London in September: Weather, Events and the Best Tours
Written and checked by the Best London Tours editorial team. .
September is the best-balanced month in the London year. Average highs of 19.7C are ideal walking weather, the school holidays end in the first week, and the city still has 12 hours 40 minutes of daylight mid-month. The deadline that shapes the month is 27 September, when the Buckingham Palace State Rooms close until next summer.
Quick pick: the best London tours in September
| # | Tour | Best for | Duration | From | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Buckingham Palace | Booking before the season closes on 27 September | 2.5 hours | £33 | 4.6 (7,797) |
| 2 | Westminster Abbey | Open House month, if you care about buildings | 2 hours | £27 | 4.6 (13,289) |
| 3 | St Paul's Cathedral | Climbing the dome in comfortable temperatures | 1.5-2 hours | £24 | 4.7 (10,847) |
| 4 | Tower of London | A full site visit with time to spare | 2-3 hours | £37 | 4.6 (31,489) |
| 5 | Thames River Cruise | Late-afternoon light on the river | 1-2 hours | £17 | 4.5 (24,711) |
| 6 | Windsor, Stonehenge & Bath | The last comfortable month for an eleven-hour day trip | 11 hours - 1 day | £71 | 4.5 (3,440) |
| 7 | London Eye | Clear autumn air and a 19:15 sunset | 30 minutes | £25 | 4.6 (39,011) |
| 8 | Borough Market Food Tour | British produce at its annual best | 3 hours | £92 | 4.8 (593) |
| 9 | Photography Tour | Softer light than August, longer than October | 1 hour | £39 | 5 (18) |
| 10 | Harry Potter Studio Tour | The wet day, now more likely than in August | 7-9 hours | £85 | 4.6 (10,822) |
Prices, ratings and review counts verified against live GetYourGuide listings on 28 July 2026. Duration varies by the option you choose at checkout.
Is September a good time to visit London?
September is the strongest all-round month covered in this guide. Highs of 19.7C, sunset at 19:15 on the 15th and a sharp drop in family crowds once schools return give you August access without August pressure. The catch is a hard deadline on 27 September and a rise in rainfall to 64mm.
There is a clean before-and-after in a London September. In the first week the city is still running on holiday volume. From roughly the second week, when English schools return, the queues at the family attractions shorten noticeably and midweek hotel rates come off their summer peak. If you have any flexibility on dates, the middle two weeks of September are the best value in the warm half of the year.
The weather holds up well. A 19.7C mean high is the temperature at which walking London stops being a chore and becomes the best way to see it, and the evenings are still long enough to do something after dinner. What changes is the rain: 64mm across eleven wet days is more than August, and the character shifts from short summer bursts towards longer frontal systems.
The date to have in your head is Sunday 27 September, the last day of the Buckingham Palace State Rooms season. After that the Palace closes to general visiting until the following summer, and the 2027 season dates had not been published when this page was written. If the Palace matters to you and your trip is in the second half of the month, book it for the first days you are here rather than leaving it to the end.
London weather in September
Expect 19.7C average highs and 11.5C lows, 64mm of rain across eleven wet days and sunrise at 06:35 with sunset at 19:15 on the 15th. September loses 1 hour 53 minutes of daylight between the 1st and the 30th, the fastest fall of any month in the year.
| Measure | September | Annual context |
|---|---|---|
| Average high | 19.7C | Ranges from 7.7C in January to 22.6C in July |
| Average low | 11.5C | Ranges from 1.7C in January to 13.9C in July |
| Rainfall | 64mm | Driest is April at 40mm, wettest is October at 77mm |
| Wet days (1mm or more) | 11 days | Fewest in April at 10, most in March at 13 |
| Daylight, mid-month | 12h 40m | From 7h 52m in mid-December to 16h 36m in mid-June |
| Sunrise and sunset, 15th | 06:35 to 19:15 | From 15:51 in mid-December to 21:19 in mid-June |
| Change across the month | loses 1h 53m | Clocks go back on 25 October 2026 and forward on 28 March 2027 |
Temperature, rainfall and wet days are the 2015 to 2024 means from ERA5 reanalysis for central London, 2015 to 2024, via the Open-Meteo historical archive. Daylight, sunrise and sunset are for the 15th, from timeanddate.com sunrise and sunset tables for London.
