There is no longer a daily summer ceremony, Sunday is now a different event at a different time, and Horse Guards has stopped changing daily too. Since the Army added two new ceremonies in 2025 this is a four-event weekly cycle, and most guides are still describing the old one. Here is what actually happens, on which days.
The Changing of the Guard tops most lists of London’s big sights, and it is the one piece of pageantry everybody means to see and a great many people turn up for on the wrong day. That has got easier to do since March 2025, when the Army and the Royal Household added two entirely new public ceremonies and dropped the daily summer schedule.
What that means in practice is that there are now four things happening in a week rather than one thing happening more often in July. Two of them are much quieter than the famous one, and one of them only exists because Queen Victoria turned up unannounced in 1894 and found the guard asleep.
Quick answers
What days is the Changing of the Guard? Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 11am at Buckingham Palace, all year round. There is no daily summer schedule any more.
What happens on the other days? A Captain’s Inspection at 3pm on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, and a Sunday Parade at 10am. Both are new since 2025 and both are far less crowded.
Is it free? Yes at Buckingham Palace and Horse Guards, with no ticket and no booking. Windsor needs a castle ticket, because the ceremony happens inside the walls.
How early should I get there? An hour, so by 10am, if you want a railing position. Earlier in summer.
What if it rains? It can be cancelled as late as 10.45am on the day. Check the Household Division calendar that morning before you set off.
The four ceremonies, and which one to go to
This is the part that has changed, so it is worth being precise about. All four are free and none needs booking.
The guard change, Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 11am
The famous one. The New Guard marches down from Wellington Barracks, the Old Guard comes over from St James’s Palace, and the two meet in the forecourt at Buckingham Palace, where the Captain of the Old Guard hands over a single key to the palace. It runs about 45 minutes. Things start moving on the forecourt from about 10.45am.
This is the crowded one, so go on a Monday rather than a Friday and be there by ten. Friday draws the weekend crowd two days early and the railings are four deep by half ten in summer.
The Captain’s Inspection, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday at 3pm
New since March 2025, and the single most useful thing to know in this guide. On the days when there is no guard change, the Captain inspects the guard on the forecourt at three in the afternoon. It uses soldiers already on duty, so it costs the Army nothing and it costs you nothing.
Go to this one if you have a choice. It is a fraction of the crowd, the light in the afternoon is considerably better than the flat glare of eleven in the morning, and almost nobody outside the ceremonial calendar knows it exists yet. A band attends when operational commitments allow, which is not every time.
The Sunday Parade, Sunday at 10am
Also new, and the most interesting of the four historically. The Regimental Colour is trooped at Buckingham Palace and then marched to St James’s Palace, reviving an eighteenth-century ceremony called Lodging the Colour that had not been performed in public for generations.
Stand on The Mall side rather than at the gates, because the walk to St James’s is the half worth watching. Note the time: ten, not eleven. The old guide-book line that Sunday has an 11am guard change will put you an hour late for a different ceremony.
The Four O’Clock Parade at Horse Guards, every day
At four every afternoon the King’s Life Guard is inspected dismounted in the courtyard at Horse Guards. It is informally known as the Punishment Parade, and the reason it exists is the best story attached to any of this: in 1894 Queen Victoria arrived at Horse Guards to find the guard variously asleep, drunk and gambling, and ordered a daily inspection at four o’clock for the next hundred years. The hundred years ran out in 1994 and Elizabeth II directed that it carry on.
This is the one to take anyone who says they have already seen the Changing of the Guard. Seven days a week, no crowd to speak of, and a punchline.
Where to watch at Buckingham Palace
Five spots see the action: the forecourt gates, the Victoria Memorial, The Mall, Friary Court at St James’s Palace and Wellington Barracks. They are all within a few minutes of each other, and our London tourist map shows how the ground fits together.
Our pick is the raised steps of the Victoria Memorial, and it is the pragmatic choice rather than the purist one. You are looking down into the forecourt rather than through the railings, you can see the New Guard arriving and the Old Guard leaving from the same spot, and you do not have to be there at half nine to get it.
If you want the gates, you need to be at the railings by ten, and earlier in July and August. Everything between the arrival and the departure happens inside the forecourt, so from a bad position at the gates you will hear a great deal and see very little.
The overlooked option is Wellington Barracks at about ten. The New Guard forms up and is inspected there before it marches, you are standing three deep rather than thirty, and then you can follow it down to the palace, which is a better half-hour than waiting in one place. The Guards Museum is right there if it rains.
Friary Court and The Mall are quieter again and see only the march, not the handover.
The schedule, minute by minute
- 10.30am The Old Guard forms up in Friary Court at St James’s Palace
- 10.40am The New Guard is inspected at Wellington Barracks
- 10.43am The St James’s detachment leaves for Buckingham Palace and enters the forecourt by the South Centre Gate
- 10.57am The New Guard leaves Wellington Barracks, arriving at the palace around 11am by the North Centre Gate
- 11am The handover. The Captain of the Old Guard hands over the key to the palace
- 11am to 11.30am The band plays, the guard is inspected, officers report and new sentries are posted
- 11.10am The St James’s Palace relief leaves Buckingham Palace
- 11.35am Compliments are exchanged and the Old Guard prepares to leave
- 11.40am The Old Guard marches out of Buckingham Palace for Wellington Barracks
The two moments worth positioning for are the arrival just before eleven and the departure at twenty to twelve. The half hour in between is music and inspection inside the forecourt, and unless you are at the gates or up on the Memorial you will not see much of it.
