Venice access fee

Venice access fee now: nothing to pay until March 2027

If you’re visiting Venice between now and late March 2027, there’s no access fee. The 2026 season ended on 26 July, and since the next day the city’s own fee website has said you can visit without paying or asking for an exemption.

The fee is a charge on day-trippers to the old city, on set days and during the day only, from 8:30 to 16:00 in 2026. It’s the day visitor’s counterpart to the tourist tax that hotel guests pay each night, and that’s why anyone staying the night in Venice doesn’t pay it.

Venice access fee 2027 dates

The 72 days for 2027 are already on the city’s fee website, even though the price isn’t. All but nine of them are Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, from the end of March to mid-August.

The longer runs fall on Italian holidays. The season opens on the Easter weekend, with Easter Sunday on 28 March and Easter Monday on the 29th. From 23 April to 2 May every day is a fee day, around Liberation Day on 25 April and Labour Day on 1 May, and the same goes for 28 May to 6 June, around Republic Day on 2 June.

The calendar for 2027 shows the hours as 8:30 to 16:30, half an hour longer than in 2026. Those hours, the price and the exemptions all come with the 2027 rules, due by 31 December 2026, so look at the city’s fee website again in January before you settle on one of these dates.

What the access fee cost in 2026, and what could change in 2027

In 2026 the fee ran from 3 April to 26 July. It cost €5 per person if you paid by the fourth day before your visit, and €10 in the last three days or on the day itself. For a Sunday, that meant €5 up to and including Wednesday and €10 from Thursday.

You paid per day, with no multi-day ticket, and a day’s payment let you leave and come back in as often as you liked.

The fee has grown every year. It ran on 29 days in 2024, nearly all weekends and with no fines. In 2025 it ran on 54, when Fridays joined, and in 2026 on 60, with tighter checks.

More than 650,000 day visitors paid in 2026, and the takings passed €5 million, according to the German press agency DPA. There’s no daily cap and the price doesn’t rise with the crowds, which is why critics quoted by the Italian daily Il Post say the fee raises money without limiting numbers.

2027 could look different. Simone Venturini, Venice’s new mayor, has proposed €30 to €50 on certain days, which would need the agreement of the Italian government. It’s a proposal, not a decision, and until the city publishes the rules, the 2026 figures are the only real ones.

Where the fee applies, and where you pass through free

The fee covers the old city, including San Michele, San Giorgio Maggiore and the Giudecca. The arrival points around its edge are outside it: the bridge from the mainland, the Ponte della Libertà, Piazzale Roma, Santa Lucia railway station, Tronchetto, the cruise terminal at the Stazione Marittima, San Basilio and the Cornoldi area by the big-ship quays on the Riva degli Schiavoni. So is the whole mainland, Mestre and Marghera included.

Changing boats is free as well. If you only step onto an ACTV pontoon to change from one vaporetto to another, without going into the city, you don’t owe the fee.

Visitors to the lagoon islands didn’t pay in 2026. Murano, Burano, Torcello, the Lido, Pellestrina and the smaller islands were left out, so you could take a vaporetto from the station or Piazzale Roma out to Murano or Burano without owing anything, as long as you didn’t walk into the old city. But that exclusion was decided for 2026 alone, and the fee’s regulation covers the islands as well as the old city, so they may be in for 2027.

The hours mattered too. In 2026, arriving before 8:30 on a fee day didn’t get you out of it, because you needed proof of payment for the whole 8:30 to 16:00 window. From 16:00 until 8:30 the next morning the fee didn’t apply and you didn’t need to register. The 2027 calendar shows the window ending at 16:30.

Who doesn’t pay the Venice access fee

If you sleep in Venice, you don’t pay. That covers accommodation anywhere in the municipality, the old city, the Lido, Mestre and Marghera included, because you already pay the tourist tax. In 2026 you still needed an exemption voucher with a QR code for the days of your stay, or a signed self-declaration with an ID document. Many hotels send the QR code, and if yours doesn’t, you request it by naming where you’re staying.

Sleeping outside the municipality, in Treviso or Padua say, makes you a day-tripper under these rules, so you pay on fee days.

Friends of a resident had their own procedure. The resident generated the QR code with an Italian digital ID, and the guest swapped it for a paper voucher at a VELA desk, at Piazzale Roma, Santa Lucia station or the Cornoldi pier, on the day or in the 15 days before.

How payment worked in 2026

The 2026 rules are the guide until the 2027 ones are published. You paid online, through WhatsApp or, in the last three days, in person, and came away with a named QR code.

You could cancel up to the day before, for the whole booking or one QR code at a time, with your booking code, and the money went back the way you paid. After that, a refund needed proof that you hadn’t gone in, and tickets from the machines couldn’t be cancelled ahead.

Checks and fines

In 2026 inspectors in vests or with ID cards stood at the main access points into the city. Not showing proof of payment or exemption, or showing a QR code for another date, cost a fine of €25 to €150, plus the unpaid fee, and a false self-declaration can lead to criminal charges.

A day in Venice on a fee day

The fee only lets you walk the streets. The Doge’s Palace, the museums and St Mark’s Basilica have their own tickets, and so does the Venice vaporetto, the water bus you’ll want between St Mark’s and the station. Our page on Venice Pass and Venice’s museum passes has the passes that bundle the big sights, and things to do in Venice helps fill the day.

If you come with a guided tour, a separate city rule caps groups at 25 people in the old city and on Murano, Burano and Torcello, with earpieces and no loudspeakers.