Planning a London Night Tour
London changes at dusk more completely than almost any city its size, and the whole question of when to go turns on one number: what time the light actually goes. That number moves by five and a half hours across the year, so the same 7.30pm departure is three hours into the dark in December and in broad daylight in June.
Start with the table below, pick a departure that leaves after civil dusk in the month you are visiting, and the rest of the planning is straightforward. If you would rather start from the tours themselves, London night ticket prices lists every departure with its price and its length.
When does it actually get dark in London?
Sunset and civil dusk for central London, month by month. Civil dusk is the point at which the floodlighting starts to win and the sky stops competing with it — roughly 35 to 45 minutes after the sun goes down.
| Month | Sunset | Civil dusk | What that means for a 7.30pm departure |
|---|---|---|---|
| January | 16:21 | 16:59 | Fully dark three hours before the first departure. |
| February | 17:15 | 17:50 | Fully dark. The clearest skies of the winter. |
| March | 18:05 | 18:38 | Dark until the clocks go forward on 29 March. |
| April | 19:57 | 20:32 | The 7.30pm departure leaves in daylight and ends in the dark. |
| May | 20:45 | 21:27 | Daylight for almost the whole of an early departure. |
| June | 21:19 | 22:07 | Broad daylight at 7.30pm. Take the last bus of the night. |
| July | 21:12 | 21:56 | Broad daylight at 7.30pm. The latest departures only. |
| August | 20:24 | 21:01 | Daylight at the start, dusk by the end. |
| September | 19:16 | 19:50 | The 7.30pm departure leaves around sunset. |
| October | 18:08 | 18:42 | Dark, and darker again once the clocks go back on 25 October. |
| November | 16:12 | 16:49 | Fully dark, and the Christmas lights go up. |
| December | 15:52 | 16:32 | Dark by four in the afternoon. The best month for this. |
One thing nobody mentions. Between late May and mid-July London never reaches astronomical darkness at all — at 51.5 degrees north the sun does not drop far enough below the horizon. Midsummer nights here keep a blue cast until dawn. It is genuinely lovely and it is not the black sky in the photographs.
What time do the tours leave?
Departure times are set by the operators and they follow the light rather than the clock. The open-top routes publish two timetables a year and swap between them.
| Format | Departures | Length |
|---|---|---|
| Open-top bus, October to March | 7:30pm and 9:20pm | 1 hour 30 minutes |
| Open-top bus, April to September | 7:30pm, 8:00pm, 8:30pm, 9:15pm, 9:45pm and 10:15pm | 1 hour 30 minutes |
| Ripper walk with projections | 7.30pm, year round | 1 hour 45 minutes |
| Royal-parks ghost walk | Evening, year round | 2 hours 30 minutes |
| Private black cab | From 5pm, your choice | 2 to 4 hours |
| Private photography walk | Evening, your choice | 3 hours |
Which format should you book?
Five ways of spending the evening, and they are genuinely different purchases rather than tiers of the same one. The full comparison sits on London Night Tour Options; the short version is here.
- Open-top bus — ninety minutes, about $39 to $42 a seat, no stops. The most ground covered for the least money, and the coldest.
- Black cab — two to four hours, priced for the vehicle rather than the seat. Hotel pickup, a driver who has passed the Knowledge, and a route you can change halfway through.
- Ghost or Ripper walk — under $31 a head, on foot, in one part of the city. The best value on the market and the one that needs decent shoes.
- Photography walk — three hours on the South Bank with a professional. Bring a camera you want to learn to use.
- Nothing at all — a real option, and worth reading before you spend anything.
London Night ticket prices, and what moves them
Seats start at $27 and run to about $42. Private vehicles start around $247 and run to $633, and the number does not change with how many of you climb in — which is the whole arithmetic of this market. Four people in a cab pay roughly what four bus seats cost twice over; six people pay less per head than a walking tour.
What does not appear in any of these prices is admission to anything, and that is not an omission. London's big indoor attractions close in the late afternoon, hours before these departures leave, so an evening tour is an outdoors, look-up experience by design.
Ready to pick an evening?
Every departure compared on price, length, what it includes and what time of year it is actually dark.
How far ahead should you book?
Two to five days for the buses and the walks between April and September, and the same again through December. The private cabs want more notice, because one vehicle serves one booking a night and December fills first. Everything listed refunds in full up to 24 hours before departure, so booking early costs you nothing but a decision.
What to bring on a London night
A warmer coat than the forecast suggests. An open top deck at 20mph in December is not the same temperature as the pavement, and being underdressed is the single commonest complaint in the reviews of both bus routes.
Shoes you can walk a kilometre in. The ghost walks cover about that much on pavement and cobbles, and there is nowhere to sit down on either of them.
Your phone, charged. Every listing here is a mobile ticket. Screenshot the booking before you set off if you are heading for one of the East End meeting points.
A tripod, if you are serious about photographs. Handheld shots of a floodlit facade are fine; light trails are not. The photography walk hires them out on request.
Getting back afterwards
Night buses run every night, all night, across the whole network, and they are the answer from Sunday to Thursday. The Night Tube adds five lines — Central, Jubilee, Northern, Piccadilly and Victoria — on Friday and Saturday nights. Check Transport for London for the night you are actually travelling, because engineering work moves things at short notice.
Every walking tour here finishes at or beside a station for exactly this reason, and the cab tours drop you wherever you like, which on a wet Tuesday in January is worth something on its own. The meeting-point map shows where each departure starts and finishes.
Is it safe?
Central London after dark is busy, lit and well policed, and the routes these tours use are the busiest parts of it. Walk with your phone in your pocket rather than your hand and you will have an ordinary evening. A guided walk is itself the most comfortable way to see the quieter streets, which is half of what people are buying when they book one.
For anything not covered here, the FAQs go further, the weather page takes the darkness table month by month, and what to expect covers the evening itself. London Night Tours carries every departure with live availability.
Departures that suit a first evening
London by Night Sightseeing Open Top Bus Tour with Live Guide
Live guide12 audio languagesMax 72
From $39 per person
