Wigmore Hall, at 36 Wigmore Street behind Oxford Street, is a 1901 recital room built by a piano firm to sell pianos, and it is still the best place in Britain to hear a string quartet, a song recital or a solo pianist. A weekday lunchtime concert costs £18, or £16 with a concession. If you are under 35 it costs £5, and that is the ticket most visitors never find out about.
The hall is small, rectangular and shallow, with the audience on one level plus a balcony, and the reason musicians talk about it is that you hear the instrument rather than the room. It programmes more than 170 concerts in a four-month block and over 300 in a season. Our round-up of London's music venues places it among the classical halls and our guide to classical music in London compares the five big rooms; this page is about how to get into this one, where to sit when you have paid the least, and what is on the ceiling.
Wigmore Hall at a glance (September 2026)
- Address
- 36 Wigmore Street, London W1U 2BP
- Nearest station
- Bond Street, 0.2 miles, on the Central, Jubilee and Elizabeth lines; Oxford Circus 0.4 miles
- Weekday lunchtime concerts
- 13:00, about an hour, no interval. £18, concessions £16
- Sunday Morning Concerts
- 11:30, £18 or £16, including coffee, sherry or juice
- Evening concerts
- Usually 19:30, about two hours with an interval. Five price bands; the cheapest is £18
- Under 35s
- £5 for concerts in the scheme, with a free online account and your date of birth
- Ages 8 to 24
- A limited number of free tickets, supported by the CAVATINA Chamber Music Trust
- Listing
- Grade II, list entry 1357377, listed 14 March 1966
What it costs, and the £5 ticket
The pricing is unusually simple for a London concert hall, and the bottom band of an evening concert costs the same as a lunchtime ticket.
| Concert | Time | Price (September 2026) |
|---|---|---|
| Weekday lunchtime | 13:00, about 1 hour | £18, concessions £16 |
| Sunday Morning Concert | 11:30 | £18, concessions £16, drink included |
| Evening recital | 19:30, about 2 hours | Five bands: £50, £43, £33, £27, £18 |
| Evening chamber concert | 19:30 | Five bands: £40, £37, £33, £27, £18 |
| Under 35s scheme | Any concert in the series | £5 |
| Ages 8 to 24 | Selected concerts | Free, limited numbers |
Underneath that sits the scheme that changes the arithmetic. Anyone under 35 can buy £5 tickets for concerts in the Under 35s series: you create a free account on the hall's website, add your date of birth, and the price appears when you log in. There is no queue, no lottery and no proof required at the door beyond the booking. For ages 8 to 24 there is a further tier, funded by the CAVATINA Chamber Music Trust, giving a limited number of free tickets: 16 to 24-year-olds with an account see the free price online, while tickets for 8 to 15-year-olds have to be bought in person or by telephone. Under-16s must be accompanied by a supervising adult who is also eligible for a free ticket, up to two children and two adults.
A pair of £5 tickets is a tenth of the price of the same two seats on the night. The Under 35s scheme needs nothing but a free account and a date of birth, and it applies across the season rather than to a handful of dates.
Photo: Wigmore Hall · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons · resized
The 1pm concerts, and the Sunday morning ones
The lunchtime series is the one to start with. It runs at 13:00, lasts about an hour with no interval, and is programmed as the Wigmore Hall/BBC Lunchtime Concerts, which means several of them are broadcast. In the autumn of 2026 there was a 13:00 concert on most weekdays and on some Saturdays: the week beginning Monday 28 September 2026, for instance, had one at 13:00 on the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and again on the Friday and Saturday of the following week. Do not assume Monday: check the day you are free.
The Sunday Morning Concerts are the hall's other institution and the more sociable of the two. They start at 11:30 every Sunday through the season, cost the same £18, and the price includes coffee, sherry or juice, which is served before the music rather than after it. Through the autumn of 2026 the run was continuous from early October to 20 December, mostly string quartets and duos. An 11:30 start and a finish before one o'clock leaves the whole afternoon, which makes this the easiest classical concert in London to fit into a short trip.
