The silver "The Making of Harry Potter" sign, with a lightning-bolt P, on the studio's ribbed beige wall

The Making of Harry Potter sign on the studio building.

Before you go

Prices
Adults £58.50, children 5 to 15 £47, under 5s free; family ticket (two adults and two children, or one adult and three children) £188 (£61, £48 and £192 from 1 January 2027)
Open
Times vary by date, so check the Studio Tour’s calendar
Nearest station
Watford Junction (trains from London Euston), then the shuttle bus, which is included in your ticket; the station is step-free
Plan your journey
TfL Journey Planner, Google Maps or Uber

For families

For neurodivergent visitors

  • Relaxed Tours: on a few mornings a year (next date: Saturday 5 December 2026) the tour is adapted for visitors with autism from 8am until 10am, with fewer visitors, changed lighting and quieter sound, at the normal ticket price, and you can stay on afterwards, when it gets busier and louder.
  • Autism & Visitor Support Guide: a social story with pictures to help you plan the visit.
  • Sensory Rooms: there are two, next to the Food Hall and the Backlot Café, for somewhere calm and quiet if it all gets too much, and a member of staff can take you to one.
  • Sunflower lanyard: pick up a free one at the ticket window or the Information Desk; it quietly tells staff that you may need extra help, and they’re trained to spot it and ask what you need.
  • Sensory Support Bags: contains fidget toys, ear defenders and a Sunflower lanyard. Collect from Information Desk in the lobby when you arrive; or borrow ear defenders.
  • Queues: ask a member of staff on the day and they can arrange for you to skip the queues in the busier areas.
  • Lights and smoke: the Forbidden Forest has smoke machines and strobe lights, so ask a member of staff for the way round it; haze is used in a few other places and some special features add flashing lights; tell staff when you arrive if you’d rather avoid them.
  • The start: everyone is led through the holding room, which can be loud and where the doors close and the lights dim, then a cinema, where the lights go off, and the Great Hall.
  • Scary bits: in the Forbidden Forest, go right to avoid the moving spiders, and to avoid Destroyed Gringotts (which is loud and smoky, with fire effects and red light), walk straight through the archway opposite into Diagon Alley.
  • Noise: the hand dryers are loud, and it can get noisy in the Backlot Café, by the Mandrakes in Professor Sprout’s greenhouse and in the dim Gringotts vaults.

Accessibility

  • The Studio Tour’s essential companion tickets: each paying disabled visitor can bring one essential companion free, though not with the free tickets for children aged 4 and under; buy your own tickets online and then contact Visitor Services with your booking reference, or collect the companion ticket at the Ticket Window on the day, and bring proof such as a DLA or PIP letter, a Blue Badge, a DID card or Access Card, or a diagnosis or doctor’s letter.

The Harry Potter studio tour is on the expensive side, but it’s good and worth visiting so long as:

  • your kids aren’t too little - it’s not really suitable for kids under about 7 or 8, because they’ll get bored and maybe frightened by some of it and they’d have more fun in a playground or a sandpit,
  • you and the other people in your group have seen at least one of the Harry Potter movies. It’s very focussed around the movies - if you’ve read the books then great, that’ll help, but it’s having seen the movies in advance that really makes this a cool and fun outing, because you can recognise sets and costumes and creatures from the movies.

Dumbledore's long pale robes on a stand beside his carved wooden desk, with a lamp, a tall chair and spiral staircases up to shelves of books behind

Dumbledore’s office, with his robes beside the desk.

So what is there to see?

Broadly speaking,

  • sets,
  • props including animatronics,
  • costumes.

The giant hairy spider Aragog, its long legs spread, clinging to a huge tree trunk in a dark forest set

Aragog, the giant spider, in the Forbidden Forest.

The red and black Hogwarts Express steam engine, number 5972, beside a brick wall under an arched station roof

The Hogwarts Express at Platform 9¾.

