New Year's Eve in London

The official show is the Mayor of London's New Year's Eve fireworks. City Hall's event page lists it from 8:00pm on Thursday, December 31, 2026, until 12:30am on Friday, January 1, 2027. The Mayor's October 16, 2026, announcement says the display begins with Big Ben's bongs, then fireworks and lights around the London Eye, and ends with Auld Lang Syne. About 100,000 people are expected along the Thames. The same note says the fireworks have been ticketed since 2014.

You cannot stand in a viewing area without a ticket. Tickets are sold only by Ticketmaster. You can buy up to four, in two batches, and the event page has not published the date of the second batch. You cannot resell a ticket except at face value on Ticketmaster's fan-to-fan platform, and refunds are not available. Prices include VAT. A booking fee goes to the ticket seller; City Hall does not publish the fee on the event page.

• Category A (Blue, Pink and White): £55, or £35 for a London postcode.
• Category B (Red, Green and Orange): £40, or £20 for a London postcode.

The London discount is £20 off each ticket, checked against the billing address of the card you pay with. You may have to show proof of address, and the lead booker may have to show photo ID that matches the tickets. Book the same viewing area as the people you are with: you cannot move between areas. City Hall says the event is not suitable for young children. Anyone under 16 must be with an adult, and every person needs a ticket. Entry to the viewing areas is from 8:00pm to 10:30pm.

Where the viewing areas are

These six areas are the only viewpoints City Hall publishes for 2026, and every one is ticketed. Blue, Red, Pink, Green and White have no seating, and you cannot bring your own. Each area has accessible toilets, first aid, and somewhere to buy food and drink. Orange is the accessible area: some seating, a hearing loop, and a vehicle drop-off.

• Blue (Category A): north-bank Victoria Embankment, from Westminster Bridge to the Golden Jubilee Footbridge. A head-on view, opposite the London Eye. Victoria, Charing Cross or Embankment, gates 1 or 2.
• White (Category A): Westminster Bridge only, from the south bank at Waterloo (gate 8). No access from Westminster Underground. A side view close to the Eye.
• Pink (Category A): Waterloo Bridge only, from the south side via Southwark (gate 6). You cannot cross into another ticketed area. A side view of the Eye.
• Green (Category B): behind the London Eye, from Waterloo (gate 7). An up-close view from behind the wheel.
• Red (Category B): north-bank Victoria Embankment, from the Golden Jubilee Footbridge to Temple Avenue. A side view farther downriver. Holborn, which has no step-free access, or Blackfriars, gates 4 or 5.
• Orange (Category B, accessible): Albert Embankment by St Thomas's Hospital, from Waterloo (gate 9). A partial side view. City Hall says crowds stay small, the drop-off works best before 8pm, and the walk from Waterloo is about 2 km.

City Hall does not publish free public viewpoints for 2026. For New Year's Eve 2025, Transport for London told people without a ticket not to travel to Victoria Embankment, and pointed them to bars, restaurants, pubs and clubs, or to BBC One. That was last year's advice. A cruise ticket is not a viewing-area ticket. A fireworks view on a Viator listing is the operator's claim, and it does not place you in one of these six areas.

Viator listed three New Year's Eve cruises for December 31, 2026. All three are City Cruises, all three meet at the address Viator gives as City Cruises, EC3N 4DT, and none lists a clock time. Read the time on the booking page before you count on a connection. Inclusions below are only what Viator lists.

London New Year's Eve Dinner Cruise is the only one with reviews: 4.63 from 8. That is a real score and a tiny sample. New Year's Eve Dinner Plus Cruise and New Year's Eve Celestial River Thames Cruise had none. Neither is a top pick.

Cruise	Duration	Departure, as listed	From	Reviews
London New Year's Eve Dinner Cruise	5 hours	City Cruises, EC3N 4DT. No clock time listed.	$679	4.63 from 8
New Year's Eve Dinner Plus Cruise	5 hours	City Cruises, EC3N 4DT. No clock time listed.	$755	No reviews yet
New Year's Eve Celestial River Thames Cruise	3.5 hours	City Cruises, EC3N 4DT. No clock time listed.	$531	No reviews yet

London New Year's Eve Dinner Cruise

Viator includes a fireworks viewing position, a 4-course dinner with tea or coffee, champagne on arrival and at midnight, half a bottle of wine, a vocalist and dancing, and shared tables of up to 10. Pickup and extra food and drink are excluded. Dress is festive: no jeans, no trainers. Add dietary requests when you book. Not recommended for children aged five and under. The policy is all sales final. The listing also says the operator may cancel for bad weather; do not assume that returns the money. The shared-tour cap is 15.

