Château de Chenonceau Tickets and Opening Hours
Entry from 15.00 to 24.00 EUR depending on age and guide, open every day of the year, and seven listings rated 4.84 across 839 reviews.
The hour printed on the Chenonceau website is not the closing time. It is the last admission at the ticket office. The château shuts thirty minutes after it and the gardens thirty minutes after that, which the operator states plainly and almost nobody repeats. On the day this page was checked its own banner read: open 9:00 to 19:30, last ticket-office access 19:00. Anyone who reads the published 16:30 of a January afternoon as a closing time is giving themselves an hour less than they have.
The second thing that makes this château different is that it is private, and it behaves like it. One price for everyone, 19.00 EUR with a printed guide or 24.00 with the audio guide, and none of the French national exemptions. Under-18s pay. European residents aged 18 to 25 pay. The Pass'Éducation, the Education Nationale professional card and the carte Culture, which open state monuments across the country, appear on the tariff page under a heading that reads plein tarif, pas soumis à réduction. The only free age band is under seven, and children that young cannot take the audio guide.
In exchange you get the most reliable calendar in French heritage. Chenonceau is open every day of the year, with published ticket-office hours for 25 December and no weekly closing day at all. If your trip has one fixed date and you cannot move it, this is the château that will be open.
There is one rule that changes what you should buy, and it is buried on the opening-hours page. On days of heavy attendance a timed slot is compulsory. But holders of works-council tickets and of any other reseller's ticket are told to go straight to the gate, because their slot is assigned on arrival rather than chosen in advance. That is the one substantive difference between buying from the château and buying anywhere else: not the price, not the queue, but whether you pick the hour or the hour picks you.
Our own catalogue for Chenonceau is small and heavily weighted: seven listings, 839 reviews at 4.84, of which 439 belong to a single product. Six of the seven run eight hours or more, because they are Loire days rather than visits. The one exception is a two-hour private guided visit with the ticket included, at 279.50 EUR against a 19.00 EUR gate price.
What follows is the full price list by visitor type, the way the timed slot works and who does not get to choose it, what costs extra once you are through the gate, and how the published hours move across a year that has no closed days in it.
Chenonceau and AOC Touraine-Chenonceau Wines, with Lunch in Montrichard
Wine tastings either side of a private guided visit to Chenonceau, lunch in a restaurant in Montrichard, and a family winery with roots going back 500 years.
Chenonceau Private Tour with Ticket Included, Starting at the Castle Gate
The entry ticket is included and the guide is yours alone, from the welcome desk at the entrance through the castle and out into the flower gardens.
Chambord and Chenonceau at Christmas: Guided Day from Tours or Amboise
A local guide walks both châteaux while they are decorated for Christmas, with pickup outside the tourist office in Tours at 9am or Amboise at 9.30am.
Chambord, Chenonceau and Lunch Inside Family-Owned Château de Villesavin
Lunch is served inside Villesavin, a family-owned château, between the guided visits to Chenonceau and Chambord. Departures from Tours and from Amboise.
Chenonceau and Chambord with a Free Midday in Amboise, the Old Capital
The minivan breaks in Amboise, the old capital of the valley, so lunch and the town are your own time between the guided visits to Chenonceau and Chambord.
Chenonceau and Chambord with an English Guide Inside Both Castles
The guiding is in English and happens inside both castles, with time for lunch at your own expense between them and pickup at the Tours tourist office.
Chenonceau, Chambord and Vouvray Tasting in a Limestone Cave Winery
Nine hours by minivan in a small group, with guided visits to Chenonceau and Chambord and a cheese and Vouvray tasting in a limestone cave winery between them.
Ratings collected by Viator and Tripadvisor
The price list, tier by tier
Chenonceau sells one visit in two versions: with a printed guide, or with an audio guide that costs five euros more and is picked up on site. Every published rate moves in that same five euro step, which makes the decision unusually clean. The audio guide is the only upgrade the château sells, and it is not available at all for children under seven.
