Pena Palace tickets: Essential €20 or Complete €45, the time slot and how to book

💡 The Short Version: A Pena ticket fixes the time you enter the palace, not the park, and there is no tolerance for lateness: arrive after your slot and you are refused, with no refund. Allow 30 minutes from the park gate to the palace. The Essential visit (€20) covers the New Palace wing, the terraces and the whole park; the Complete visit (€45) adds the royal family’s private apartments, with only six start times (11:15 to 17:00); park only (€12) has no interior. Buy from Parques de Sintra and choose an afternoon slot, which the operator says is quieter. Online tickets can be rescheduled until 18:00 the day before. Or book a tour: the small-group Sintra tour with ticketsad (from £58.08) includes Pena and the coach from Lisbon.

The tickets

Euros are converted at the ECB rate of 29 September 2026 (€1 = £0.857). Under-6s are free on every ticket. Adult prices, read on 1 October 2026, are from Parques de Sintra.

• The time is the palace. The time on the ticket is your entry to the palace’s interior route. You cannot go in early, and the ticket is valid for one entry.
• Late means no entry. There is no delay tolerance, and a missed slot cannot be changed or refunded.
• Changing it. Tickets bought online can be rescheduled on the Parques de Sintra site until 18:00 the day before, within 365 days of the original date. A ticket bought at the gate cannot be changed.
• Upgrading. Holders of a park or Essential ticket can upgrade online, subject to availability, at the upgrade page.
• Complete visit start times: 11:15, 14:15, 15:00, 15:45, 16:15 and 17:00.
• Quieter hours. Parques de Sintra says the afternoon is at present the time when the palace has fewer visitors, and suggests the park in the morning.

Parques de Sintra sells tickets on its own site and at the gates, where machines operate. The only other sellers it names are the fast-track partners (below).

Pena Palace’s yellow rotunda and terraces. Photo: CEphoto, Uwe Aranas, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

Fast-track and combined tickets

Fast-track tickets

Sold by Blueticket, Headout, Tiqets and GetYourGuide

Parques de Sintra names these four as the sellers of its fast-track ticket. Holders enter the park through a priority gate, then meet a member of staff next to the Pena Palace shop at the time on the ticket and are taken to a priority entry to the palace route. Only 25 fast-track entries are available in each slot, and the same rule applies: no delay tolerance, and 30 minutes to allow from the park gate to the meeting point. A fast-track ticket still has a time; it shortens the queue, not the climb.

On GetYourGuide, check which option you are buying. The Pena Palace and Park Entrance Ticketad listing starts at £10.25, the price of the €12 park-only ticket (£10.28), so read its options before assuming the palace is included.

Viver Sintra: Palácios Reais

€42 · Pena (Essential visit and park) + the National Palace of Sintra + Scotturb 434 and 435 for 24 hours

Launched on 24 April 2026 by Parques de Sintra. Bought separately, Pena (€20), the National Palace (€13) and the Scotturb 24-hour ticket (€13.50) come to €46.50. It covers two palaces and the buses. A second Viver Sintra ticket, Herança Real (€35), covers the National Palace of Sintra and Queluz and has no Pena in it. Parques de Sintra and the Palácio Biester launched three more combined tickets with transport on the same day: Pena, the National Palace or Monserrate, each with the Palácio Biester. The prices are on the Parques de Sintra ticket office.

Discount for several sites

Buying tickets for more than one Parques de Sintra site in one purchase takes 5% off two, 6% off three, 7% off four, 8% off five and 10% off six.

Lisboa Card

The Lisboa Card does not include Pena: the only Sintra site on its list of free entries is the Sintra Myths and Legends interactive centre (Visit Lisboa). The Sintra day trip guide has the €5.10 train that the card also covers.

Tours worth paying for

A tour fixes the slot for you and takes care of the transport. Prices are GetYourGuide’s lowest “from” price on 1 October 2026; the DIY ticket is €20 (£17.14), plus the train.

Small group with tickets

From £58.08 · 4.9 stars from 1,888 reviews · 9 hours

Lisbon: Sintra, Pena, Cascais & Cabo Day Tour With Ticketsad is a small-group guided day with Pena, Sintra’s historic centre, Cabo da Roca and Cascais.

Half day with Pena tickets

From £68.33 · 4.9 stars from 256 reviews · 5 hours

From Lisbon: Sintra Half-Day Tour with Pena Palace Ticketsad has a local guide, the Pena entrance and the old town with a local pastry.

The cheap coach tours

From £20.67 · 4.7 stars from 24,221 reviews · 9½ hours

Lisbon: Sintra, Pena, Regaleira & Cabo da Roca & Cascais Coastad has more reviews than any other Sintra tour on GetYourGuide. At £20.67 it cannot also cover the €20 Pena ticket and the €20 Regaleira entry: buy your own Pena slot before you book it, or choose a listing that says tickets are included.

What to see

The Essential visit is the New Palace wing, the terraces and the park; the Complete visit adds the Private Apartments. Parques de Sintra describes the park and palace as one design by Ferdinand II, so the park is not an add-on.

The red tower of Pena Palace. Photo: Diego Delso, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

1. The palace route. It starts in the Stag Room and goes through the New Palace wing: the Great Hall, the Smoking Room, the Chapel, the Kitchen, the Queen’s Terrace, the Courtyard of Arches, the Triton’s Terrace and the Sentry Walk. Entry is at your slot, and the terraces have the views.
2. The Private Apartments (Complete visit only). The Green Room, the Queen’s Office, the dressing room of Queen Amelia and the Tea Room, the bedroom of Ferdinand II, the Manueline Cloister and the chambers of King Carlos. The group is small and has a visitor assistant, and the visit is self-guided.
3. The park, before or after. The High Cross, the Temple of Columns, the Monk’s Grotto, the Valley of the Lakes, the Queen’s Fern Valley and the Camellia Garden. Parques de Sintra calls it the largest arboretum in Portugal. The Chalet of the Countess of Edla is in the western part.
4. Order and skips: park in the morning and palace at an afternoon slot. If your slot is after 16:00, do the park first, because its last admission is 18:00. The Guided (€75) and Theatrical (€95) visits are for anyone who wants a mediator or actors.

Free guides for the park and palace are on the operator’s site: the Zoomguide audio guide, the Pena Maps routes and the Pena Quest game, in English, Portuguese, Spanish and French.

Practical information

• Hours: the park is open 9:00 to 19:00, with last ticket and last admission at 18:00; the palace is open 9:30 to 18:30, last ticket 17:30 and last admission 18:00. Everything in Sintra’s parks and monuments is open daily except 24 and 25 December and 31 December and 1 January.
• Getting there: CP’s Sintra line from Rossio to Sintra, about 40 minutes, then Scotturb 434 from the station. Pena is closed to private cars at all times, and tour coaches have stopped outside the centre of Sintra since 8 July 2026. Sintra day trip from Lisbon has the train, the bus and the other palaces.
• Bags: lockers and a cloakroom are at the main entrance of the park and at the start of the palace route.
• Closures: Pena can close for strong wind or fire risk; on 16 December 2025 it was shut for wind. The notices page lists current closures.
• Free for residents: Portuguese residents enter free on Sundays and national holidays, so those days are busier.
• The one thing that ruins a visit: a late arrival at the palace. Count 30 minutes from the gate.

Pena Palace on its hill. Photo: Jakub Hałun, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.

Pena is one of the bookings in what to book before you go to Lisbon, it takes Day 3 of 3 days in Lisbon, and Cascais is the easy half-day to add on the coast. See the other day trips from Lisbon too.