Papal Audience: How to Get Free Papal Audience Tickets

Papal audience tickets for the Pope’s general audience are always free, and they are handed out by the Prefecture of the Papal Household: lay faithful request them on its website, eventi.pontificalisdomus.va, once the date shows as open. The general audience is the Wednesday one, held either in St Peter’s Square or in the Paul VI Hall. Requests open only after the official calendar of celebrations is published, so the date and time of each audience come from the Vatican, not from this page. The current Pope is Leo XIV.

What is the Pope’s general audience and when is it held?

The general audience is the Pope’s public meeting with the faithful. Organizing the Pope’s audiences is the job of the Prefecture of the Papal Household, the body that also handles protocol and hospitality at the Vatican, according to Wikipedia. It is different from a private audience, for which the Holy See’s public page offers no procedure.

It is held on Wednesdays. Wikipedia calls it the “Wednesday General Audience”, and tour operators confirm it in their own way: they warn that St Peter’s Basilica closes on Wednesday mornings for the papal audience. The exact time, and whether there is an audience in a given week, is on the Holy See’s official calendar. We give no dates because they change: the Pope also travels, and some weeks the schedule is different.

The Pope is Leo XIV, elected on 8 May 2025. He is the 267th pope of the Catholic Church and the ninth sovereign of Vatican City.

If you only want to see the Pope, there is another occasion that needs no ticket: the Angelus. The Pope prays it in public every Sunday at noon, usually from the window of his study in the Apostolic Palace, which looks onto the square. We explain it in how to see the Pope.

How do you get papal audience tickets?

Request them free of charge from the Prefecture of the Papal Household. The Holy See’s page on audiences and celebrations separates two routes:

Who you are	Where to request	What for
Lay faithful (most visitors)	Prefecture of the Papal Household, eventi.pontificalisdomus.va	General audiences and liturgical celebrations of the Holy Father
Bishop, priest or deacon	Office for the Liturgical Celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff, biglietti.liturgiepontificie.va	Papal Masses as a concelebrant

The steps are simple:

1. Check the official calendar. Requests open only after the calendar of celebrations is published. Until then there is nothing to request.
2. Register on the Prefecture’s website. The eventi.pontificalisdomus.va system asks you to create an account before requesting tickets, and it is available in Spanish.
3. Choose the audience and request your tickets. The Prefecture’s confirmation is what counts.

Keep one ground rule in mind: the Holy See points out that these tickets are always free. If a website sells you a “ticket” for the audience, what you are paying for is a service. For example, one of the audience activities listed in the same catalog as our tours charges from $39 and includes a host at a meeting point, the audience tickets and, in its extended option, entry to the Museums with an audio guide. The value lies in the hosting, not in the ticket, which is free. We do not sell tickets for the audience.

What about a private audience? The Holy See’s public page only explains how to attend the general audiences and the liturgical celebrations. It offers no procedure for requesting a private audience with the Pope.

Where is it held: St Peter’s Square or the Paul VI Hall?

The general audience is held in St Peter’s Square or in the Paul VI Hall, a covered auditorium next to the basilica. Wikipedia explains that since the pontificate of Paul VI, popes have used this hall as an alternative to the square for the Wednesday audience. One of the audience activities in the catalog sums it up this way: the square, or the Paul VI Audience Hall in bad weather.

Here is what the two venues are like:

• St Peter’s Square. Bernini’s square, with four colonnades of 284 columns, is the usual setting for the Pope’s major ceremonies, the general audiences among them, according to Wikipedia. Its history is in the St Peter’s Square guide.
• Paul VI Hall. Also called the Nervi Hall, after its designer, the engineer Pier Luigi Nervi. It opened on 30 July 1971 and has an auditorium that holds 6,300 people. The hall is dominated by a bronze sculpture by Pericle Fazzini, The Resurrection.

The Vatican announces the venue of each audience. Do not take it for granted when planning your day: if the audience is in the square, the basilica closes that morning; if it is in the hall, some tours do include the basilica.

What time should you arrive and how does entry work?

Arrive early: the Vatican publishes the start time of each audience, and getting a good spot means getting there ahead of time. That is the advice the audience activities keep repeating; one of them meets its customers at 7:30 in Piazza del Risorgimento, next to the Museums. The same activities warn that the timing and running of the audience are decided only by the Holy Father and the Vatican authorities, and can change at the last minute.

For entry, prepare the same things as for entering the basilica:

• ID. The audience activities ask every participant, children included, for a passport or national ID card.
• Suitable clothing. Shoulders and knees covered: no shorts, miniskirts or sleeveless tops. The details are in Vatican dress code.
• Security check. Access to the basilica area goes through the Italian State Police checks in the right-hand colonnade of the square. Travel light: the basilica has no cloakroom.
• Water and patience. In the square you wait outdoors.

To get there, metro line A, direction Battistini, drops you at Ottaviano; from there you walk to the square along Via di Porta Angelica. Every route is in how to get to the Vatican.

How do you combine the audience with the Vatican Museums?

Wednesday is a good day to pair the audience with the Vatican Museums, as long as you leave the basilica for the afternoon. The Museums are open Monday to Saturday from 8:00 to 20:00, last entry at 18:00, so after the audience you have plenty of time to get in. Book an entry time that leaves you some slack, because the audience can run long.

The basilica is the tricky part. Operators warn that it closes on Wednesday mornings for the papal audience:

• The Museums and basilica ticket gives you, on that day, basilica entry at the first available time.
• The guided tour of the Museums, the Sistine Chapel and the basilica moves the basilica to 15:00 or later, without the guide inside, on ceremony days.

A simple Wednesday plan: audience in the morning, lunch near the square, the Museums and the Sistine Chapel in the early afternoon and the basilica at the end of the day, since it is open until 19:00 in fall and winter. For the Museums, a Vatican Museums and Sistine Chapel ticket is enough, from $37, rated 4.5 out of 5 in 159,426 reviews of this ticket on GetYourGuide; it is non-refundable, so choose your time carefully. The other options are in Vatican Museums tickets.

If you also want to attend a Mass, the basilica holds Masses every day; the times are in Mass at the Vatican. And to fit it all into one or two days, use the guide to visiting the Vatican.