How the booking year works
Wigmore Hall does not put a whole season on sale at once. It sells the year in blocks, and each block opens first to members and Friends, in order of membership level, before general sale. In late September 2026 the block in priority booking covered concerts from January to March 2027, while the September-to-December block was already on general sale and selling.
The practical consequences are these. If your trip is more than three months away, the concerts for your dates may not be on sale yet, and the hall publishes the opening dates for each block on its Priority Booking page as an image rather than as text, so it is worth looking at that page rather than searching for a date. If your trip is inside three months, book straight away: the popular recitals in a 500-odd seat hall go before general sale is a week old. Membership starts at £5.50 a month and includes priority booking, which is worth it only if you live within reach of the place.
Buying in person is possible and sometimes the quickest route to a returned seat. The box office is open on days with both a daytime and an evening performance from 10:00 to 19:30, and on days with only an evening performance from 11:30 to 19:30, with no advance booking in the half hour before a concert starts. Telephone booking on 020 7935 2141 runs seven days a week from 10:00 to 18:00, or to 17:00 on days without an evening concert. The box office no longer takes cash.
Where to sit, and the staircase that decides it
The auditorium and the box office are both on the ground floor, straight in from Wigmore Street. The balcony is reached by the main staircase in the ground-floor foyer, and the hall states plainly that there is no lift access to the balcony. That single fact should decide your booking if stairs are a problem, because the cheaper seats tend to be up there.
On the floor of the hall, the room is shallow enough that there is no bad seat for sound. What varies is sightline: the platform is low, so from the back of the stalls a pianist's hands disappear behind the rows in front. For a piano recital the balcony front is the better £18 than the back stalls. For a song recital, where you want to see a face, the stalls win. The restaurant, bar, cloakroom and toilets are all on the lower ground floor, reached by the stairs at the back left of the foyer or by the lift beside them.
The cupola, and the argument about what it is
Above and behind the platform is the thing people photograph least and remember most: a great semi-domed painting filling the apse. The hall's own history calls it the cupola, says it was designed by the painter and muralist Gerald Moira, and describes it as Love and Psyche inspiring a performer and a composer in their search for the essence of music, with a genderless figure at the centre representing the soul of music, crowned by the golden light of harmony.
Historic England's list entry describes the same thing differently. It says the hall is barrel vaulted and that the main feature is the apse, with a mosaic by Gerald Moira flanked by a shallow relief framed frieze "probably by Anning Bell". Painting or mosaic, the two official accounts do not agree, and we are not going to pick for them. Either way, sit where you can see it, and look up before the players come on rather than during the Schubert.
1901 or 1904, and Collcutt or Colcutt
The hall was built by the Bechstein piano firm, whose showrooms were next door, as a place to demonstrate their instruments. It opened with two gala concerts on 31 May and 1 June 1901, with Ferruccio Busoni, Eugène Ysaÿe, Vladimir de Pachmann and the Lieder singer Raimund von Zur-Mühlen among the performers. German-owned assets in London were seized during the First World War, the hall closed, and in 1916 it was sold to Debenhams; it reopened in 1917 under its present name, and the audience at the first concert included Virginia Woolf.
Here the sources part company again. The hall's history gives the architect as Thomas Collcutt and the building date as 1901. Historic England's list entry, which covers 36, 38 and 40 Wigmore Street together, gives "1904 by T E Colcutt" and describes buff terracotta with a slate roof, free northern Renaissance and classical motifs, four storeys with a gabled attic, and the hall entrance to the right under an iron and glass canopy. Inside, it records a vaulted marble-clad passage leading to a barrel-vaulted foyer with a marble staircase. The 1904 date probably belongs to the showroom block rather than the hall, but neither source says so, so we print both. For a London concert room of a similar vintage in an entirely different condition, see Wilton's Music Hall.
Getting there, eating there, and the bag rule
Bond Street station is two hundred metres away on the Central, Jubilee and Elizabeth lines, and the hall points wheelchair users and buggies to the Marylebone Lane exit for step-free access. Oxford Circus is about four hundred metres. A great many buses run along Oxford Street, five minutes' walk south. The surrounding streets are the quiet end of Marylebone, and two other things worth a morning are within ten minutes on foot: the Wallace Collection in Manchester Square and Handel Hendrix House on Brook Street.