Payment is accepted by card, cash, cheque, chèque vacances and chèque culture up. The tariff page draws no distinction between buying online and buying at the window, and the only reason it gives for booking in advance is to save time. That matters, because at several French châteaux the online price and the gate price differ; here, on the operator's own published figures, they do not.
| Visitor | With printed guide | With audio guide |
|---|---|---|
| Adult | 19.00 EUR | 24.00 EUR |
| Aged 65 and over | 16.00 EUR | 21.00 EUR |
| Student with card | 16.00 EUR | 21.00 EUR |
| Child aged 7 to 18 | 15.00 EUR | 20.00 EUR |
| Child under 7 | Free | Not available |
| Family, from three paying children | 15.00 EUR each | 20.00 EUR each over 7 |
| Group over 20, adult | 16.00 EUR | 20.00 EUR |
| Group over 20, child or student | 14.00 EUR | 18.00 EUR |
| Visitor with an invalidity card | Free | Free entry plus 5.00 EUR |
| Their companion | 16.00 EUR | 21.00 EUR |
| Pass'Éducation, Culture card, press card | Full price | Press and ICOM cards take 5.00 EUR off the audio guide |
The slot you do not always get to choose
Most of the year Chenonceau asks nothing of you but a ticket. On days of heavy attendance it switches on a compulsory timed slot, and the wording it uses is worth quoting because of the exception attached: booking a slot is obligatory, except for holders of works-council tickets or of other resellers' tickets, for whom the slot will be assigned on arrival, presenting themselves directly at the entrance gate.
Read that twice if you are comparing sellers. Buying from the château lets you name your hour. Buying from anyone else, this catalogue included, means arriving and being told what your hour is. On a quiet Tuesday in February that is irrelevant. On the Saturday of a public holiday weekend it is the whole difference between a morning and an afternoon. It is also the only material difference between the two channels, since the price is the same either way.
The château lists the 2026 dates when online booking is required outright, all running 9:00 to 19:00: Easter on 4, 5 and 6 April, then 1, 2 and 3 May, then 8, 9 and 10 May, then Ascension from 14 to 17 May, and Pentecost from 23 to 25 May. It also asks visitors with a timed ticket to arrive at the hour printed on it and not before, so that nobody stands outside in the sun. The building is not air conditioned; the operator has put fans on the various floors, and misting devices and drinking fountains around the domain.
The labyrinth, and where the facade went
The gardens hold a piece of the building's own history that most visitors walk past. At the centre of the labyrinth stands a small pavilion clad in living willow, topped by a figure of Venus and a nymph carrying the infant Bacchus on a cedar trunk, ringed by a hornbeam hedge set with vases of box and ivy.
To the east of it, gathered behind the labyrinth, stand the caryatids carved by Jean Goujon: Pallas and Cybele, with the atlantes Hercules and Apollo. They used to be on the front of the château. Knowing that changes how the facade reads when you walk back towards the river, and it costs nothing, which is more than can be said for most of what gets added to a ticket.
What costs extra once you are inside
Three things, and none of them is expensive. The audio guide is the five euro step already described. A boat trip on the Cher, which is the only way to see the gallery from underneath, runs every day at 5.00 EUR a person. And guided tours, in summer, are not sold by the château at all: they are run by the local tourist office and booked on its own site. Anyone hunting for a guided visit on chenonceau.com finds a referral rather than a product, which is unusual enough to be worth knowing before you spend twenty minutes looking.
One restriction has a season attached. Group audio guides must be reserved in advance, and the tariff page states that no reservation is taken in July and August. That is a booking closed in the two months of highest demand, which reads oddly until you consider how many people are already carrying one of those handsets in mid-August.
Several things that are chargeable elsewhere are free here. The left-luggage lockers cost nothing. The shop sits outside the ticket line at the entrance to the domain and is free to enter. There are picnic areas, one covered by the green car park and one in the open at the entrance. Wheelchairs and pushchairs are available against a token, there is a ramp into the monument, and the shop, restaurants and toilets are adapted. Three Tesla chargers serve the car park, one of them a universal Type 2, with a normal charge quoted at about two and a half hours. Dogs are welcome on a lead in the gardens and carried in arms or a basket inside the château, and guide dogs are accepted without condition.
