Can Anyone Join The Imperial Palace New Year Greeting?

This question sits inside the Imperial Palace Tokyo guide, which covers the East Gardens, the outer garden and the free guided tour in full.

Quick Facts

Can Anyone Join The Imperial Palace New Year Greeting?

Yes, anyone can. The Imperial Palace New Year Greeting is a public event: entry is free, no ticket is sold, no application is needed, and the Imperial Household Agency opens the Main Gate to the general public during a posted entry window. The last confirmed edition was 2 January 2026, with entry from 9:30 to 14:10. The 2027 notice had not been posted yet, so the 2026 pattern is the only confirmed detail available.

The event matters because the inner grounds of the Imperial Palace are closed to the public for the rest of the year. There is no wandering in. The two everyday ways in are the East Gardens, which are free but closed Mondays and Fridays, and the free guided tour of the grounds, which is free but needs an application made in advance. The New Year Greeting is the exception: on that one day the Main Gate opens and anyone can walk in during the window, with no reservation at all.

The Imperial Household Agency publishes the notice on its own site when the date and times are set. That page, at kunaicho.go.jp, is the only authoritative source for the 2027 entry window, and it is where the 2026 details were published. Nothing on this page should be read as a schedule for 2027; the 2 January date and the 9:30 to 14:10 window describe what happened in 2026, and the next edition follows its own notice.

The broader setting is worth understanding before you plan a day around it. The Imperial Palace sits on the site of the former Edo Castle shogunal residence, and the surrounding area, the Kokyo Gaien plaza and Kitanomaru Park, is free public space you can walk any day of the year. A free walking tour is a good way to get that context. The Shogun History Walk, English is a free, pay what you want GuruWalk walk rated 4.65 out of 5 across 295 GuruWalk reviews, meeting at Imperial Palace, Kokyogaien and running 2 hours in English.

The walks above give three different angles on free Tokyo: the palace grounds with a shogun-history focus, a street-food walk around Tsukiji where the guiding is free, pay what you want and food is bought separately, and a classic Asakusa old-town walk.

One practical note on timing your trip around the greeting. Late December and early January carry several fixed closures in central Tokyo: the East Gardens close 28 December to 3 January, both Tokyo Metropolitan Government observatories close 29 to 31 December and 2 to 3 January, and the metropolitan gardens, Hama-rikyu, Koishikawa Korakuen and Rikugien, close 29 December to 1 January. If your visit spans the New Year, plan around those gaps rather than assuming everything is open.

What Does The Free Part Include?

The free part is entry to the palace grounds through the Main Gate during the posted window on the day of the greeting. No ticket, no fee, no application. Around it, a ring of permanently free public space frames the visit: the Kokyo Gaien plaza, Kitanomaru Park, Hibiya Park and the East Gardens on their open days. All of these are free to enter, and none of them requires a reservation.

Start with the event itself. The 2026 greeting took place on 2 January with entry from 9:30 to 14:10, and the Imperial Household Agency describes the event as a general greeting to the public. Because the notice is the only source, anything beyond entry, the gate and the window is not something this page can state in detail. What is certain, and what answers the question, is the openness: no selection, no ballot, no prior booking.

The free ring around the palace is substantial. The Imperial Palace Outer Garden, the Kokyo Gaien plaza, is free public space. Kitanomaru Park, to the north, is free and open 24 hours, with restrictions only on days of state functions. Hibiya Park, to the south, is a free metropolitan park. The East Gardens are free as well, though they close every Monday and Friday and keep winter hours of 9:00 to 16:00 with entry stopping at 15:30. You can build an entire free day around the palace without ever paying an entrance fee.

For deeper context on the grounds, a guided walk is the strongest free option. The Palace Storytelling Walk, run by 5 STORY on GuruWalk, is free, pay what you want, rated 4.85 out of 5 across 901 GuruWalk reviews, meeting at Imperial Palace, Kokyogaien and running 2 hours in English. It is one of the ways to hear the history of the place from a guide rather than reading it off a plaque, and it costs nothing beyond what you choose to give.