September is the month London slides out of summer, and the daylight numbers show it more clearly than the temperature does. You start the month with 13 hours 34 minutes of daylight and finish it with 11 hours 41 minutes. That is a loss of nearly two hours in thirty days, and it is the steepest decline in the calendar. Anything you want to do outdoors after work hours is easier in the first fortnight than the second.
Rainfall rises to 64mm from August's 57mm and the pattern changes with it. Summer showers are convective and short. September rain increasingly arrives as an Atlantic front, which means several hours of steady drizzle rather than twenty minutes of downpour. That is the reason a full indoor option belongs in every September itinerary, even though eleven wet days out of thirty still leaves you two dry days in three.
Evening temperatures fall faster than daytime ones. The 11.5C mean low is four degrees down on July and it is felt most on the water, where the wind off the Thames adds to it. A river cruise at 19:00 in late September wants a proper jacket, not the light layer that was enough in August.
Crowds, prices and what to book ahead
Crowds fall sharply once English schools return in the first week. The two things still worth booking well ahead are the Buckingham Palace State Rooms, because the season ends on 27 September and the last slots go early, and any Open House building with a ballot, which fills within days of release.
The family attractions are the ones that feel the change most. The Warner Bros Studio Tour, SEA LIFE, Madame Tussauds and London Zoo all run at holiday capacity into the first week and then noticeably ease. If your trip is flexible within the month, the second and third weeks are the quietest you will find until January.
Open House London runs 12 to 20 September and is the best free thing to do in the city all year. Several hundred buildings that are normally closed to the public open their doors, and a proportion of them are working offices, private houses and industrial sites you cannot see in any other month. The highest-demand buildings run a ballot or a booking system that opens ahead of the festival and fills quickly. The rest are walk-in and queue.
Business travel returns in September, which means midweek hotel rates in the City and Canary Wharf recover from about the second week even as leisure demand falls. If you are booking on price, a Friday to Sunday stay in September is materially cheaper than a Tuesday to Thursday one, which is the reverse of the August pattern.
The best tours in London in September
The September ten is built around a deadline and a shift in the light. Buckingham Palace stays at the top only until the 27th. Architecture and heritage move up because Open House puts the city's buildings in focus. Long day trips move up while there is still enough daylight to do them properly.
1. Buckingham Palace
4.6 out of 5 from 7,797 verified GetYourGuide reviews • from £33 • 2.5 hours
Holds first place for the same reason as August, but with a deadline attached. The State Rooms close on Sunday 27 September and do not reopen until the following summer. The last week of the season is the busiest of it, so take an early-September slot if you can.
Best for in September: Booking before the season closes on 27 September
2. Westminster Abbey
4.6 out of 5 from 13,289 verified GetYourGuide reviews • from £27 • 2 hours
Moved up from fifth on review volume. September is the month London puts its architecture on display, and the Abbey is the single densest piece of building history in the city: nine hundred years of coronations, and the Cosmati pavement, in one visit.
Best for in September: Open House month, if you care about buildings
3. St Paul's Cathedral
4.7 out of 5 from 10,847 verified GetYourGuide reviews • from £24 • 1.5-2 hours
The dome climb is 528 steps and there is no lift for the upper galleries, which makes ambient temperature the deciding factor. At a 19.7C mean high September is close to ideal for it; in August the same climb is genuinely hard work.
Best for in September: Climbing the dome in comfortable temperatures
4. Tower of London
4.6 out of 5 from 31,489 verified GetYourGuide reviews • from £37 • 2-3 hours
September is the last comfortable month for the Tower. It is still on summer hours through October, the outdoor sections of the site are pleasant at 19.7C rather than baking, and the summer crowd has gone. From November the winter hours make an afternoon visit impractical.
Best for in September: A full site visit with time to spare
5. Thames River Cruise
4.5 out of 5 from 24,711 verified GetYourGuide reviews • from £17 • 1-2 hours
Still a daylight product in September but the window narrows fast. Sunset is 19:46 on the 1st and 18:40 on the 30th, so a cruise that is bathed in evening light at the start of the month is dusk by the end of it.
Best for in September: Late-afternoon light on the river
6. Windsor, Stonehenge & Bath
4.5 out of 5 from 3,440 verified GetYourGuide reviews • from £71 • 11 hours - 1 day
Ranked up hard for the season. An eleven-hour coach day needs daylight at both ends, and September still has between eleven and thirteen and a half hours of it. The same itinerary in December runs its last two hours in the dark.
