Go to the National Gallery, and it is not a close call. If you have one visit in you, the National Gallery holds paintings by Leonardo, Titian, Velázquez, Rembrandt, Turner and Van Gogh, and the National Portrait Gallery does not. Both are free, both are on Trafalgar Square, and the honest comparison is not about quality but about time and mood.
The two buildings share a block and a postcode, which is why the question gets asked at all. They are not branches of the same museum. The National Gallery collects paintings because of who painted them; the National Portrait Gallery collects portraits because of who is in them. That one sentence decides most people's answer.
Our separate guides to the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery have the room numbers, the highlights and the floor plans. This page is only about choosing, and about what happens if you try to do both.
The comparison in one box (September 2026)
- Cost, either gallery
- Free. Donations invited; nobody asks at the door
- Time to do it properly
- National Gallery: two to three hours. Portrait Gallery: about 90 minutes
- Time to do it at all
- National Gallery: one hour for a dozen famous paintings. Portrait Gallery: 40 minutes for one floor
- Hours
- National Gallery daily 10am-6pm, Friday to 9pm. Portrait Gallery daily 10.30am-6pm, Friday and Saturday to 9pm
- Which is quieter
- The Portrait Gallery, almost always
- Which works in bad weather
- Both, which is why both are busy when it rains
- Doors
- National Gallery: Sainsbury Wing, corner of Pall Mall and Whitcomb Street. Portrait Gallery: Ross Place, off Charing Cross Road
The case for the National Gallery, in one paragraph
About 1,000 paintings are on display, covering European painting from the thirteenth century to roughly 1900, and a high proportion of them are pictures you have already seen reproduced somewhere. There is no sculpture court, no decorative arts wing and no modern collection to wade through, so the density of famous things per hour walked is higher than at any other free museum in London. If you have three hours in the centre of London and no strong opinions, this is where to spend them.
Photo: Yair Haklai · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons · resized
The case for the Portrait Gallery, which is a real case
Three things it does better.
It explains the rest of your trip. The Tudor rooms on the top floor put faces to the names you meet in every other building in London: Henry VIII, his six wives, Elizabeth I dressed as a political statement. If you are going on to Westminster Abbey or the Tower, an hour here first makes the rest legible. No painting in the National Gallery does that job.
It is finishable. The collection hangs in date order from the top of the building down, so you can walk from about 1300 to the present in ninety minutes and feel you have seen it. Nobody has ever finished the National Gallery.
It opens on Saturday evening. This is the single practical advantage that decides a lot of itineraries. The Portrait Gallery is open until 9pm on Fridays and Saturdays, with last entry at 8.30pm. The National Gallery's late is Friday only. There are very few free galleries in central London you can walk into at seven o'clock on a Saturday night, and this is one.
What an hour buys in each
An hour is the commonest amount of time people actually have, and the two galleries reward it differently.
| You have | National Gallery | National Portrait Gallery |
|---|---|---|
| 40 minutes | Not enough. You will see four or five pictures and spend the rest walking | Enough for Floor 3: Tudors, Stuarts, Georgians, the Romantic poets |
| 1 hour | A focused route past a dozen of the best-known paintings if you keep moving | The whole collection at a brisk pace, top floor to ground |
| 2 hours | The famous route plus real time in the Dutch and Venetian rooms | The collection plus a paid exhibition, or a long stop in the Tudor rooms |
| Half a day | Comfortable, and still selective | More than the building needs unless you eat there |
The asymmetry is the point. The Portrait Gallery is the right answer for a short, fixed gap in a day; the National Gallery is the right answer when the gallery is the day.
Where "free" stops
Both galleries are free for the permanent collection and both charge for temporary exhibitions, so the real comparison for a visitor on a budget is what the paid shows add and whether you need them. In autumn 2026 you do not.
- National Gallery: Renoir and Love, until 31 January 2027, with about 40 paintings including Bal du moulin de la Galette on loan from the Musée d'Orsay. £20 from Sunday to Thursday, £25 on Fridays and Saturdays. Under-18s free.
- Portrait Gallery: the annual painted portrait award ran to 7 October 2026, and the photographic portrait prize is listed for 5 November 2026 to 17 January 2027. Children under 12 visiting as part of a family get in free, a carer accompanying a disabled visitor is not charged, and a 10% reduction applies to students, disabled visitors and parties of ten or more. Nothing is added for booking.
Neither show is the reason to pick one gallery over the other. If money is the question, keep both free and spend the £20 on lunch. Our guide to London's free museums carries the wider comparison of opening hours across the national collections, and it is the page to bookmark rather than this one if you are planning several days of them.
The two front doors, and the bag rules that differ
Both entrances are on the wrong side of the building from where visitors expect, and both have security checks.
The National Gallery's only public entrance is now the Sainsbury Wing, on the corner of Pall Mall and Whitcomb Street, to the left of the central portico as you face the building. The grand steps in the middle are not a way in. The Portrait Gallery's main door is on Ross Place, near the corner of Orange Street and Charing Cross Road, round the back from Trafalgar Square.
The bag rules are where the two diverge in a way that matters if you are carrying anything.
| National Gallery | National Portrait Gallery | |
|---|---|---|
| Cloakroom | £3 per item, bags up to 56 x 25 x 45 cm | £2.50 or £5 per item, limited space |
| Wheeled luggage | Not allowed at all, including cabin bags | Not stated; folding bicycles are refused even in the cloakroom |
| Rucksacks in the galleries | Carried or worn as normal, subject to search | Worn on the front, carried by hand, or checked in |
| Rucksacks in paid exhibitions | Allowed if small | Bags over 35 x 25 x 15 cm are not allowed in at all |
| Photography | Allowed for personal use unless signed otherwise | Allowed in the main galleries; not in some exhibitions or loan displays |
If you are between a hotel and a train, deal with the case first; our guide to left luggage in London lists the station offices. Buggies are fine at both.