The storytelling walk sits well alongside a greeting-day visit because the two cover different things. The greeting is the one open day inside the grounds; the walk covers the plaza, the bridges and the story of the site on any ordinary day. Between them, and the free East Gardens, most of what a visitor wants from the palace area can be done without spending yen on admission.

What Do You Still Have To Pay For?

Nothing at the greeting itself, and nothing at the East Gardens or the surrounding parks. The paid parts are the specialised museums nearby: the Tokyo National Museum at JPY 1,000 for adults, the National Museum of Western Art at JPY 500 outside its free Sundays, and the inner paid corners of shrine and temple complexes elsewhere in the city. Within the palace area, every entry fee on this list belongs to a museum, not to the palace.

The distinction matters because Tokyo is full of half-free sites, places where the precinct or park is free but a museum, garden or deck inside it charges. Ueno Park is free and open at all times while the Tokyo National Museum inside it charges adults JPY 1,000, with free entry for under 18s and over 70s with proof of age. The National Museum of Western Art charges JPY 500 for adults except on the second Sunday of each month, the 18 May and the 3 November, when the permanent collection is free for everyone.

Inside the palace perimeter the split is different: there is essentially nothing to pay for. The East Gardens are free. The guided tour of the palace grounds run by the Imperial Household Agency is free, though it requires an application made in advance and does not accept walk-ins. The greeting itself is the freest of all, since even the application step disappears. The only paid things near the palace are the museums of Ueno and the observation decks further afield, which are separate sites.

The same trap repeats across the city, so it is worth naming the pattern once. Zojo-ji's grounds and main hall are free while the Treasures Gallery charges JPY 700. The Yasukuni precinct is free while the Yushukan museum charges JPY 1,000. Shibuya Crossing is free while Shibuya Sky above it is ticketed. A museum or tower never inherits its park's or shrine's free status, and the palace is the cleanest example of the rule in reverse: here even the museum exception does not apply, because there is no paid museum inside the palace perimeter at all.

If your free day stretches toward the bay, the Rainbow Bridge Promenade is free, with winter hours of 10:00 to 18:00 and last entry 30 minutes before closing, and it is closed the third Monday of the month from November to March, per the official Tokyo Port page. The pair to remember there is teamLab Planets at JPY 3,800, which is ticketed and dynamically priced, sitting beside a free waterfront walk.

When Is The Free Option Available?

The greeting runs on one day: 2 January in the 2026 edition, with entry from 9:30 to 14:10 through the Main Gate. The 2027 notice had not been posted, so check the Imperial Household Agency page before committing a date. The East Gardens around it are free on every day except Mondays and Fridays, and they close entirely from 28 December to 3 January, which brackets the greeting with a closure.

The single-day nature of the event is the whole constraint. Unlike the East Gardens, which are free almost every day of the year, the greeting exists only on its announced date. In 2026 that was 2 January. The entry window, 9:30 to 14:10, is generous by palace standards, but it is a window, not an all-day opening, and the gate closes after it. Other pages covering the same trip are gathered on Free Things To Do In Tokyo.

The surrounding closure pattern needs planning. The East Gardens close from 28 December to 3 January, which means the gardens are shut on the greeting day itself and for several days either side of it. Anyone combining the two, the greeting in the morning and the gardens afterwards, will find the gardens shut. The alternative free spaces that do stay open, the Kokyo Gaien plaza and Kitanomaru Park, carry no such closure.

For the 2027 edition, the honest answer is that the times are not yet resolved. The Imperial Household Agency posts the notice on its New Year Greeting page, and that page is where the date and window will appear. The pattern from 2026, a single morning-to-afternoon entry window through the Main Gate, is a reasonable shape to plan around, but the specific hours should be read from the notice once it is up.

If you miss the greeting, the free guided tour of the grounds is the nearest substitute, with the caveat that it requires an application at least 24 hours ahead and accepts no walk-ins. The East Gardens on an open day cover a different slice of the same ground, and they need nothing at all: no ticket, no application, no reservation.

