The Paris Museum Pass is a card that opens some fifty museums and monuments in Paris and the Île-de-France, and it does not count days: it counts hours. It activates itself the first time you use it at an entrance, and from that moment you have 48, 96 or 144 consecutive hours, depending on the version you chose.
That card, though, does not open a single door any faster than anyone else’s: the pass is not a skip-the-line ticket, and at the Louvre, at Versailles and at the Sainte-Chapelle you still have to book a time slot, free for pass holders, on each site’s own website.
On the price, though, I have to tell you how things actually went, because a single official figure does not exist. The parismuseumpass.fr site rejects automated requests with a 403 error, I tried it again every way I know on 2 October 2026, and the tables circulating online for the 2026 pass are three and do not agree with each other. The soundest of the sources that do answer is VisitParisRegion, the official tourist board for the Paris Île-de-France destination, which publishes 85 euros for two days, 105 for four and 125 for six: those are the figures I do the sums with below. Take them as an order of magnitude, because a few museum pages still carry a table fifteen euros lower on every version and several blogs a higher one, and read today’s price on parismuseumpass.fr, which opens perfectly well in your own browser.
Why can a “two-day” pass leave you with only a day and a half?
Off we go!
Consecutive hours, not days
You choose between the two, four and six-day versions, but that word is misleading. The count starts the exact moment you swipe the card at the first entrance and runs on the clock, without stopping overnight: a two-day pass activated on a Wednesday at 15:00 expires on Friday at 15:00.
Keep the consequence in mind, because it is worth real money. If you activate it in the afternoon, the first hours go to museums that are already closing, and on the last day the pass switches off mid-afternoon, right when you might still be inside a gallery. Activate it at the first opening of the morning, and your two days really do become two.
The other rule worth remembering is that every site can be visited only once with the same pass. It is not a subscription that lets you go back to the Musée d’Orsay the next day to see a room again: it is an entry counter, and every door opens once.
What the pass does not cover
Which Paris museums do you still pay for, even with the pass in your pocket?
They fall into two families, and neither is obvious. The first are the private museums, which are outside the network because they belong neither to the state nor to the city: the Musée Marmottan Monet, which holds the painting impressionism took its name from, the Musée Jacquemart-André, the Fondation Louis Vuitton and the Bourse de Commerce. These are exactly the museums you put on the list for a second or third trip to Paris, which is when the pass finally seems worth it.
The second family are temporary exhibitions, and this applies inside museums that are included. The pass opens the permanent collection of the Musée Rodin or the quai Branly, but the big exhibition of the moment, in the same building, has its own separate ticket.
Also outside the pass are the Eiffel Tower, which is not a national museum, and the Centre Pompidou, which is out only because it is shut: the centre has building works running from 2025 to 2030, and until then the question of whether the pass covers it does not arise. If you read elsewhere that the pass includes it, that is a list written before the closure. At Versailles, finally, the pass opens the Palace and the Domaine de Trianon but not the Grandes Eaux musicales and the musical gardens, which are shows with their own separate ticketing.
The eleven museums you do not need it for, because they are already free
Eleven of the fourteen Ville de Paris museums have a free permanent collection, pass or no pass: the Petit Palais, the Musée Carnavalet, the Musée d’Art Moderne, the Musée Cernuschi, the Musée Cognacq-Jay, the Musée Bourdelle, the Musée Zadkine, the Maison de Victor Hugo, the Maison de Balzac, the Musée de la Vie romantique and the Musée de la Libération.
They are not in the pass, and they do not need to be: the only exception concerns three of them, where free admission is suspended during some temporary exhibitions. But this is where people miscalculate most often: looking at the list of Paris museums, anyone choosing the pass also counts the sites that would be free anyway, and the pass looks like it delivers more than it actually does.
The full list of what is free in Paris, with the first-Sunday-of-the-month rule spelled out properly, is in Paris for free.
The booking the pass does not replace
If the pass opens the door, why do you still have to book?
Because the pass and the booking count two different things. The pass is a payment method, and it tells the ticket desk you have already paid. The booking is a people counter inside the rooms, and it keeps the museum under its capacity in a given time slot. More than three sites ask for it regardless of the pass: I list all eight in Artworks to see in Paris, and here I stop on three, where the time slot stays free for pass holders. Two spell it out on their own pages: the Palace of Versailles, whose official site says that even pass holders must still collect a timed “Passeport”, and the Sainte-Chapelle, whose FAQ page answers the question at length for visitors arriving with a pass. The third is the Louvre, and there the source is a different one: its own page goes no further than recommending the time slot, including for visitors who enter free, while it is the pass’s site that writes that the slot has to be booked in advance and that only a booked slot guarantees entry. At the Orangerie the pass site strongly recommends booking, and in practice you should.
At the Arc de Triomphe, on the other hand, the pass is enough and you do not need to book anything. At Versailles the time slot only concerns the Palace, but the free tickets you have to collect are two and not one: the “Passeport”, with its slot, and a second one for the Domaine de Trianon, where the slot is not needed and the ticket is.
The worst case is the Louvre, because it is also the one everyone puts on day one. If you turn up at the pyramid with the pass and no booked time slot, nobody turns you away on principle: the museum does release a few tickets at its desks on the day, but only a booked time slot guarantees entry, and you are risking the queue and a sold-out afternoon. How the museum’s entrances and time slots actually work is explained in How to skip the line at the Louvre.
Under twenty-six, the maths change completely
And if you are under twenty-six?
