Colosseum tickets in 2026: how to buy and what is included

A Colosseum ticket costs 18 or 24 EUR and is sold online only. Children under 18 enter free, but they still need a ticket — and that is the main trap that sends families back from the barrier.

In brief, if you have no time to read

• Buy only at ticketing.colosseo.it. It is the only official sales site.
• The standard ticket is 18 EUR, and it already includes the Roman Forum and the Palatine.
• Tickets open thirty days before the date of the visit.
• Children under 18 are free, but a ticket is compulsory and is booked online in advance.
• The ticket is personal: the holder's name is printed on it and can be changed only once.
• The underground sells out in the first minutes after sales open.

Which ticket to choose

There are six tickets for independent visitors, and they differ not in «quality» but in where exactly you are let in. The important thing that is almost never said plainly: every ticket already includes the Roman Forum and the Palatine Hill. There is nothing extra to pay for them.

Two points people most often trip over.

«Only Arena» is not only the arena. The name misleads: besides twenty minutes on the arena it includes the Forum, the Palatine and the SUPER sites. It does not, however, let you into the tiers of the amphitheatre itself.

Full Experience is not «two days running». You visit the Colosseum once, strictly at the booked date and time. But the Forum, the Palatine and SUPER can be visited the day before, the same day or the day after — the window is wider than is usually written.

What the SUPER sites are

SUPER is a set of places inside the Forum and on the Palatine that are closed on an ordinary ticket: the House of Augustus and the House of Livia, the Temple of Romulus, the shrine of Vesta, the Palatine Museum. They are not included in the 18 EUR ticket.

If you want to go in, there is a supplement: 4 EUR added to the «24h — Colosseum, Forum, Palatine» ticket. It must be bought for the same day or within twenty-four hours before or after your booked time. All the Full Experience tickets and Only Arena already include the SUPER sites.

With children under ten we would not pay the supplement: these are interiors and mosaics that interest an adult, and by that point the child has already walked enough around the Forum.

Children under 18: free, but a ticket is compulsory

Entry to the Colosseum is free for everyone under 18 — regardless of nationality. A Russian passport changes nothing here.

And now the trap. Free entry does not mean «without a ticket». A separate zero-price ticket must be booked for the child on the same official site. You cannot simply arrive with a child on your own ticket: at the entrance the tickets are counted by head.

Buy the children's tickets in the same transaction as the adults' — then the whole family will have the same entry time. At the entrance you may be asked for a document confirming the child's age, so keep the birth certificate or passport to hand.

About the booking fee. Many sites state that 2 EUR is added to every ticket, including a free child's one. In the official regulations the 2 EUR figure is named only for Roma Pass holders, who book their entry time separately. We found no confirmation on the official pages that the fee is charged on all tickets — so simply check the total on the last step before paying.

Days when entry is free for everyone

The Colosseum takes part in the state free-days programme. Entry is free:

• on the first Sunday of every month;
• 25 April — Italy's Liberation Day;
• 2 June — Republic Day;
• 4 November — National Unity Day.

An honest warning: with children this is a bad idea. On free days there are so many people at the Colosseum that the security queue stretches for hours and inside there is no room to move. You save 36 EUR and lose a day.

How to buy a ticket, step by step

1. Open ticketing.colosseo.it and choose the section for individual visitors — it is meant for groups of 1 to 8. A family of four fits here.
2. Work out the date: tickets appear exactly thirty days before the day of the visit. If you are travelling in high season, set an alarm for the day sales open.
3. Choose the ticket type and the entry time. Entry is strictly by slot.
4. Add every member of the family to one order, including children with a free ticket.
5. Enter the names. The ticket is personal, and the name on it must match the document.
6. Pay by card. The ticket arrives by email; there is no need to print it — at the entrance they scan your phone screen.

We give instructions but do not sell tickets and have no connection with the official site. Responsibility for the booking stays with you: check the date, time and spelling of the names in the email straight after paying.

The personal ticket: what it means in practice

The holder's name is printed on the ticket, and it can be changed only once and only before midnight seven days before the visit. There are just three grounds for a change: an obvious typo in the name, a ticket type mixed up within a single order (a free one issued to an adult, for instance) and serious circumstances confirmed by documents.

What follows from that. Do not buy tickets «in my name, we will sort it out later» if the travelling party might still change. And check the spelling of the names in Latin letters at once: transferring a ticket to somebody else the day before the visit will not work.

How far ahead to buy

Tickets appear thirty days ahead, and that is the only window. You cannot buy earlier either on the official site or from resellers — their «tickets six months ahead» mean a promise to buy later on your behalf, and if sales run out you are left with no ticket and a refund.

• Spring and autumn — buy 2–3 weeks ahead.
• Summer, June–August — on the very day sales open.
• The underground — only at the moment sales open: visitors are admitted in groups of at most 25, every 15 minutes, so places are physically few.

The underground and the attic: special rules

If you did get a Full Experience with the underground, note two things. You must arrive thirty minutes before the time on the ticket — that is a requirement, not a suggestion. And groups are sent in on a schedule, so being late means you will not get in.

With children under eight we would not take the underground: the passages are narrow, the floor uneven and there is little for a child's eye to see. The attic — the upper tiers with the panorama — goes down better, but it means height and stairs.

Opening hours and last entry

The Colosseum is open all year except 25 December and 1 January. Closing times vary by season, and «last entry» matters more here than the closing hour.

With children take the 8:30 slot or one after 16:00. In the middle of the day there is no shade at all on the arena, and in July it is physically hard. That applies to adults too, but the child gives up first.

What to do inside with a child

The Colosseum is a difficult place for a child. From outside it is a postcard; inside it is brick walls without captions, and a crowd. A child walks round it in twenty minutes and asks for food, and the parents are left feeling they queued for nothing.

What works: not telling them dates but searching. Where the animal cages stood. Why the walls are full of holes — they were not bombed, the metal clamps were pulled out. Where the bronze colossus went that gave the amphitheatre its name. Where the women sat and where the slaves. Why there is sand on the arena, and how that word connects to the word «arena».

And a free bonus right there: the Arch of Constantine stands hard against the Colosseum, and you can walk up to it with no ticket and no queue.

The Roman Forum can be added to the quest: an hour and 60 EUR. To be honest about it — entry to the Forum is already in your 18 EUR ticket. Those 60 EUR are for the guide's work, not for the way in.

Where to go after the Colosseum

The Colosseum almost always turns out to be the first stop, and then the question arises: what is near it and how not to lose the mood. The Forum and the Palatine are already on your ticket — the obvious next step. But the amphitheatre only explains the spectacles; how Romans lived day to day is not visible there.

If gladiators caught your child's imagination, there is a sequel for the same day: the gladiator school for 150 EUR — they hand out a wooden sword and teach the stances.

And when the budget is tight there is an option eight times cheaper: a quest in the LooksArt app for 29 EUR for the whole family — you go on your own, at your own pace, and the app leads you along the route and works offline.

And if Rome is only just beginning for you, see our guide to where to go in Rome with children.