Where Does The Free Visit Start?

The New Year Greeting starts at the Main Gate, the entry point named in the 2026 notice, with entry from 9:30 to 14:10. For the everyday free options the starting points differ: the East Gardens have their own gates, and the free guided tour has its own assembly arrangement set out at application. The walking tours that cover the palace area meet at named points around it, most at Imperial Palace, Kokyogaien.

The Main Gate is the one detail the notice fixes for the greeting, and it is the detail that answers the practical question of where to go. Beyond that, this page does not describe routes into or through the grounds, because the notice, not a tour description, governs the event. What can be mapped reliably are the meeting points of the free walks that operate around the palace all year.

Each of these is free, pay what you want, and reserved on GuruWalk. The Palace Intro, 1 Hour has 15 GuruWalk reviews so far, too few for an overall score yet, and the Ginza Luxury and Hidden Alleys walk is rated 4.75 out of 5 across 20 GuruWalk reviews. The two palace-anchored walks with large pools are the Palace Storytelling Walk, covered above, and the Shogun History Walk, which meets at the same point.

One walk pairs the palace with the city's food district in a single outing. The Palace Walk Ending At Tsukiji, run by Japan Navigators, is free, pay what you want, rated 4.84 out of 5 across 587 GuruWalk reviews, meeting at Sakuradamon Gate, Imperial Palace and running 2 hours in English and Spanish.

For Spanish-speaking visitors, the 3-Hour Imperial Gardens walk, run by Ignacio on GuruWalk and rated 4.92 out of 5 across 718 GuruWalk reviews, meets at Kudankita, Chiyoda and runs 3 hours in Spanish. The walk is free, pay what you want, and you reserve it on the guide's GuruWalk page. The same applies to the Ginza walk for those extending toward the shopping district.

Which Free Walking Tours Cover This?

Several free, pay what you want GuruWalk walks meet around the Imperial Palace, led by the Palace Storytelling Walk at 4.85 out of 5 across 901 GuruWalk reviews and the Shogun History Walk, English at 4.65 out of 5 across 295 GuruWalk reviews. All meet at named points around the palace or Marunouchi and run about 2 hours. None of them is the greeting itself; they cover the everyday palace area.

The clearest way to see the field is to separate what the walks do from what the greeting does. The greeting is a once-a-year opening of the inner grounds by the Imperial Household Agency. The walks cover the publicly accessible palace area, the plaza, the gates, the gardens' surroundings, on ordinary days, with a guide narrating the shogunal and imperial history of the site.

The 5 STORY Palace Storytelling Walk is the most-reviewed English option anchored at the palace, 4.85 out of 5 across 901 GuruWalk reviews, 2 hours, meeting at Imperial Palace, Kokyogaien. Japan Navigators, one of the larger operators on this site's roster, runs the Palace Walk Ending At Tsukiji at 4.84 out of 5 across 587 GuruWalk reviews and the 18-Plus Night Walk in Kabukicho, which is adults only, at 4.89 out of 5 across 2,714 GuruWalk reviews. Local Guide Stars runs the Shogun History Walk, English.

If the palace day stretches into a wider old-Tokyo day, Asakusa is the natural second stop, and the free walks there are among the strongest in the city. The Asakusa Old Town, English walk, run by Tokyo Genki Tours, is rated 4.78 out of 5 across 767 GuruWalk reviews, meeting at Kaminarimon Gate, 2 hours. The Asakusa Classic English Walk, run by Localized Walking Tours, is rated 4.91 out of 5 across 671 GuruWalk reviews, meeting at the Asakusa Culture Tourist Information Center. The wider question of how these free walks work, including what pay what you want means in practice, is covered in the how much to pay for a free walking tour post.

All are free, pay what you want, on GuruWalk.

A note on what the palace walks can and cannot promise. The meeting point, duration, language and rating are the fixed facts; the route belongs to the guide's own listing on GuruWalk.