Best for in September: The last comfortable month for an eleven-hour day trip
7. London Eye
4.6 out of 5 from 39,011 verified GetYourGuide reviews • from £25 • 30 minutes
September often gives the sharpest long-range visibility of the warm half of the year, as the summer haze clears and before the winter cloud sets in. A slot around 18:45 mid-month puts you at the top close to sunset.
Best for in September: Clear autumn air and a 19:15 sunset
8. Borough Market Food Tour
4.8 out of 5 from 593 verified GetYourGuide reviews • from £92 • 3 hours
September is the harvest month, and Borough is one of the few places in central London where that is visible rather than theoretical. It stays high in the ranking through autumn but this is the month the stalls are at their fullest.
Best for in September: British produce at its annual best
9. Photography Tour
5 out of 5 from 18 verified GetYourGuide reviews • from £39 • 1 hour
The sun tracks lower in September, which gives longer shadows and warmer colour for more of the day rather than only at the edges. It is a better month for photographing London than August, when the midday light is flat and hard.
Best for in September: Softer light than August, longer than October
10. Harry Potter Studio Tour
4.6 out of 5 from 10,822 verified GetYourGuide reviews • from £85 • 7-9 hours
Drops from sixth in August to tenth here, purely because September is the first month you can reasonably do most things outdoors and should. It moves back up sharply in November when the Hogwarts in the Snow dressing goes in.
Best for in September: The wet day, now more likely than in August
The London Zoo and bike tours both drop out of the September ten. Neither is a bad September choice, but both are pure fair-weather products and the wet-day count rises from ten to eleven while daylight falls by nearly two hours. The Churchill War Rooms and the two Dungeon-style indoor attractions stay out for one more month and return in October.
Events and festivals in September 2026
September has one genuinely unusual event: Open House, 12 to 20 September, when several hundred normally-closed London buildings open free to the public. The other date that shapes the month is 27 September, the last day of the Buckingham Palace State Rooms season.
| Event | Dates | Where | Free? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open House Festival | Saturday 12 to Sunday 20 September | Several hundred buildings citywide | Free, some ballot or booking |
| Last day of Buckingham Palace State Rooms | Sunday 27 September | Buckingham Palace, SW1 | Ticketed |
| English schools return | First week of September | Citywide, family attractions quieten | Not applicable |
| Changing the Guard | Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays | Buckingham Palace forecourt | Free to watch |
Open House is the reason to prefer September over May if you have to choose between the two. For nine days a large slice of London's building stock opens for free, including working government buildings, private homes by well-known architects, engineering infrastructure and City livery halls. The programme is published in the weeks before the festival. The highest-demand entries run a ballot; most do not and simply queue.
The Buckingham Palace deadline is worth repeating because it is the one thing on this page that cannot be rescheduled. Sunday 27 September is the last day of the 2026 State Rooms season. After that, the Palace opens only on selected dates for a limited number of ticketed guided tours, and the 2027 summer season dates had not been announced when this was written.
Changing the Guard continues on its Monday, Wednesday and Friday pattern through September. It is worth noting that the ceremony is more reliably held in September than in the depths of winter, since it is weather-dependent and can be cancelled at short notice, but the three-day-a-week schedule is the same year round.
What is closed in September
The defining closure of September is at the end of it. The Buckingham Palace State Rooms shut on 27 September and stay shut for the next nine months. Everything else in our list runs normally, and the Tower of London is still on its longer summer hours until the end of October.
| Site or service | Closed | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Buckingham Palace State Rooms | From 28 September | The 2026 summer season ran 9 July to 27 September. From 28 September the Palace opens only on selected dates for a limited number of guided tours. |
| Changing the Guard | Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays | Monday, Wednesday and Friday only, and subject to cancellation in bad weather. It is not a daily ceremony in any month. |
| Open House buildings | Outside 12 to 20 September | Not a closure so much as the opposite. Most of these buildings are shut to the public for the other 356 days of the year. |
| Houses of Parliament | Recess then sitting | Parliament returns from summer recess in September and typically breaks again for the party conference season. Tour availability follows the sitting calendar. |
Buckingham Palace opening season: Royal Collection Trust, visiting Buckingham Palace. Changing the Guard days are published a month at a time on the Household Division Changing the Guard listing, and the ceremony can be cancelled at short notice in bad weather.
One closure in September has a knock-on effect on the rest of this guide. Because the Palace shuts on the 27th, it does not appear in the ranked ten on any month page from October through to May. That is not an oversight and it is not an availability glitch: it is a nine-month closure and we would rather name it than quietly drop the product.
