Do New York City passes include the Metropolitan Museum?

No. None of the big New York City passes includes the Metropolitan Museum of Art: CityPASS and its C3 and C-All versions leave it out, and so do the passes of Go City, the company behind The New York Pass. We read each seller's own pages on September 29, 2026, and the Met appears on none of them. The museum closes the question from its side too: its complimentary admission page says it "does not accept vouchers or passes from any outside ticket sellers."

So a pass changes nothing about your Met visit. You buy a regular ticket from the museum (prices on our admission page), and it covers both of the museum's sites on its date. What a pass can still do is save money on the other things you plan to see, and whether it does is a sum you can work out in ten minutes. Below: what the passes list instead, how to do that sum, which museums near the Met a pass does cover, and how to plan a Met ticket around one.

Here is what each pass seller listed on its own website the day we checked. The line-ups change from year to year, so read the table as a dated snapshot and the conclusion as the part that has held: the Metropolitan Museum isn't on any of them.

The Go City wording is worth quoting because it is so direct. Its guide to visiting the Metropolitan Museum says: "Please note: the Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met) is NOT on our passes." Its Met-versus-MoMA article repeats the point from the other side: "Although you can visit MoMA with Go City, the Met is currently not included on our passes." Both pages carry a May 16, 2024 publication date and were still online on September 29, 2026.

CityPASS doesn't need a disclaimer, because its list is short. The ten CityPASS choices are the Empire State Building, the American Museum of Natural History, Top of the Rock, the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, Circle Line, the Intrepid Museum, the Guggenheim, Edge and the Whitney. MoMA is on C3 and C-All (C-All is simply all eleven) but not on the five-attraction CityPASS. The Metropolitan Museum doesn't appear on any of the three.

If a website tells you a New York pass "includes the Met", check the pass seller's own list before you pay. On September 29, 2026, none of them named the Metropolitan Museum, and the museum wouldn't accept their voucher at the door anyway.

The warning is there because the claim does circulate. An unofficial visitor guide to the Met was still telling readers in 2026 that passes such as The New York Pass include admission, and old forum threads remember a time when that pass listed the museum. Whatever the deal was back then, the museum's current policy rules it out.

Because it sells its own tickets and says so in writing. The first line of the museum's complimentary admission page reads: "The Met does not accept vouchers or passes from any outside ticket sellers. Please purchase your ticket at metmuseum.org or at a ticketing desk on-site." Its ticketing policy goes further: resales of any admission ticket "without prior and express authorization from The Met are strictly prohibited", tickets can't be transferred, and the museum reserves the right to turn away anyone whose ticket came from a seller it never authorized.

The word "pass" does turn up on the museum's site, and that trips people up, because it means something else there. The passes the museum accepts are its own guest passes, the Culture Pass run by New York City's public libraries, the Cool Culture family pass, and cards such as IDNYC, a reciprocal membership from a participating museum, or an AAM or ICOM card. None of them is a tourist card you can buy online. The full list, with who qualifies, is on our page about Metropolitan Museum admission and free entry.

Some resellers bundle a city pass with a Metropolitan Museum product. When we looked at one such bundle on September 29, 2026, the Met part was a separate guided tour sold alongside a Go City pass. Nothing wrong with that as a package. The pass still doesn't open the Met: you are buying two things, and the Met half is a tour, with the tour's own schedule, group size and admission arrangements. If that's what you want, judge it as a tour and compare it with the museum's own ticket plus the pass bought on its own. What to check in a Met tour listing is in how to choose a Metropolitan Museum tour.

It can, and the Met has nothing to do with the answer. Because no pass covers it, the Met ticket sits on both sides of the comparison: you pay it with a pass and you pay it without one. So it cancels out. What's left is a simple question: does the pass cost less than buying the other attractions one by one? Here is a method you can redo with your own list and today's prices.

1. List only what you would visit anyway, on the days you actually have. Leave out anything that's on your list only because the pass makes it look free.
2. Price each one at the ticket you would really buy. Pass sellers compare against a high number: CityPASS says its "Regular Price" combines "the highest published box office price" of each attraction. Its figure for the Natural History Museum, for example, is general admission plus a ticketed exhibition. If you would buy the plain ticket, use that price.
3. Subtract what you'd get free or cheaper anyway. The Whitney is free for visitors 25 and under, the Guggenheim for children 11 and under, and the Natural History Museum has resident pricing, which the museum itself limits to New York State residents (the other two per CityPASS's own price notes).
4. Compare that total with the pass price plus fees, per person.
5. Add the Met separately, at the museum's own rate for each person: full, senior or student, free for children 12 and under, pay what you wish for New York State residents (rates on our admission page). It raises your budget but leaves the verdict where it was.

Two imaginary adult visitors, both buying the five-attraction CityPASS. The attraction prices are the box-office figures CityPASS itself published on September 29, 2026, so they are on the high side by construction. The Met line is the museum's full adult price on the same day, $30, from its own ticketing page. To redo the sum, swap in your own attractions and the prices each seller shows today.

For someone who wants three observation decks the pass pays well, because deck tickets are expensive. For a museum-based plan it barely breaks even. One free entry is enough to flip a thin saving into a loss: Visitor A at 24 would do better paying at the door. And there's a second reason to be skeptical of the headline savings: observation decks price by date and time. On September 29, 2026, CityPASS noted that Top of the Rock ran from about $46 to $72 for an adult, and its comparison used the top of that range.

In both columns the Met adds the same full-price ticket. Families should run the sum per person, remembering that children 12 and under pay nothing at the Met with or without a pass, so there's no reason to buy a child's pass with the museum in mind.

This is where a pass and a Met visit fit together well. Several museums a short walk up Fifth Avenue, or a bus ride across Central Park, are on pass lists. Others, including the Met's own second site, are not.

The Guggenheim is the natural partner: CityPASS, C3, C-All and Go City all list it, and its building at 1071 Fifth Avenue (it fills the block from 88th to 89th Street) is about a 10-minute walk north of the Met's 82nd Street entrance, so a pass day there and a Met ticket on the same afternoon work without any backtracking. And the Met Cloisters needs no pass at all, because any Met ticket covers the Cloisters on the same date. If you're comparing museums by price, remember that entry to both Met sites costs one ticket. The Cloisters has its own page: the Met Cloisters museum, how to visit.

Buy the Met ticket from the museum, on its website or at a desk. The museum's ticket page says advance tickets are not required, so you can decide on the day. Then plan around four facts:

• The Met is closed on Wednesdays, at both sites. That's your best pass day: Top of the Rock, the Statue of Liberty or MoMA don't care what day it is.
• Fifth Avenue stays open until 9 pm on Fridays and Saturdays. Spend the daylight on pass attractions and walk into the Met in the late afternoon. The rest of the week it closes at 5 pm (September 2026). Current hours for both sites are on the museum's visit page, and timing advice on our page about opening hours and the best time to visit.
• A pass priced by the day loses value on a Met day. If your pass counts days, don't start it on a day you'll spend at the Met. CityPASS and C3 run for 9 consecutive days from first use and count attractions, not days, so a Met day in the middle costs them nothing.
• Pair by neighborhood. The Guggenheim and the Cooper Hewitt are a short walk north on Fifth Avenue. The Natural History Museum is across the park: the M79 crosstown bus runs between the two sides, and our itineraries around the Metropolitan Museum build a day around that crossing.

One more thing a pass won't do at the Met is get you through the door faster. There's no ticket queue you're obliged to join: buying online sends you straight to a gallery entrance. The only line everyone faces is security, and members and tour groups wait in it like everyone else.