Tourists at Buckingham Palace will be able to walk through its famous front gates and across the forecourt for the first time, just as guests do for official royal events.
Visitors paying to go inside the London landmark from next year will get the chance to enter in the same way as those attending garden parties or royal receptions.
It comes as the Royal Collection Trust (RCT), which manages public openings of the site, is also opening up its East Wing outside the traditional summer tourist season.
The 2025 plan follows the success of this year’s summer opening when it welcomed a record-breaking number of visitors and allowed access to the wing, which includes the palace’s famous central balcony, for the first time since it was built 175 years ago.
King Charles III is known to want to give people greater access to royal buildings – with a report when Queen Elizabeth II was still alive saying he hoped to transform them from ‘private spaces to public places’ as monarch.
Delicate cleaning of a Chinese pagoda in the East Wing of Buckingham Palace in June
Preparations are made in the Centre Room in the East Wing of Buckingham Palace in June
Members of Royal Collection Trust staff walk through the Principal Corridor in the East Wing
The 90-minute guided tours, from January to May and costing £90, will offer a more in-depth look at the history of the rooms in the East Wing at a time when the palace is not usually open to the public.
The royal residence, which serves as monarchy HQ, is undergoing a £369million refurbishment to update the palace’s electrical cabling, plumbing and heating system over ten years.
A working palace, it is the King’s official residence in London, and where he conducts his audiences and receptions.
But Charles’s favoured dwelling to stay overnight in the capital remains his nearby home Clarence House.
East Wing guided tours will be available from Friday to Monday from mid-January to late May.
For the first time, visitors will be able to enter through the palace’s front gates and proceed across the forecourt, just as guests do for official royal events.
Further details and on-sale ticket dates will be announced in due course.
The palace’s East Wing was built between 1847 and 1849 to accommodate Queen Victoria’s growing family, and the development enclosed the former open horse-shoe shaped royal residence.
George IV’s opulent oriental-style seaside palace, the royal pavilion in Brighton, was sold to finance the building work and its contents, some of the finest ceramics and furniture in the Royal Collection, were moved to the east wing and inspired the Chinese-themed decor of its principal rooms.
They were carried from Brighton in 143 shipments on artillery carts, and although some items were loaned back to the pavilion, major items, like 42 fireplaces, were incorporated into Buckingham Palace along with tables, chairs, clocks and vases.
Guided tours of the east wing, which also include the palace’s state rooms, will take visitors along much of the 240ft-long principal corridor, and include the yellow drawing room and centre room behind the balcony.
Preparations in the Yellow Drawing Room in the East Wing of Buckingham Palace in June
Preparations are made in the Centre Room in the East Wing of Buckingham Palace in June
Preparations in the Yellow Drawing Room in the East Wing of Buckingham Palace in June
The yellow drawing room features an oriental-style fireplace from George’s seaside pleasure palace, an elaborate gilded curtain rail and even some of the pavilion’s wallpaper that was discovered in storage by Queen Mary and hung at her request.
Victoria and her consort furnished the corridor with chairs, side tables, large pagodas and Chinese porcelain, including an incense burner in the shape of a Buddha.
Highlights in the centre room include a newly restored glass chandelier, shaped to resemble a lotus flower, and two Chinese 18th-century imperial silk wall hangings, presented to Victoria by Guangxu, Emperor of China, to mark her Diamond Jubilee in 1897.
The public will not be able to step onto the balcony although they will have views down The Mall.
Guided tours of the palace’s State Rooms – which do not include the East Wing – are offered already at the palace during winter months, from November to January, with some tours in late spring and around Easter time.
But the extra East Wing tours will be seen as a shift towards greater public access to the historic building throughout the year.
People outside the Buckingham Palace gates, which will be opened for paying tourists in 2025
The Buckingham Palace gates were boarded up in March after a car crashed into them
Guests walk through the famous Buckingham Palace gates for a garden party on July 23, 1931
Meanwhile, tickets for the traditional summer opening of the palace’s State Rooms, from mid July until late September, and the East Wing in July and August go on sale today.
And new £1 tickets to Windsor Castle and the Palace of Holyroodhouse have been announced for 2025.
The cut-price entrance fee will be available between January and April to people receiving universal credit and other certain benefits in a bid to make the royal residences more welcoming and inclusive to all.
Those eligible can bring up to five members of their household along with them to explore the Berkshire castle or the palace in Edinburgh for £1 each.
Guided tours of St James’s Palace in London including a view of the Chapel Royal, where Prince George and Prince Louis were christened, will also be available on selected weekends in spring 2025, following trial openings several years ago.
Tickets and visitor information can be found at rct.uk.
