A tall, square brick chimney against a blue sky with white clouds, rising above green birch trees, with the glass top floor of a brick building beside it and a street lamp and the rail of a footbridge in the bottom right corner

The brick chimney of Tate Modern, which was once Bankside Power Station, above the birch trees by the Thames.

Before you go

Prices
Free; paid exhibitions extra, where up to four children 11 and under go free with each parent or guardian, and children 12 to 18 pay £5
Open
Daily 10am to 6pm, Fridays and Saturdays until 9pm; last entry 30 minutes before closing; closed 24 to 26 December
Nearest station
Blackfriars (Circle and District lines, and Southeastern and Thameslink trains), 5 minutes’ walk from the south exit; Southwark (Jubilee line), 15 minutes’ walk; both stations are step-free
Plan your journey
TfL Journey Planner, Google Maps or Uber

For families

  • Tate Modern
  • Visiting with children
  • Family events
  • Play area: the Clore Hub, on Level 0 of the Natalie Bell Building, has soft play and books for children.
  • Free view: The Viewing Platform, on Level 10 of the Blavatnik Building, has an excellent view over the City of London, looking towards St Paul’s Cathedral and the Millennium Bridge.
  • Buggies (strollers) and nappies (diapers): every entrance is fine with a buggy, and all the toilets have nappy (diaper) changing.
  • Packed lunches: allowed in the Turbine Hall and on the grass outside, but not in the galleries or cafés.
  • Bags: no cloakroom, and no bags over cabin size.

For neurodivergent visitors

Accessibility

  • Accessibility at Tate Modern
  • Entrances: all are step-free; the riverside entrance is level, but the Turbine Hall entrance goes down a steep ramp.
  • Wheelchairs and mobility scooters to borrow: book a scooter at least 24 hours ahead, and only if you’ve driven one.
  • Toilets: a Changing Places toilet, with a hoist and changing bench, is opened with a key from the ticket desk.
  • Parking: book one of twelve spaces for disabled visitors at least 24 hours ahead; there’s no other parking nearby.
  • Companion tickets: disabled visitors pay a reduced price for paid exhibitions, and one companion goes free.
  • AccessAble’s access guide, from a 2018 visit

A sculpture of a headless figure leaning back on one arm, see-through and streaked with pink, green and yellow, wearing furry shoes with long finger-like toes, on a white plinth against a dark blue wall

Predators ’R Us, a sculpture by Andra Ursuţa.

Tate Modern is a gallery of modern and contemporary art beside the Thames, with paintings, sculptures and large installations by artists from around the world, among them Pablo Picasso, Yayoi Kusama and Henri Matisse. The building was Bankside Power Station, designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, who also designed the first red telephone box. The power station shut down in 1981, and the gallery opened in 2000.

You can visit the free galleries at any time the building is open. Tate Modern is quietest at the start and end of the day. It’s fine to talk and make some noise in the galleries. Allow two to three hours for the Turbine Hall, a few of the free galleries, the view from Level 10 and lunch. If you’re not really into art, the Turbine Hall and the view still make it worth visiting.

The Turbine Hall

Looking down from high up into a long, tall hall with a grey concrete floor, where people walk around a big sculpture of a bare tree made of pale wood, with lit balconies along the left wall, dark steel columns along the right and tall windows at the far end

The Turbine Hall seen from high up, with visitors walking around a sculpture of a tree on its floor.

A woman in black sitting on a block of marbled stone in the Turbine Hall, looking up at big round drums, lamps, horns and metal pipes hanging on wires from the roof, with more stone blocks around her

Tarek Atoui’s sound installation Hold in the Turbine Hall, with drums and pipes hung overhead and stone blocks to sit on below.

The Turbine Hall is 155 metres long and 35 metres high. Cross the bridge on Level 1 to look down on it.

A new artwork is made for the hall every year. Until 11 April 2027 the hall has Tarek Atoui’s Hold, and you can sit or lie on the stones along the floor and feel them vibrate with its sound.

Finding your way

Tate Modern has two buildings, the Natalie Bell Building and the Blavatnik Building. You can enter both from the Turbine Hall, and bridges join them on Levels 1 and 4. Ask for a map at the Plan Your Visit point at the bottom of the ramp, or download it here (PDF) before you go.

