Borough Market is not quiet on a Monday. It is shut. Its own opening times read "Monday: Closed", and the stalls, the Green Market, Three Crown Square and the Borough Market Kitchen are all dark. What is open is the ring of permanent shops and restaurants around the edge, which are separate businesses with their own hours, and a Monday is the only day of the week when you can walk through Stoney Street without queueing. This page is about how to use that.
Our main guide to Borough Market has the full week's hours, the layout, the food tours and the history. This page takes the one day it does not trade, and it exists because the assumption that Monday is simply the market's quietest day sends people to a closed gate.
Borough on a Monday
- The market itself
- Closed. Its published times are Monday closed, Tuesday to Friday 10am to 5pm, Saturday 9am to 5pm, Sunday 10am to 4pm
- Address
- Borough Market, 8 Southwark Street, SE1 1TL, immediately beside London Bridge station
- Entry
- Free, on every day it is open. Nothing is ticketed
- What is open on a Monday
- The permanent shops and restaurants on Stoney Street, Park Street, Bedale Street, Cathedral Street, Rochester Walk and Southwark Street
- The Mondays it does open
- Bank holiday Mondays, and every day from late November for Christmas trading
- Why come anyway
- The lanes are between about 1.5 and 4 metres wide. On a Monday you can use them
The market's own timetable, and the Mondays that are exceptions
Read on the market's own site at the end of September 2026, the position is unambiguous: Monday is closed, and access on the other six days is free and open to everyone. That has been the pattern since the market added Sunday trading in 2021, which means it now trades six days and rests one.
There are two sets of exceptions, and both are Mondays.
Bank holidays. In 2026 the market opened from 10:00 to 17:00 on the May and August bank holiday Mondays. If your Monday is a bank holiday, check before you write the day off. The bank holiday Mondays in 2027 fall on 29 March, 3 May, 31 May, 30 August and 27 December, and our guide to bank holidays and opening hours has the full list.
Christmas trading. From Monday 30 November 2026 the market announced it would open seven days a week for the festive period, with weekday hours of 10:00 to 17:00, 10:00 to 18:00 on Wednesday 23 December, 08:00 to 15:00 on Christmas Eve, closed on Christmas Day, Boxing Day and Sunday 27 December, 10:00 to 15:00 on 31 December and closed on New Year's Day. Normal hours return on Saturday 2 January 2027. So for about five weeks of the year, Monday is a trading day.
Check the market's own page for the week you are coming. The market says its hours may change, and it publishes a separate festive timetable each autumn. Any third-party listing, including this one, is a snapshot: ours was taken on 28 September 2026.
Photo: Smiley.toerist · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons · resized
What is actually open: the ring around the edge
This is the part nobody explains. Borough Market is a market of trading stalls, and around it sits a ring of permanent shops and restaurants with street frontage, leases of their own and opening hours of their own. Several of them trade on Mondays. Every one below was checked on the Food Standards Agency register in September 2026, and the ratings and inspection dates are printed.
| Business | Address | Hygiene rating | Last inspected |
|---|---|---|---|
| Neal's Yard Dairy | 8 Park Street, SE1 9AB | 5 | 17 February 2026 |
| Padella | 6 Southwark Street, SE1 1TQ | 5 | 2 June 2026 |
| Brindisa | Units 9-10, The Floral Hall, Stoney Street, SE1 9AF | 5 | 3 February 2026 |
| Tapas Brindisa | 18-20 Southwark Street, SE1 1TJ | 5 | 18 August 2025 |
| Arabica | 3 Rochester Walk, SE1 9AF | 5 | 21 May 2025 |
| Bao | 13 Stoney Street, SE1 9AD | 5 | 20 October 2026 |
| Elliot's | 12 Stoney Street, SE1 9AD | 4 | 18 August 2025 |
Not every one of these opens on a Monday, and none of them publishes hours in a form we could read reliably. Padella's own site was showing a Monday menu for its Borough branch on the day we looked, which is about as close to confirmation as the internet gets. The practical rule is that the coffee and cheese shops open earliest and most reliably, the restaurants vary, and a telephone call settles it.
Do not go looking for these restaurants' websites. Two domains that once belonged to Borough Market businesses have lapsed and been taken over. One, which still looks like a restaurant address, now serves an online baby-equipment shop; another now serves a foreign-language gambling site. This is a well-documented hazard with small independent restaurants, and it is why we never link to one. Find the address, walk there, or telephone the number on the Food Standards Agency register.
Why a Monday in Borough is better than it sounds
The market's own warning is that visitor numbers are high at peak times and particularly on Saturday afternoons, and the reason it matters is physical: the lanes are narrow, between roughly a metre and a half and four metres, so a full market is a slow shuffle. On a Saturday you do not really see Borough Market; you are carried through it.
On a Monday you can look at the building. The Floral Hall is a cast-iron portico taken from the old Covent Garden flower market and re-erected here, and you cannot take it in with three hundred people between you and it. The Victorian market frame, the railway viaducts overhead, the cobbles and the way Stoney Street runs under the trains are all visible on a Monday and invisible on a Saturday.
It is also the only day the neighbourhood behaves like a neighbourhood. Borough High Street, Park Street and Bedale Street on a Monday morning are a working part of Southwark rather than a food attraction, and you get an idea of what the area is when nobody is queueing for a cheese toastie.