What you are actually looking at
The ceremony is the handover of responsibility for guarding the palace from the Old Guard to the New Guard, formally called Guards Mounting. The soldiers are from the Foot Guards, whose regiments date to 1656, when they were raised to protect Charles II in exile, and who have been doing this at Buckingham Palace since Victoria moved the court there in 1837.
One thing to get right, because a lot of guides do not: the scarlet tunic is worn all year and the grey item is a greatcoat. The switch is tied to the clocks rather than the weather, so greatcoats go on when the clocks go back in late October and come off when they go forward in late March. A cold September will not produce a grey parade. For this season that means greatcoats from 25 October and scarlet again on 28 March.
The bands do not only play military marches. The Household Division’s own line is that the programme runs from traditional marches to show tunes and familiar pop songs, and a 2014 performance of the Game of Thrones theme went round the world. You will not get a request played.
There are more oddities like this in our facts about London.
Horse Guards and the King’s Life Guard
The second ceremony, ten minutes away on Whitehall, and the one most visitors miss entirely. The King’s Life Guard is found by the Household Cavalry, so this is the mounted version: breastplates, plumed helmets and horses rather than bearskins.
It changes on Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 11am, not daily. That is the other thing that changed: on Saturday and Sunday at 11am the duty officer inspects the guard instead, which is a shorter affair. The New Guard rides out of Hyde Park Barracks in Knightsbridge at 10.28am and comes down through Hyde Park Corner, Constitution Hill and The Mall, which means you can watch it pass and then follow it.
Our steer is to skip the 11am entirely and come at four for the dismounted inspection instead, which runs seven days a week and has the Victoria story behind it. Failing that, catch the ride down The Mall at about twenty to eleven rather than standing at Horse Guards, because you get the horses at close range with nobody in front of you.
The two mounted sentries on the Whitehall side change every hour between 10am and 4pm, which is worth knowing if you arrive at an odd time and want to see something.
The Household Cavalry Museum is in the building itself if you want the stables and the kit.
Windsor Castle
The third ceremony, and the one with a catch. It happens at Windsor on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday from 11am, weather permitting, and runs about 45 minutes. There is no Sunday ceremony.
The catch is that the ceremony takes place inside the castle precincts, so you need a castle ticket to watch it. Plenty of guides send you to Windsor for a free spectacle, which is only half true: the Guard marches up through the town from Victoria Barracks and you can watch that stretch along the High Street for nothing, but the parade itself is behind the walls.
So do it as part of a castle visit rather than as a trip in its own right, and go on a Tuesday. The Guard forms up outside the Guard Room led by a regimental band, a corps of drums or occasionally a pipe band, and the Old Guard marches back down into the town afterwards. It is a smaller and considerably more pleasant thing to watch than the Buckingham Palace scrum. If you would rather be walked round it all, there are guided options in our guide to London sightseeing tours.
Windsor is a straightforward half-hour from Paddington via Slough, and it is one of the better day trips from London regardless of the ceremony.
Practical tips
- Check the calendar that morning. Wet weather can cancel it as late as 10.45am, and the Household Division publishes changes about four weeks ahead and updates them on the day
- Go to the 3pm inspection or the 4pm parade if you can. Both are free, neither has a crowd, and the afternoon light is better
- Do not bring a pushchair to the railings. You will not get it in or out, and the Victoria Memorial steps are the better call with children
- Nearest tube is Green Park, five minutes down the Queen’s Walk, rather than Victoria or St James’s Park, which both put you on the wrong side of a crowd
- Combine it with the palace itself in summer. The State Rooms open roughly 11 weeks from July, and the garden comes with the ticket
- Nothing is signposted. There are no announcements, no screens and no commentary, so read the schedule above before you go or you will not know what you are watching
The London x London Take: The honest advice on the Changing of the Guard is that the famous eleven o’clock version is the worst way to see it. You stand for an hour, you see the arrival and the departure, and the thirty minutes in the middle happen behind a railing and two hundred people. The two ceremonies the Army quietly added in 2025 are better in every practical respect: the Captain’s Inspection at three has the same soldiers, the same forecourt and a tenth of the crowd, and the four o’clock parade at Horse Guards runs every single day and comes with the story of a queen catching her own guard gambling. Go to those, and if you want the full pomp, take the Sunday Parade at ten and follow the Colour down to St James’s. Leave the eleven o’clock to the coach parties.
Need to know
- Guard change: Buckingham Palace, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 11am. Free, no ticket
- Captain’s Inspection: Buckingham Palace, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, 3pm. Free
- Sunday Parade: Buckingham Palace and St James’s Palace, Sunday, 10am. Free
- King’s Life Guard: Horse Guards, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 11am. Inspection at 11am Saturday and Sunday. Dismounted inspection 4pm daily. Free
- Windsor: Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday from 11am, inside the castle, so a castle ticket is required
- Schedule and cancellations: householddivision.org.uk