Access: the answer is not the same
This is the one criterion on which the Portrait Gallery might make the decision for you, and the answer is more complicated than "both are accessible".
Every entrance at the Portrait Gallery is step-free and there are lifts between all the floors, plus a Changing Places toilet on Floor -2 and free manual wheelchairs to borrow from the ticket desk, which the gallery asks you to book ahead. But the gallery itself points out that Leicester Square, Charing Cross Underground and Embankment have no lifts, and advises wheelchair users to arrive by taxi or car and set down at the corner of Orange Street and Charing Cross Road.
The National Gallery's Sainsbury Wing entrance is its accessible entrance, and Charing Cross mainline station, about 200 metres away, has step-free access from platform to street. That makes the National Gallery the easier of the two to reach without a car. See our guide to accessible London for the wider picture.
With children
Neither is a children's museum, and both work for about an hour if you go looking for details rather than masterpieces.
The National Gallery has more to hunt for: the skull stretched flat across Holbein's floor, the small dog at the feet of the Arnolfini couple, the locomotive coming through the rain on Turner's bridge. It also runs a family space at weekends and in the school holidays. The Portrait Gallery's advantage is that children recognise people, and the lower floors are full of faces from sport, music and television.
For a family of two adults and two children the cost is the same either way, which is nothing, so decide on stamina. One hour, one gallery, then Trafalgar Square.
Both in one day: the order matters
It is a two-minute walk between the two front doors, so doing both is easy, and the sequence is what makes it bearable.
- National Gallery first, from 10am. The first hour after opening is the quietest of the day, and this is the gallery where crowds cost you most.
- Out at about midday. Eat away from the square: Chinatown is five minutes north, or see where to eat near Charing Cross.
- Portrait Gallery in the afternoon, and start at the top. The lifts and escalator go to Floor 3; walk down through the centuries rather than up.
- On a Friday or Saturday, reverse it. Take the Portrait Gallery from about 6pm, when the rooms empty out, and you get the best two hours either building offers.
Do not try to add a third gallery. Trafalgar Square itself, with Nelson's Column and the Fourth Plinth, is a better twenty minutes than a third collection, and a cheap theatre ticket is a better evening. Our guide to museum late openings lists the other galleries that stay open after six.
Rooms shut in autumn 2026
Both buildings have work going on, and it is worth checking before you make a special journey for one picture.
At the National Gallery, building work for a new Research Centre due in 2028 has closed several rooms; in September 2026 the floorplan showed Rooms 7, 8, 16, 17, 17a and 31 closed and Rooms 9 and 30 open but empty. Two of the best-known paintings were away on loan in early autumn, Van Gogh's Sunflowers and Constable's Hay Wain; both are back on the walls (checked November 2026).
At the Portrait Gallery, the displays on the most recent floors change often. In autumn 2026 Room 32 was closed from 24 August to 8 October 2026, with Rooms 30 and 31 also closed from 21 September to 8 October. If contemporary portraits are what you came for, check first.
Neither gallery needs a ticket, but a free one saves the queue at the Sainsbury Wing. The National Gallery's optional free timed ticket gives fast-track entry and takes half a minute to book; it earns its keep at weekends, in school holidays and on wet afternoons. The Portrait Gallery recommends a free booking for the same reason. On a weekday morning you can walk into either.
Frequently asked questions
Which is better, the National Gallery or the National Portrait Gallery?
The National Gallery, for a first visit. It holds a far greater concentration of world-famous paintings, including works by Leonardo, Holbein, Velázquez, Rembrandt, Turner and Van Gogh. Choose the Portrait Gallery if you have only an hour, if you want British history rather than European art, or if you are free on a Saturday evening.
Are the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery the same building?
No. They are two separate institutions sharing a block on the north side of Trafalgar Square, with different entrances, different collections and different opening hours. It is a two-minute walk from one front door to the other, but there is no internal connection.
Is the National Portrait Gallery worth visiting if I have already seen the National Gallery?
Yes, and it is the better second visit precisely because it does something different. Ninety minutes gives you British history in faces from the Tudors to the present day, which changes how the rest of a London trip reads. It is also usually much quieter than its neighbour.
Do I have to pay at either gallery?
No. Admission to both permanent collections is free every day. You pay only for temporary exhibitions, for the cloakroom, and for anything you buy in the shops or cafés. The National Gallery's autumn 2026 exhibition costs £20 or £25 for an adult, with under-18s free.
Which gallery is open latest?
The National Portrait Gallery, on Fridays and Saturdays, until 9pm with last entry at 8.30pm. The National Gallery stays open to 9pm on Fridays only. Both close at 6pm on the other days, and the Portrait Gallery does not open until 10.30am.
Sources
- The National Gallery - Plan your visit: hours, entrance, cloakroom and bag rules (checked September 2026)
- The National Gallery - Floorplans and closed rooms (checked September 2026)
- The National Gallery - Renoir and Love: dates and ticket prices (checked November 2026)
- The National Gallery - Access (checked September 2026)
- National Portrait Gallery - Visit: hours, booking and access (Internet Archive copy, 28 August 2026) (checked September 2026)
- National Portrait Gallery - Floor plans and display closures (Internet Archive copy, 26 June 2026) (checked September 2026)
- National Portrait Gallery - Frequently asked questions: bags, photography and cloakroom charges (Internet Archive copy, 14 August 2026) (checked September 2026)