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Two things follow from that table. Winter is genuinely short here: a 16:30 last admission means the château closes at 17:00 and the gardens at 17:30, so an afternoon arrival from Tours leaves very little. And the December calendar is unusually generous rather than the reverse, with last admission at 18:00 from 19 to 25 December and 18:30 from 26 to 31, which is later than most of November. The single busiest window in the published year is 4 July to 23 August, when the château accepts visitors until 19:00 and closes at 19:30.
What this catalogue sells, and what it costs against the gate
Seven listings carry Chenonceau, priced from 199 to 675 EUR with a median of 239. Six of the seven run eight hours or more and the median length is exactly eight, which tells you what they are: Loire days that include this château, not visits to it. All seven come from the same supplier, all seven cancel free, and none of them confirms instantly.
The one product that is Chenonceau and nothing else is a two-hour private guided visit with the ticket included at 279.50 EUR, rated 5.0 from four reviews, which is too small a sample to lean on. Set against a 19.00 EUR gate price and a 10.30 EUR return train from Tours, that is a large premium for a guide, and it is the honest arithmetic: what you are buying is a private guide, not access, because access here is easy.
The ratings are the highest in the French catalogue, 4.84 weighted, and rest on one product. A nine-and-a-half hour day pairing Chenonceau with Chambord and lunch at a private château carries 439 of the 839 reviews at 4.9. The weakest listing with a usable sample, at 4.6 from 169 reviews, is a nine-hour version of the same pairing that adds cellars at Amboise for the same 239 EUR. When two products cost the same and differ by an extra stop, the shorter one is rated higher here.
Chenonceau questions, answered with the operator's figures
How much does it cost to get in?
19.00 EUR for an adult with a printed guide and 24.00 with the audio guide. Over-65s and students with a card pay 16.00 or 21.00, children aged 7 to 18 pay 15.00 or 20.00, and under-7s are free but cannot take the audio guide. Groups over twenty pay 16.00 or 20.00 an adult.
Do French free-entry cards work here?
No. The château is privately owned and applies none of the national exemptions: the only free age band is under 7. The Pass'Éducation, the Education Nationale professional card and the carte Culture are listed under full price on the tariff page. The Paris Museum Pass does not cover it either.
Do I need to book a time slot?
Only on days of heavy attendance, and outright on the 2026 holiday weekends the château names: 4 to 6 April, 1 to 3 May, 8 to 10 May, 14 to 17 May and 23 to 25 May, all 9:00 to 19:00. Tickets bought from resellers are given their slot on arrival rather than in advance.
What time does it really close?
Thirty minutes after the hour published, which is the last admission at the ticket office, and the gardens close thirty minutes after the château. A published 16:30 in winter means the building shuts at 17:00 and the gardens at 17:30. In high summer the last admission is 19:00 and the château closes at 19:30.
Is it open on Mondays and at Christmas?
Yes to both. Chenonceau publishes ticket-office hours for every day of 2026 and has no weekly closing day. Last admission is 18:00 from 19 to 25 December and 18:30 from 26 to 31 December, which is later than it is through most of November.
Can I take a guided tour?
Not one sold by the château. Guided visits run through the summer but they are organised by the local tourist office and booked on its own site. Group audio guides need a reservation and the château takes none at all in July and August.
What else costs money on the day?
The audio guide, at 5.00 EUR above the brochure rate, and a boat trip on the Cher at 5.00 EUR a person, available every day. Lockers are free, the shop is outside the ticket line, and wheelchairs and pushchairs are lent against a token. Smoking is banned across the whole domain by prefectural order.
Data verified on. Tariffs, hours, slot rules and on-site services from chenonceau.com, read 5 September 2026. Listing prices, durations and ratings from our own database on the same date.