Mistakes That Trip People Up At The Imperial Palace New Year Greeting

The recurring mistakes are treating the 2026 times as a 2027 schedule, assuming the East Gardens are open on the greeting day, expecting to reserve a place when none is taken, and paying a reseller for a free event. The 2027 notice is the only valid schedule, the East Gardens close 28 December to 3 January, the greeting needs no booking at all, and no ticket to the greeting or the East Gardens is ever sold by anyone legitimate.

The first mistake is calendar arithmetic. The 2026 greeting ran on 2 January with entry from 9:30 to 14:10, and it is tempting to copy those hours into a 2027 plan. The Imperial Household Agency had not posted the 2027 notice, so those hours describe one past edition only. The fix is simple: read the notice page before locking the date, and treat everything else on this page as the shape of the event rather than its schedule.

The second mistake is combining the greeting with the East Gardens on the same day. The greeting sits inside that closure window, so a plan that says "greeting in the morning, gardens in the afternoon" fails on the spot. The free alternatives on those days are the Kokyo Gaien plaza and Kitanomaru Park, which have no such closure. The reasons behind the gardens' weekday closures are unpacked in why the Imperial Palace East Gardens are closed.

The third mistake is over-booking. Visitors used to ticketed Tokyo attractions sometimes hunt for a reservation slot for the greeting. There is none: entry is free and open during the window, which is the entire point of the event. The contrast is the palace's own guided tour, which is also free but does require an advance application made at least 24 hours ahead and accepts no walk-ins. Two free offerings, two different rules.

The fourth mistake is paying anyone for access. Reseller sites exist that sell tickets to free places, and this site blocklists them rather than linking them. The greeting, the East Gardens and the guided tour are all free of charge; anyone selling entry to any of the three is selling something that costs nothing. The same logic applies to the official reservation system for palace visits, which is the Imperial Household Agency's own channel.

The fifth mistake is expecting the surrounding city to be fully open on 2 January. Both Tokyo Metropolitan Government observatories close 2 to 3 January, having also closed 29 to 31 December, so the free view over the city is unavailable on the greeting day itself. The metropolitan gardens close 29 December to 1 January. A New Year palace plan works best when the free outdoor spaces carry the day and the indoor and deck attractions are left for later in the week.

Common Questions About The Imperial Palace New Year Greeting

Can Anyone Join The Imperial Palace New Year Greeting?

Yes. Entry is free, open to the general public, with no ticket and no application. The 2026 edition ran on 2 January with entry from 9:30 to 14:10 through the Main Gate. The 2027 notice had not been posted, so check the Imperial Household Agency page for the next date and window.

Is The Imperial Palace New Year Greeting Really Free?

Yes, completely. No ticket is sold, no fee is charged and no application is taken. The only costs you might incur around it are transport and food. Anyone selling tickets to the greeting is selling access to something that is free to everyone.

Are The East Gardens Open On The Day Of The Greeting?

No. The East Gardens close entirely from 28 December to 3 January, and the greeting falls inside that window. They also close every Monday and Friday through the rest of the year. On greeting day, the free outdoor alternatives are the Kokyo Gaien plaza and Kitanomaru Park.

Do I Need A Reservation For The Imperial Palace Guided Tour?

Yes. The regular guided tour of the palace grounds is free but admission is by advance application made at least 24 hours ahead, and walk-ins are not accepted. The New Year Greeting is different: it needs no reservation at all, only arrival within the posted entry window.

When Will The 2027 New Year Greeting Times Be Announced?

The Imperial Household Agency posts the notice on its own site, and that page is the single authoritative source. The timing of the posting is not fixed in anything this site can verify, so the practical advice is to check the agency's New Year Greeting page directly before planning a trip around the event.

Can A Free Walking Tour Replace The Greeting If I Miss It?

Not replace, but complement. Free, pay what you want GuruWalk walks such as the Palace Storytelling Walk, 4.85 out of 5 across 901 GuruWalk reviews, cover the palace area on ordinary days. The greeting remains the one open day inside the grounds, so if that matters to you, plan around the notice.