What’s On At The Royal Mews For May Half Term?

Looking for things to do with the kids this week? As the May half term enters its stride, take a look at this regal activity. The Royal Mews at Buckingham Palace is celebrating its 200th anniversary this month, inviting families to explore the historic state coaches with a whole host of events. Here’s what you need to know.

The Royal Mews Turns 200 This Month

(© Royal Collection Enterprises Limited 2025 | Royal Collection Trust)

What Is The Royal Mews?

The Royal Mews at Buckingham Palace is a working stables and home to the Royal Family’s historic coaches and carriages. This includes the spectacular Gold State Coach recently used at King Charles’ Coronation. In fact, the Mews has played a role in every coronation and royal wedding since it was built in 1825.

Open to the public, the Royal Mews gives visitors a behind the scenes insight into these magnificent royal events. On average, hundreds of thousands of people visit the Mews every year. As well as the Gold State Coach, the Mews is home to 2014’s Diamond Jubilee State Coach, and artifacts related to significant events in British history, including a musket ball from the Battle of Waterloo to a piece of a Battle of Britain Spitfire. Visitors can also watch the daily work of the Royal Mews staff, including feeding, exercising, mucking out and training the horses.

However, the Royal Mews is not just for good times and celebrations: on a day-to-day level, the Mews is home to a village of people with Palace staff and their families living on site, and even housed a school for the children of Buckingham Palace staff during Queen Victoria’s reign.

The current Royal Mews dates back 200 years, a grand stables designed by architect John Nash to house 100 horses for George IV. But of course, George IV wasn’t the first royal in need of a home for his stallions. Before its current location at Buckingham Palace – before George IV’s time, the less impressive Buckingham House – the Mews had been located at Charing Cross where the National Gallery sits today, coincidentally celebrating its own 200th anniversary this year.

(© Royal Collection Enterprises Limited 2025 | Royal Collection Trust)

What’s On This Half Term?

Year round, the Mews offers a range of interactive displays and activities for visiting families, including:

• A multimedia journey through the Mews’ royal cars, horses, and carriages, including games, videos and fun facts
• Dressing up as a coachman
• Tacking up a wooden pony
• Sitting inside a model carriage
• Special family-oriented guided tours at the weekend

This May half term, special editions to the line-up include art activities inspired by The King’s Gallery’s current exhibition, The Edwardians: Age of Elegance, inviting budding young artists to create family miniatures to take home and keep. Available on 29 and 30 May 2025 from 10.30am to 3pm, these activities are free with standard admission.

Best of all, children aged five to 17 benefit from half price tickets, with free tickets available for children under the age of five. The one year pass, meanwhile, offers free re-entry for a year, meaning families can return to enjoy new activities with every school holiday.

(© Royal Collection Enterprises Limited 2025 | Royal Collection Trust)

When Is The Royal Mews Open?

The Royal Mews is open until 2 November 2025, when it will close for the winter months. It is closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, except during the summer holidays when it is open seven days a week (this year, that is 10 July to 31 August). Later in 2025, this includes a Royal Ascot themed arts and crafts session (28 June) and summertime crafts including camera-less photography (26 July).

VISIT

Find The Royal Mews at Buckingham Palace (London SW1W 1QH). It is open Thursday to Monday from 10am to 5pm, with last entry at 4pm. This half term, the Royal Mews will be closed on Saturday 31 May.

Tickets start from £17 per adult and can be booked in advance at rct.uk

Tickets can be purchased at the door, but they are slightly more expensive.