Hamilton starts at £23. Tartuffe (Remixed) starts at £120.75. Both are West End shows, both were on sale on the same afternoon, and the second one costs more than five times the first.
That is the part no ranked list tells you. Every guide to the best West End shows puts them in an order and leaves out the only number that decides what you actually see, which is what it costs to get in the door.
So here is the other version of a list of London theatre shows. Eighty six shows are currently on sale in the West End, forty five of them London musicals and forty one of them plays in London, and the cheapest entry price is £13 against £120.75 at the top. Checked against the Society of London Theatre’s own listings on 26 September 2026 and rechecked on 28 September.
Cheap theatre tickets in London: the cheapest way into a West End theatre
Thirteen pounds. Four plays were on sale at that price: The Bridge, Darkling, Global Majority and Insane Asylum Seekers.
For a musical the floor is £18, and it is held by two you have heard of: Into The Woods and Mamma Mia!
Then the thing that surprises people most.
Hamilton, The Book of Mormon, Matilda, Miss Saigon and Oliver! all start at £23. The most garlanded musical of the last decade has the same entry price as ten other shows and is cheaper to get into than more than twenty of the plays currently running. If your assumption was that Hamilton is the expensive one, it is not, and it has not been for years.
What the top actually costs
| Musicals, from | Price |
|---|---|
| Into The Woods, Mamma Mia! | £18 |
| Showstopper! The Improvised Musical | £21.60 |
| Hamilton, Book of Mormon, Matilda, Miss Saigon, Oliver! | £23 |
| Come Alive! | £51.08 |
| Operation Mincemeat | £53.24 |
| Kimberly Akimbo | £93 |
| Plays, from | Price |
|---|---|
| The Bridge, Darkling, Global Majority, Insane Asylum Seekers | £13 |
| The Play That Goes Wrong, Amadeus, Hay Fever | £23 |
| Frankenstein | £48 |
| Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, one part | £56 |
| Tartuffe (Remixed) | £120.75 |
| The Comedy About Spies | ClosedEnded at the Adelphi on 26 Sep 2026, when it was from £138 |
Note the Harry Potter line carefully. The £56 is for one part. The Cursed Child is a two part play and seeing the whole thing means buying twice, which is the single most common budgeting mistake made on this list.
What “from” means, and why some prices are not round numbers
Every figure above is a “from” price and every one of them describes a small number of seats.
The cheap seat is usually restricted view, high up, or at the extreme side. That is not a swindle, it is how theatres built in the 1890s were designed, with a gallery sold cheaply because you can see about three quarters of the stage from it. For a musical with big staging that matters. For a play with four people and a table it frequently does not, which is why £13 goes further on a play than on a spectacle.
There is a second tell worth knowing. Most of the prices above are round pounds. A few are not: £21.60, £27.39, £51.08, £53.24, £120.75. A price that lands on an odd figure like that is what a booking fee folded into the headline looks like, rather than a fee added at the end. It is not possible to tell from a listing alone which shows add fees later, so take the price you are quoted at the final screen as the real one and compare there, not at the top of the page.
Last minute theatre tickets in London: the booth in Leicester Square, which has changed its name
If someone has told you to go to TKTS, that advice is still right and the name is now wrong.
It is called the Official London Theatre Ticket Booth, in partnership with tkts. It is in the Clocktower building on the south side of Leicester Square, opposite the Radisson Blu Edwardian Hampshire hotel, and it has been selling on the day tickets there for over forty years.
Opening hours are Monday to Saturday 10.30am to 6pm and Sunday 11am to 4pm. There are extended hours across the summer, from 20 July to 29 August, when it runs 10am to 7pm Monday to Saturday.
It is run by the Society of London Theatre, which is a not for profit, and money spent there goes back into the industry rather than to a reseller.
Now the part worth the whole section. The Society’s own page warns you about the competition in plain language: there are other ticket shops in Leicester Square, it is the only one run by the Society, and it tells visitors to make sure they are at the right one.
When the official not for profit body feels the need to say that on its own website, take it as written. The square has shops that look like the booth and are not the booth. Check the building before you queue.
One practical difference in its favour: you leave with a physical ticket. It does not offer concession rates.
The best musicals and plays in London: which one should you actually book
“Best” is a matter of taste and anybody ranking eighty six shows is guessing. What can be said without guessing is which ones have survived, because the West End is brutal and a show that has run for decades has been chosen by millions of people rather than by a critic.
Les Misérables is the longest running of the London musicals, which is the closest thing to an objective answer that exists. Phantom of the Opera, The Lion King, Mamma Mia!, Wicked and Matilda are all in the same category of long stayers, and all of them start at £38 or less.
Phantom of the Opera enters its 40th year at His Majesty’s Theatre, and has a special anniversary gala performance on Friday 9 October 2026, with alumni from the last four decades joining the company for a curtain call. The producers say a limited number of tickets for that night were to go on sale in late September through Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Box Five Club, with the proceeds matched to fund a scholarship programme. Hamilton is booking to March 2027, with midweek showing the best availability, returns worth checking daily, and a ticket lottery on its official site.
If you want the famous one on a budget: Hamilton or Matilda at £23, or Mamma Mia! at £18.