The Monday that works: a half-day plan
- Arrive at London Bridge before 10:30. The station is immediately next to the market and our station guide has the exits; the Borough Market exit is signed.
- Buy cheese on Park Street. The permanent shop there is one of the oldest presences in the area and does not need the market to be open.
- Walk the empty lanes. Stoney Street, Rochester Walk, Cathedral Street and Bedale Street, in that order, take fifteen minutes and are the market's actual architecture.
- Go into Southwark Cathedral. It is thirty seconds from the market, free to enter, open on Mondays, and has a free lunchtime organ recital most Mondays at 13:20.
- Eat a sit-down lunch rather than street food. This is the switch the day requires: the market's street-food stalls are what is missing, and the restaurants on Southwark Street and Stoney Street are what is there. Book if you want Padella, because it does not take the pressure off on a Monday.
- Finish at Bankside. Tate Modern and Shakespeare's Globe are both ten minutes west along the river and both open on Mondays; our page on the Globe covers what is on there outside the summer season.
The Monday organ recital is the best free half-hour in Borough. Southwark Cathedral puts on a free organ recital from 13:20 to 13:50 most Mondays, and it is thirty seconds from the closed market gate. Our page on free lunchtime concerts has the rest of the weekday circuit.
What a Monday costs, against a Saturday
Less, and the reason is structural rather than a bargain. The market's street food is priced for a captive weekend crowd; a sit-down lunch at a restaurant with a hundred covers and no queue is priced against other restaurants.
Our estimate for September 2026, for two people: £22 to £34 for a proper sit-down pasta or tapas lunch with a drink each, against roughly £26 to £36 for two portions of market street food, two coffees and a pastry eaten standing up. The Monday version is cheaper, warmer, drier and involves sitting down. What you lose is the range: one kitchen instead of forty, and none of the produce shopping.
If shopping is the point of your visit, Monday is the wrong day and there is no way round it. Come Tuesday to Friday before 11:30, which our main market guide identifies as the calmest trading window, or Saturday at nine when the gates open an hour earlier than the rest of the week.
If Monday is your only day
Three honest alternatives, in order of how well they replace it.
A food market that trades on Mondays. Very few do. The weekend markets of Bermondsey are firmly weekend markets: our guide to Maltby Street and the Bermondsey markets explains that the Ropewalk runs Saturdays and Sundays and that Friday is the day that gets you all three, so a Monday there is a row of shutters. The weekday lunch markets of the City are the real answer, and our guide to London's food markets lists which trade when.
The restaurant version of the same food. Our page on where to eat near London Bridge was written partly to solve this problem, and its recommendations are sit-down places rather than stalls. The George Inn on Borough High Street, three minutes away, is open and is a seventeenth-century galleried coaching inn, which the market is not.
Accept the swap. A Monday in Borough with the market shut is a good architecture-and-cathedral morning with a good lunch, and it is not a compromised version of a Saturday. If you came to London for a market, our comparison of Camden Market and Borough Market may send you north for the day instead: Camden trades seven days a week.
Frequently asked questions
Is Borough Market open on Mondays?
No. The market's own published times give Monday as closed, with Tuesday to Friday 10am to 5pm, Saturday 9am to 5pm and Sunday 10am to 4pm. The exceptions are bank holiday Mondays, when it has opened 10:00 to 17:00, and the Christmas period, when it opens seven days a week from late November.
Is anything open at Borough Market on a Monday?
Yes, the permanent shops and restaurants around the edge, on Stoney Street, Park Street, Bedale Street, Cathedral Street, Rochester Walk and Southwark Street. They are separate businesses with their own hours, so several trade on Mondays while the market stalls do not. Southwark Cathedral next door is also open, free, and usually has a free organ recital at 13:20.
What is the best day to visit Borough Market?
Tuesday to Friday before about 11:30, or Saturday at the 9am opening. The market itself warns that numbers are highest at peak times and particularly on Saturday afternoons, and the lanes are narrow enough that a busy market is slow to move through.
Do I need a ticket for Borough Market?
No. The market states that access is free and open to everyone. Paid food tours exist and are covered in our main market guide, but walking in and buying things costs nothing.
Is Borough Market worth visiting if the stalls are closed?
For an hour, yes, if you are interested in the building: the cast-iron Floral Hall, the Victorian market frame and the railway viaducts are all genuinely visible on a Monday and effectively invisible on a Saturday. For shopping or street food, no, and there is no way to work round it.
Sources
- Borough Market - Opening times, address and free access (checked September 2026)
- Borough Market - This week's opening times panel, showing Monday closed (checked September 2026)
- Food Standards Agency - Food hygiene ratings for Neal's Yard Dairy, Park Street SE1 9AB; Padella, 6 Southwark Street SE1 1TQ; Brindisa, The Floral Hall, Stoney Street SE1 9AF; Tapas Brindisa, 18-20 Southwark Street SE1 1TJ; Arabica, 3 Rochester Walk SE1 9AF; Bao, 13 Stoney Street SE1 9AD; Elliot's, 12 Stoney Street SE1 9AD (checked September 2026; Bao, 13 Stoney Street checked November 2026)
- Southwark Cathedral - What's on, including the free Monday lunchtime organ recitals at 13:20 (checked September 2026)
- GOV.UK - Bank holidays in England and Wales for 2027 (checked September 2026)