Then, in most cases, the pass is money you will not get back. The reason is that France has already given your age group the biggest discount there is: with residency or citizenship in the European Economic Area and a photo ID, up to the day of your twenty-sixth birthday the ticket for national museums and state monuments is zero. The exact conditions, age by age, are laid out in Paris for free.
Work out what that means. The Louvre, Orsay, Rodin, quai Branly, Panthéon, Sainte-Chapelle, Conciergerie and the Arc de Triomphe: all doors that already open for you without paying. The pass is sold at a single price for everyone, with no reduced rate, so you would pay it in full for an advantage you already have.
Note: free entry under 26 requires citizenship or residency in the European Economic Area, not just your age. A twenty-year-old arriving from outside pays like an adult, and for them the pass maths become a real calculation again.
How to buy it, and how to do the maths without getting it wrong
The pass is sold online on the official site, which delivers it as an e-ticket to keep on your phone or print out, and it is also sold in person: the official site’s list of sales points names the ticket desks of the participating museums and monuments and the tourist information points at the two airports, Charles-de-Gaulle and Orly. If you find advice somewhere that you must collect it in person before using it, that is outdated: the official site now dedicates a whole page to the instant e-ticket.
The honest calculation, the one that really tells you whether to buy it, takes three steps.
- List only the paying sites you will actually visit in those 48 or 96 hours, not the ones you would like to see.
- Cross off everything that would be free for you anyway: the eleven municipal museums, and everything at all if you are under 26 with the right residency.
- Cross off the temporary exhibitions, because you will pay for those regardless.
Add up the individual tickets for what is left and compare the total with the price of the pass. The threshold is not a number of sites: it is the average price of the sites you have left, and in Paris a paid entry almost always sits between 16 and 22 euros. Do the division, and paying off the two-day version, 85 euros, takes more than four sites in 48 hours, while the four-day one, 105 euros, takes five or six in 96 hours. The Versailles Passeport, 35 euros, is the one ticket in the network worth two Paris entries on its own: that is why a sum that works out almost always has it in there.
Let me show you the maths on a real case, the itinerary in What to see in Paris in 3 days. Its three stops covered by the pass are the Sainte-Chapelle, the Louvre and the Musée de l’Armée: 16, 22 and 17 euros on the European Economic Area rate, so 55 in all, and 22, 32 and 17 for someone arriving from outside, so 71. The four-day version asks 105. Three sites in three days do not pay it off, and they are not even close: you need fuller days than that.
And the difference between those two totals, 55 and 71, tells you who the pass suits better. In Paris the full rate does not depend on age alone: at the Sainte-Chapelle and the Louvre, anyone without citizenship or residency in the European Economic Area pays 6 and 10 euros more, while the pass is sold at a single price for everyone. So if you are arriving from outside, you break even with one site fewer than a European does.
Practical information
Details checked on 30 September 2026 on the official sites of the Louvre, the Palace of Versailles, the Sainte-Chapelle and the Centre des monuments nationaux, and on the parismuseumpass.fr pages reachable from search results; the individual tickets used in the sums and the pass prices were rechecked on 2 October 2026, the former on the sites of each venue and the latter on VisitParisRegion. Prices and opening hours change: check again before you travel.
Price. VisitParisRegion publishes 85 euros for two days, 105 for four and 125 for six, figures read on 2 October 2026. The official site rejects automated requests, a few museum pages still carry a table fifteen euros lower on every version and several blogs a higher one, so today’s price is on parismuseumpass.fr, on the pass’s own page. Duration. The pass lasts 48, 96 or 144 consecutive hours: two, four or six days, and the count starts at the first entrance and does not stop overnight. What it includes. One entry to every site on the official list, permanent collections, and at Versailles the Domaine de Trianon too. What it leaves out. Private museums, including the Marmottan Monet and the Jacquemart-André, the Eiffel Tower, every temporary exhibition and, at Versailles, the Grandes Eaux musicales and the musical gardens. Booking. The Palace of Versailles and the Sainte-Chapelle still ask for a separately booked time slot on their own website, free for pass holders, while the Louvre recommends one, and the pass’s site warns that only a booked slot guarantees entry. They are not the only ones: there are eight in all, listed in Artworks to see in Paris. At the Orangerie booking is strongly recommended, the Arc de Triomphe and the Domaine de Trianon do not ask for one, and at Versailles the free tickets to collect are two, one for the Palace’s “Passeport” and one for the Trianon. Free admission. Under-18s of any nationality, and citizens or residents of the European Economic Area under 26 with a photo ID, enter free without a pass. How much time it needs. The pass only pays off for someone who fills the days: with entries between 16 and 22 euros it takes more than four paying sites in 48 hours to cover the two-day version, and five or six in 96 hours for the four-day one.
Before you buy it
The pass is good for one thing only: saving money across a tight run of paid entries, within a fixed number of hours. It does not get you past the queue, it does not cover exhibitions, it is no use in the city’s own museums and it is almost never worth it under 26.
If the maths work out in your favour after the three steps, the best way to use it is to load it with the sites that have the most expensive ticket and the longest queue: the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay, the Sainte-Chapelle, the Musée de l’Armée at the Invalides and Versailles. If it does not, the Paris that asks for no ticket at all is bigger than it seems, and it starts with Paris for free. And if you still need to work out in what order to fit these stops into your days in Paris, start from What to see in Paris in 3 days, which ties them together around each site’s closing day.
Photographs: Sainte-Chapelle by Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons; Dôme des Invalides by Maksim Sokolov, CC BY-SA 4.0. The sculpted group on the Arc de Triomphe, “La Paix de 1815” by Antoine Étex, is in the public domain.