The hall has its own restaurant and bar on the lower ground floor. It opens two hours before an afternoon concert and two and a half hours before an evening one, with a Sunday pattern of tea, coffee and pastries from 10:00 to 11:30 and a full menu from 12:30 to 15:00. The kitchen closes 30 minutes before each concert and last orders are 45 minutes before, so a pre-concert meal has to start earlier than you would think; tables for the set menu are reserved through an outside booking service, and bar seating is first come, first served. The Food Standards Agency rates the restaurant 5, inspected on 6 March 2025. If you would rather eat elsewhere first, our guide to where to eat near Oxford Street covers the streets between here and Soho.
Two practical rules. The hall asks visitors not to bring large bags and carries out random bag searches, with refusal leading to non-admittance, so do not arrive with a suitcase. And there is no dress code worth worrying about: a lunchtime audience is in office clothes and a Sunday morning audience is in coats, as our note on what to wear in London explains.
Access
Step-free access runs from the street into the auditorium, and front-of-house staff will help. Toilets for visitors with mobility needs are reached by lift, there is a hearing loop in the auditorium, and assistance dogs are welcome. Wheelchair spaces and additional support are arranged through the box office on 020 7935 2141 rather than online. Some visitors and their companions are eligible for a 50% reduction, applied through the hall's free access list. The one hard limit remains the balcony, which has stairs and no lift. For the journey rather than the building, see step-free transport in London.
Frequently asked questions
How much are tickets at Wigmore Hall?
Lunchtime and Sunday morning concerts are £18, or £16 with a concession. Evening concerts are sold in five bands, with the cheapest at £18 and the most expensive around £50 depending on the artist. Anyone under 35 can buy £5 tickets for concerts in the Under 35s scheme, and a limited number of free tickets are available to anyone aged 8 to 24.
When are the lunchtime concerts at Wigmore Hall?
At 13:00, on most weekdays through the season and on some Saturdays, lasting about an hour with no interval. They are programmed as the Wigmore Hall/BBC Lunchtime Concerts. The Sunday Morning Concerts are a separate weekly series at 11:30, and the ticket price includes a drink.
How far ahead do Wigmore Hall tickets go on sale?
The season is released in blocks of three or four months, each opening to members and Friends by membership level before general sale. In late September 2026 the block in priority booking covered January to March 2027. The hall publishes the opening dates for each block on its Priority Booking page.
Is Wigmore Hall wheelchair accessible?
The ground floor is. There is step-free access from Wigmore Street into the auditorium, accessible toilets reached by lift, a hearing loop and a welcome for assistance dogs, and wheelchair spaces are booked through the box office. The balcony is reached only by the main staircase: the hall states that there is no lift to it.
What is painted on the ceiling at Wigmore Hall?
The apse behind the platform holds a work by the painter Gerald Moira showing Love and Psyche inspiring a performer and a composer, with a central figure representing the soul of music. The hall describes it as a painted cupola; Historic England's list entry calls it a mosaic, flanked by a relief frieze probably by Anning Bell. The two official descriptions differ.
Sources
- Wigmore Hall - History, including the cupola and the 1901 opening concerts (checked September 2026)
- Wigmore Hall - Visit us: address, box office opening times and transport (checked September 2026)
- Wigmore Hall - Inside the building, including balcony access (checked September 2026)
- Wigmore Hall - Accessibility and the access list (checked September 2026)
- Wigmore Hall - Under 35s scheme and CAVATINA free tickets (checked September 2026)
- Wigmore Hall - Priority Booking and how the season is released (checked September 2026)
- Wigmore Hall - What's on, concert times and ticket prices (checked September 2026)
- Historic England - Numbers 36 (Wigmore Hall), 38 and 40 Wigmore Street, list entry 1357377 (checked September 2026)
- Food Standards Agency - food hygiene rating for Wigmore Hall Restaurant, basement, 36 Wigmore Street W1U 2BP (checked September 2026)