New Year's Eve Dinner Plus Cruise

Also 5 hours. The inclusions name a fireworks view, a 4-course dinner, champagne on arrival and at midnight, half a bottle of wine, a 500ml bottle of water, live music, dancing and a full bar. Sales are final, and this listing does not say the operator cancels for bad weather. The shared-tour cap is 150, and one booking can include up to 15 adults. No dress code is stated.

New Year's Eve Celestial River Thames Cruise

3.5 hours, and not a sit-down dinner: canapés, champagne on arrival and at midnight (a soft drink for children), live music and a full bar. The inclusions do not mention fireworks, so this page does not give it a fireworks view. Sales are final.

A Thames dinner cruise on any other night is a different product, with a cancellation window and a much lower from-price. Our Thames dinner cruise guide compares those, and the full set of boats is on Thames cruises. Do not book one of those and expect a New Year's Eve fireworks position.

City Hall has published the travel rules for the event. You cannot use Westminster Bridge, the Golden Jubilee Footbridge, Lambeth Bridge, Blackfriars Bridge or Waterloo Bridge before or after the fireworks. Vehicles, including buses, coaches, cars and bikes, must stay outside the restricted area. With the Metropolitan Police, vehicle access is restricted from 2:00pm on December 31 until about 6:00am on January 1, and closures can start at noon. Stations will be very busy when the event ends. Pick your side of the river before you arrive, because you cannot cross those bridges later.

TfL had not published a New Year's Eve 2026 passenger timetable when we checked on October 26, 2026. The latest public note was still the December 2, 2025 release, for New Year's Eve 2025. It said that, apart from planned closures, services would run all night, that some central stations might close at short notice, that some central buses would divert from about midday, and that you should not travel to Victoria Embankment without a fireworks ticket. That is last year's pattern. Check the TfL Journey Planner closer to the night.

Night Tube runs on Friday and Saturday nights only, on the Central, Jubilee, Northern, Piccadilly, Victoria and Windrush lines. December 31, 2026, is a Thursday, so that service does not include it unless TfL adds one. Rail for London's Elizabeth line engineering access statement for 2027, issued July 10, 2026, eases access that night "to make provision for" an all-night Elizabeth line service, and withdraws the provision if the operator decides not to run it. That note is not a timetable, and it says nothing about the Tube.

Friday, January 1, 2027, is New Year's Day. The London Parade's location and timing page lists the parade that day, from 1pm to 4:30pm, with ticket holders asked to arrive from noon. Standing along the route is free. The streets it names are Piccadilly, Regent Street, St James's, Pall Mall, Trafalgar Square and Whitehall.

londonparade.com returned a 403 error when we tried to open it on October 26, 2026, so those details are the indexed text of that official page. Check it again before you go. For the days after, see our London in January guide. The days before are in the Christmas in London guide, and Hyde Park Winter Wonderland has its own tickets and dates page.

The Met Office's 1991–2020 averages for Heathrow, west of central London, put December at a high of 8.8°C (about 48°F) and a low of 3.1°C (about 38°F). Rainfall averages 57 mm, about 2.2 inches, on roughly 11 days with at least 1 mm. The month averages about 7 nights of air frost and about 55 hours of sunshine.

Those are long-term averages, not a forecast for December 31, 2026. The fireworks are outdoors, and five of the six viewing areas have no seating. Take a warm, water-resistant coat, a hat, gloves, and shoes you can stand in. Check the Met Office forecast the week you travel.

The three cruises above are the New Year's Eve bookings. For the days before or after, these are daytime sightseeing rides that were on sale for late December when we searched. They are not a fireworks plan.

London Eye River Cruise, from The London Eye, is a 40 minutes circular cruise from London Eye Waterloo Pier with live commentary, from $21, rated 4.78 from 2,032 reviews. The cancellation policy offers a full refund at least 24 hours ahead. The description on the same listing also says tickets are non-amendable and non-refundable, so read both before you pay. Arrive at London Eye Pier 15 minutes early.

Westminster to Greenwich Sightseeing Thames Cruise in London is the one-hour Westminster-to-Greenwich sightseeing cruise, with live commentary, from $23.

London in a Day: Tower of London, Westminster & River Cruise folds a Thames cruise into a full day at Westminster and the Tower of London, 6–8 hours, from $129. Neither daytime product is a New Year's Eve fireworks cruise.