We have deliberately not stated when the State Rooms reopen in 2027. The Royal Collection Trust had not published the 2027 season dates when this page was written, and the pattern in recent years has been a July to September window announced a few months ahead. Treat that as a pattern, not a promise, and check the official site before you build a trip around it.
The Tower of London remains on its longer summer opening through September and October, returning to its winter pattern from November and back to summer hours on 1 March. That matters most for a late-afternoon arrival: in September you can still start a Tower visit after 15:00 and see the site properly.
What to wear and pack for London in September
Pack for 19.7C days that end at 11.5C, and for eleven wet days spread across thirty. September is the first month where a proper jacket beats a light layer after dark, and the first where a full-day indoor option needs to exist in your plan rather than being optional.
The temperature spread is what catches people out. An eight-degree gap between the average high and the average low means a comfortable lunchtime and a cold 21:00, and the difference is amplified anywhere near the river. If you have booked an evening cruise or a late walking tour, take more than you think you need.
Footwear matters more in September than August because the rain lasts longer when it comes. London pavements do not drain quickly and the parks turn soft after a frontal system passes. Something water-resistant rather than mesh is the practical choice for a nine-day trip.
- A proper jacket for evenings falling to about 11.5C
- Water-resistant footwear, September rain is longer-lasting than August rain
- A compact umbrella, which works in September in a way it does not in a windy August
- A booked indoor option for at least one day in three
- Layers you can shed, because 19.7C in the sun feels considerably warmer
How we chose these tours
September is ranked around one hard deadline and one soft trend. Buckingham Palace holds first place only because the season ends on the 27th. Westminster Abbey and St Paul's move up for Open House and for the dome climb being comfortable at 19.7C. Long day trips move up while the daylight still supports them.
- Popularity first. The base order is the verified review count on the live GetYourGuide listing, which is the only booking signal we can check independently.
- Then seasonal fit. A tour moves up or down for a specific, stated reason tied to September: temperature, wet days, sunset time, school holidays or a closure. Every move is explained in the entry itself rather than left implied.
- Closed means out. If an attraction is shut for the month, it does not appear in the ten at any rank, however popular it is. We name it in the closures table instead so you can plan around it.
- Nothing is invented. Prices, star ratings and review counts come from the live product page, checked on 28 July 2026. We do not publish an opening time, closure or event date we could not confirm, and we say so where we could not.
- We earn a commission. Booking links go to GetYourGuide and pay us if you book. That does not change the ranking: the review counts are public and you can check every one of them against the listing.
FAQs about London in September
Is September a good time to visit London?
It is the best-balanced month in this guide. Average highs of 19.7C are close to ideal for walking, English schools return in the first week so family attractions quieten noticeably, and mid-month still gives 12 hours 40 minutes of daylight. The two costs are 64mm of rain across eleven wet days and the Buckingham Palace State Rooms closing on 27 September.
When does the Buckingham Palace State Rooms season end?
The 2026 season ends on Sunday 27 September. From 28 September the Palace opens only on selected dates for a limited number of ticketed guided tours, and general State Rooms visiting does not resume until the following summer. The 2027 season dates had not been published by the Royal Collection Trust when this page was written.
What is Open House London and when is it?
Open House is a nine-day festival, running 12 to 20 September 2026, in which several hundred London buildings that are normally closed open free to the public. It covers working government buildings, private architect-designed houses, engineering infrastructure and City livery halls. Most venues are walk-in and queue; the highest-demand ones run a ballot or advance booking that fills quickly.
How much daylight does London lose in September?
One hour 53 minutes, the fastest fall of any month in the year. Daylight runs 13 hours 34 minutes on 1 September and 11 hours 41 minutes on the 30th, with sunset moving from 19:46 to 18:40. That is why an evening river cruise or walking tour feels like a different product at the end of the month than at the start.
Is London cheaper in September than August?
Leisure rates fall from about the second week as the school holidays end, but business travel returns at the same time, so the saving shows up mainly at weekends. A Friday to Sunday stay in mid-September is materially cheaper than the equivalent in August; a Tuesday to Thursday stay in the City may not be. Tour prices themselves barely move by month.
Does it rain a lot in London in September?
It rains on eleven days out of thirty on the ten-year mean, totalling 64mm, which is more than August but well short of October's 77mm. The change worth planning for is the character rather than the quantity: September rain increasingly arrives as multi-hour Atlantic frontal drizzle rather than the short heavy summer bursts of July and August.