The purple triple-decker Knight Bus parked outside the studio buildings

The Knight Bus, a purple triple-decker, in the tour’s outdoor area.

The big round Chamber of Secrets door, with carved snakes coiled across it, on a stand under studio lights

The Chamber of Secrets door, with its coiled snakes.

The studio itself is in a series of different large rooms (different sets from the movies):

  • The Great Hall. Pretty interesting, look for the graffiti in the tables. The hovering candles in the movies were added by CGI.
  • Gryffindor common room and boys’ dormitory. Includes costumes worn by the three principal kids (young adults by the time they were wearing these costumes). Look out for the invisibility cloak.
  • Dumbledore’s office. Includes the Sorting Hat (we like the Sorting Hat).
  • Potions Classroom.
  • Hagrid’s Hut. It was built in two sizes: a bigger one to make the other actors look small, and a smaller one to make Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane) seem large.
  • The Weasley Kitchen including the Family Clock (“Find My” for wizards).
  • The Ministry of Magic. Big fireplaces.
  • The Forbidden Forest including Aragog (big spider).
  • Platform 9¾ and the Hogwarts Express. One of the best parts, this contains an actual steam engine. You can get into the carriages.
  • The Backlot including Privet Drive (the Dursleys’ House) but more importantly the three-level Knight Bus!
  • Professor Sprout’s Greenhouse, added in 2022, where you can pull up a potted Mandrake for a photo.
  • Creature effects. One of the most interesting sections for adults, this shows you how the animatronics and other creature effects were built. Buckbeak is a highlight.
  • Gringotts Wizarding Bank, added in 2019, with the Lestrange vault.
  • Diagon Alley. Pretty interesting, fun to spot which movie scenes it was used in. In the first movie they also used Leadenhall Market.
  • Hogwarts Castle. A very large and detailed model of the exterior of the school.

A long wooden broomstick with a bicycle-style seat, a backrest and foot stirrups, on a green stand in front of a green screen

A broomstick with a seat and footrests for the actors, in front of a green screen.

There’s also a gift shop and a cafe where you can get ‘butterbeer’ (doesn’t contain alcohol, more like rootbeer, too sweet for me). The gift shop will try to sell you so much really expensive stuff, so cut that short if you can.

And there’s a green-screen section where you can ride a broomstick and see yourself on-screen swooping around the castle, which is fun.

Getting there

The Harry Potter studio is a little way outside of London - it’s in the northern suburb of Watford which is absolutely gettable-to by public transport.

You could get a direct coach to the studio from Victoria, Baker Street or King’s Cross, but you shouldn’t because it’s ludicrously overpriced, from £52 return for the coach alone - which is just ridiculous. If money is no object then you can buy those tickets here with the studio entrance ticket bundled in or here for just the coach journey.

So don’t do that.

What you should do instead is go by public transport. It’s pretty easy and our page Travelling around London will help you.

  1. Go to London Euston railway station and from there get a train to Watford Junction:

    You can use the Transport for London journey planner to help you: this link automatically fills out the destination as Watford Junction, so you just need to put in your starting location.

    There are lots of trains from Euston to Watford Junction, you want the fast train which will take about 20 mins.

    You can pay using contactless (your phone or your credit/debit card) to swipe in and out of the ticket barriers at Euston and Watford Junction. Or you can buy a paper ticket which will cost £15.20 return per adult at off-peak times. You can also buy tickets online from Trainline, Uber or National Rail. Assuming you’re travelling after the morning rush-hour (leaving Euston after 9:30), the ticket you want is an Off-Peak Day Return.

A black double-decker bus painted with Harry Potter scenes, its sign reading "Watford Junction & Warner Bros. Studio Tour London", at a bus stop

The free bus between Watford Junction station and the studio.

  1. From Watford Junction, get the free bus to the Warner Bros Harry Potter studio. The bus is included in your studio tour ticket, which you must book in advance - show your ticket to the driver.