For tired legs there are sofas on Level 2 of the Natalie Bell Building and on Levels 2 and 3 of the Blavatnik Building. Refill water bottles at the fountains next to the toilets on Levels 1 to 4 of the Natalie Bell Building.

What to see with children

A round tower of radios stacked in rings, seen from below and narrowing as it rises, with rows of silver and black radios at the top and wooden radios with glowing dials at the bottom, against white walls

Looking up at Babel, Cildo Meireles’s tower of old radios, many with their dials lit.

On Level 2 of the Natalie Bell Building, look for Henri Matisse’s The Snail, a spiral of shapes he cut and tore from painted paper while working from his bed. Cildo Meireles’s Babel, a sculpture made of radios, is on Level 4 of the same building; see if anyone can understand what the radios are saying. For three more, see Five artworks to see with your family.

Free activities for children

A man helping a baby, who sits on a table, peel a sheet of coloured dot stickers, in a white room whose walls, table and furniture are covered in bright stickers

Covering everything in coloured dots in Yayoi Kusama’s The obliteration room, in the Turbine Hall for UNIQLO Tate Play in 2022.

Seen from high above, children and adults drawing coloured lines, spirals, a sun and a big yellow figure on a grey floor, some kneeling and some holding long wooden poles, with boxes of poles beside them

Children and grown-ups drawing all over the Turbine Hall floor, some with long poles, for UNIQLO Tate Play in 2021.

The UNIQLO Tate Play trailer, from Tate’s YouTube channel.

UNIQLO Tate Play is Tate Modern’s free programme of art and play for families. In term time (outside the school holidays), its Make Studio workshops run in the Clore Studio, on Level 0 of the Natalie Bell Building, past the Clore Hub play area. Under-5s sessions are Wednesdays from 10.30am to 3pm, and sessions for children of all ages are weekends from 10.30am to 6pm. More are run in the school holidays.

A toddler in a red spotted dress standing with her hands on a long white wall covered in small handwritten names and marks, while a man and other visitors look at the wall beside her

A toddler at the Turbine Hall wall, covered in visitors’ height marks, for Roman Ondák’s Measuring the Universe on Tate Modern’s 25th birthday weekend.

Family Tours are free 30-minute tours of two or three artworks for children aged 5 to 11, on set days, mostly Saturdays. They start on Level 2 of the Natalie Bell Building.

At the free Tate Draw desks, on Level 1 of the Natalie Bell Building and Level 3 of the Blavatnik Building, children draw on a digital sketch pad and see their drawing projected on the wall, then save it to a phone.

The view from Level 10

The dark outlines of people sitting and standing at a big window, which looks out over a footbridge crowded with people, office buildings and the great dome of St Paul's Cathedral, under a pale blue sky

Looking out from Tate Modern across the Thames to the Millennium Bridge and St Paul’s Cathedral.

The Viewing Platform on Level 10 of the Blavatnik Building has an excellent view over the City of London, particularly St Paul’s Cathedral.

The only way up is by lift, from Levels 0 to 4. It closes at 5pm from Sunday to Thursday, an hour before the galleries.

Food

The Corner café, on Level 1 of the Natalie Bell Building, has a children’s menu. The Corner and the Espresso Bar, on Level 3 of the same building, both do a Pick and Mix kids’ lunch of a sandwich, fruit and a snack. From Wednesday to Sunday in good weather, the Riverside Terrace outside the river entrance serves wood-fired pizza. The cafés get busy and noisy in the lunchtime peak.

Getting there

People walking along a long, pale footbridge over a river, with curved steel arms along each side and a man in a red jacket nearest, seen through a dark window frame divided into three panes

People walking across the Millennium Bridge, seen through a window of Tate Modern.

The Millennium Bridge, a footbridge, crosses the Thames from St Paul’s Cathedral to Tate Modern. From St Paul’s tube station (Central line), the walk over the bridge to Tate Modern takes about 16 minutes. The Tate Boat, a paid river boat, runs between Tate Modern and Tate Britain, the other London Tate gallery, every 20 to 30 minutes while the galleries are open.

Tate Modern is also walking distance from London Waterloo (trains, Northern line, Jubilee line, Bakerloo line, Waterloo & City line). It’s a pleasant walk along the river past the Southbank Centre; you might want to visit both on the same day.