and large bags are not allowed in the building, and not at the coat check either, so don't come straight from the airport with a suitcase. A small backpack is allowed as long as it hangs on your chest or you hold it. The only drink allowed is water in a secure bottle. Tripods, selfie sticks and drones are banned without prior permission; non-flash photos for personal use are allowed in most galleries. There is no dress code beyond shirts and shoes. The full list, with what to bring in each season, is on our page about rules, bags and what to bring.

They are one museum on two sites, more than a hundred blocks apart. The Met Fifth Avenue, at 1000 Fifth Avenue by 82nd Street, is the building everyone means by "the Met": the Egyptian galleries, European paintings, the American Wing, arms and armor. The Met Cloisters, up in Fort Tryon Park (99 Margaret Corbin Drive) close to the top of the island, is the museum's branch for medieval European art and architecture, built around reassembled cloisters and gardens above the Hudson River. The Cloisters is not on Museum Mile and has nothing to do with Fifth Avenue except the ticket.

The ticket is the link. Whatever you pay at one site admits you to the other on the same date. Doing both in a day is possible but takes planning. By subway (A train to 190th Street, then a walk through Fort Tryon Park) count on about an hour door to door; the museum's own estimate for the M4 bus is about an hour and 25 minutes. In winter the Cloisters closes at 4:30 pm, so leave Fifth Avenue by 2 pm if you go uptown second. Most people who manage both start at the Cloisters when it opens and finish downtown, and a Friday or Saturday gives them until 9 pm on Fifth Avenue. Accessibility is also different: Fifth Avenue has step-free entrances at 81st Street and through the garage at 80th Street, while the Cloisters, a landmark building, has cobblestones on the approach and, by the museum's count, roughly 60 steps inside between the main entrance and the admissions desk; a free shuttle serves visitors who need a step-free way in. Everything else about the northern site is in our guide to the Met Cloisters.

Most problems at the Met are avoidable with a minute of checking at the right moment. Here's the sequence we'd follow, from a week out to the morning of the visit.

More than usual, and it's worth checking before you set your heart on a gallery. On September 29, 2026 the museum's Plan Your Visit page listed the Cantor Roof Garden, the Modern and Contemporary galleries, and the Ancient West Asia and Ancient Cyprus galleries as closed for renovation. The roof's last season ended on October 19, 2025, and the museum has announced its reopening for 2030, with the new Tang Wing. The Ancient Near East galleries (400 to 406) are shut until a reopening the museum has announced for 2027, so the winged guardian figures from Nimrud are out of view, and on September 29 the museum's own gallery data also marked several Egyptian galleries closed, among them 116 to 120. The Temple of Dendur, in gallery 131, was marked open. Individual rooms open and close from one day to the next. The museum says outright that it cannot guarantee access to all galleries at all times; its gallery closures list is the page to check on the day. How to plan a route around the closures is on our page about what to see in two hours, half a day or a day.

For Fifth Avenue, the museum's own directions start with the 4, 5 or 6 train to 86th Street and a walk of three blocks west, about ten minutes; the M1 to M4 buses run along Fifth and Madison Avenues. From the west side you cross Central Park on the M79 or M86 bus. For the Cloisters it's the A train to 190th Street. Routes, entrances and the accessible options are on our page about getting to the Metropolitan Museum.

As for how long to stay: no visit covers the whole museum. Two hours is enough for a short route through a few collections; half a day lets you add one department in depth; a full day still leaves most of the building unseen. We lay out a route for each case in what to see in two hours, half a day or a day, with the museum's interactive map as the reference for gallery numbers.

A tour is useful if you want a thread through the collections in two hours; our guide to choosing a Metropolitan Museum tour explains what formats exist, what "admission included" really covers, and the museum's rules for outside guides. With children, the museum is easier than its size suggests: children 12 and under are free, front-facing baby carriers and most strollers are welcome, and there's a free play space for ages 3 to 11. See the Metropolitan Museum with kids. For visitors with limited mobility, hearing or sight, the access programs and step-free routes are on our accessibility page.

City passes are a quick one: none of the big ones (CityPASS, Go City and the like) includes the Metropolitan Museum, and its admission policy states that it "does not accept vouchers or passes from any outside ticket sellers." How to decide whether a pass still pays for the rest of your trip is on do New York City passes include the Metropolitan Museum? If you're building a longer stay around the museum, with Central Park, Fifth Avenue and other museums on the days the Met is closed, start with our itineraries around the Metropolitan Museum. And if you have a specific question, the visitor FAQ answers the common ones in two or three lines each.