If you want to spend as little as possible: a £13 play. The economics of a small cast play favour the cheap seat, and £13 for an evening out in central London is not a price that exists anywhere else.
If you are taking someone who does not go to the theatre: a musical rather than a play, and something with staging that justifies the ticket. This is the one case where paying for a better seat changes the evening.
If you have left it until today: the booth in Leicester Square, in person, and take the advice of the person behind the glass. That is what they are there for and it is free.
Practical notes
Check whether the play is in two parts. The Cursed Child is the obvious one and the pricing looks half what it is.
Book the dinner around the curtain, not the other way round. West End curtains are usually 7.30pm and kitchens near the theatres fill from six. Pre theatre dinner in London covers the rooms that can actually turn a table in ninety minutes and which ones will not try.
Matinees are cheaper and quieter. The same show on a Wednesday afternoon is a different price from a Saturday night, and the cast is the same.
The odds of a cheap seat rise midweek. Nothing complicated behind that: fewer people want a Tuesday.
Everything here was taken from the Society of London Theatre’s own listings on 26 September 2026, and rechecked in full on 28 September. Prices are the advertised minimums for the cheapest available seats, they move with demand, and the show list changes constantly as productions open and close. Confirm before you book.
The cheap ticket routes, show by show
Each of the big shows now has its own page, and the cheap route differs on every one.
Hamilton runs a £10 lottery with a six-day entry window, from 12.01am Friday to 1pm Thursday.
Wicked releases 24 Front Row seats online at £29.50 every Wednesday at 10am, which undercuts its own £35 student standby.
The Lion King puts £29.50 seats on sale every Monday at noon through Magical Mondays.
The Book of Mormon sells last-minute seats from £23, the cheapest non-lottery price, plus £2 a ticket.
Mamma Mia charges £99 for four on its family rate, which beats its own £30 day ticket.
Matilda books furthest ahead, to September 2027, with up to 20% off off-peak dates from January.
Moulin Rouge publishes no cheap route at all, and will only sell you six months ahead unless you are a group.
Les Misérables has the half-price parking and the box office that covers eight theatres.
Back to the Future has closed in the West End, and the UK tour does not come to London.
Where to go next
The National Theatre has its own page, with the ten pound Friday Rush and what the cheap seats actually are.
Pre theatre dinner in London is the other half of the evening, and the timing is the whole problem: a 7.30pm curtain means ordering by about a quarter past six.
Covent Garden and Soho are the two neighbourhoods Theatreland sits between, and the restaurants in Covent Garden are the closest to most curtains.
Late night restaurants covers the other approach, which is eating after the show instead of rushing before it, and London after dark has the rest of the evening.
Questions we get asked
What is the cheapest West End show?
Thirteen pounds is the floor, and on 28 September 2026 four plays were on sale at that price: The Bridge, Darkling, Global Majority and Insane Asylum Seekers. For a musical the cheapest entry is 18 pounds, held by Into The Woods and Mamma Mia! Those are from prices for a small number of seats, usually restricted view or high in the gallery, which matters more for a big staged musical than for a small cast play.
How much are Hamilton tickets in London?
From 23 pounds, which surprises most people. That is the same entry price as The Book of Mormon, Matilda, Miss Saigon and Oliver!, and it is cheaper than more than twenty of the plays currently running in the West End. Hamilton has not been the expensive ticket in London for some years. The genuinely expensive ones at the moment are The Comedy About Spies at 138 pounds and Tartuffe (Remixed) at 120.75.
Is TKTS in Leicester Square still there?
Yes, and it has been renamed. It is now the Official London Theatre Ticket Booth, in partnership with tkts, in the Clocktower building on the south side of Leicester Square opposite the Radisson Blu Edwardian Hampshire hotel. It opens Monday to Saturday 10.30am to 6pm and Sunday 11am to 4pm. It is run by the Society of London Theatre, a not for profit, and the Society's own website warns that there are other ticket shops in the square which are not it, so check the building before queueing.
What is the best West End show right now?
Nobody can answer that honestly for you, but there is an objective proxy: survival. Les Misérables is the longest running of the London musicals, and Phantom of the Opera, The Lion King, Mamma Mia!, Wicked and Matilda are all long stayers chosen by millions of people rather than by a critic. All of them start at 38 pounds or less. If you want the most talked about rather than the most enduring, that is a different and much shorter lived list.
How many shows are on in the West End?
Eighty six were on sale on 28 September 2026, split as forty five musicals and forty one plays, according to the Society of London Theatre's own listings. That number moves constantly as productions open and close, which is why any ranked list of the best shows goes out of date faster than it looks. The price range across all of them ran from 13 pounds to 138.
Why are some theatre ticket prices not round numbers?
A price landing on an odd figure like 27.39 or 51.08 rather than a round pound is usually what a booking fee folded into the headline price looks like, as opposed to a fee added at the checkout. You cannot tell from a listing alone which shows add fees later and which have already included them, so compare the total at the final payment screen rather than the from price at the top of the page.
Written by Robert J Wills, no. 158 in the guide.
Last checked 28 September 2026 against the venues' own published information. Nobody pays to appear here and we take no bookings.
