Tokyo Skytree Tickets

A service fee of $3.24 (¥500) per ticket is added to every purchase made at the 4th-floor ticket counter or the ticket vending machines beside it. It applies to the Tembo Deck ticket and to the combined Deck and Galleria ticket. For a family of four buying at the door, that is $12.96 (¥2,000) added for the privilege of queueing, and the queue is the reason most people end up there in the first place.

The exception, in writing

The Tembo Galleria ticket sold from the machines inside the Tembo Deck on Floor 350 carries no service fee. The operator states this explicitly, in the same block of text that announces the fee for everything else. It is the reason this guide keeps recommending you buy the deck ticket online and settle the Galleria question upstairs: you lose nothing by waiting, and you gain the ability to look out of a window first.

What buying at the door does not buy you

It does not buy priority, and it does not buy a slot that was not there. The operator's ticket FAQ is explicit that no allocation is reserved for same-day sales and that the machines and the online store draw on the same remaining inventory. On a busy evening the counter can therefore be both more expensive and empty-handed.

The operator introduced variable pricing for individual admission tickets with effect from admissions on 1 April 2026, and recorded the change on its own history page. The published figures on the ticket page are now written as From ¥1,800 and From ¥3,000, and the sentence under each one says to check the price for the day of your visit on the online reservation calendar. There is no table of tiers anywhere on the site.

What this means in practice

Treat the figures on this page as floors that hold on ordinary weekdays, and expect a higher number on weekends, national holidays, the New Year period and the fireworks nights on the Sumida, for which the operator says the ticket release schedule itself differs from the usual timeline. The only honest way to learn your fare is to open the calendar for your date. Anyone quoting you an exact peak figure without a date attached is quoting a fare they cannot have read.

The tiers you can see are on other products

The event tickets are still published at fixed prices, and they give a sense of where the tower prices its extras: the Morning View ticket with a soft drink and a food item at $16.20 (¥2,500) for an adult and $11.02 (¥1,700) for a child, the Night Viewing ticket with one alcoholic drink at $15.55 (¥2,400), and the yoga session on Floor 450, open to over-18s only, at $36.30 (¥5,600). All three are event-dated and appear only when the calendar carries them.

Sales open on the first day of the month two months before the visit month: tickets for any date in June go on sale on 1 April. Membership registration is required, so you cannot check out as a guest. Payment takes Visa, Mastercard, American Express, JCB and Diners cards, debit cards, Alipay and WeChat Pay, and since April 2025 the card must support 3D Secure or the transaction will not complete, which is the most common cause of a failed purchase from abroad.

• Open the date calendar first and read the fare for your date; the price shown under the date is the one you pay
• Buy up to 29 minutes after your chosen admission time on the day itself, if anything is left
• Confirmation arrives from a linktivity.co.jp address; check the spam folder before assuming it failed
• The QR code appears through a link in the voucher, and can be printed, screenshotted or shown live
• Since 2 March 2026 there is no ticket-issuing step on site: the QR code at the gate is the whole process

Convenience stores are the other official route

The ticket page lists purchase at convenience stores alongside online purchase for both the Deck and the combined ticket, at the same online prices. For anyone already in Japan without a 3D Secure card, that is the way around the payment problem, and it avoids the counter surcharge that the machines inside the tower carry.

You cannot change the date, the time or the number of guests on an official ticket. The only route is to cancel and rebook. Cancellation is free more than 31 days before the admission date, costs 20 per cent from 30 days out until the admission time, and is not possible at all once the admission time has passed.

A cancellation made within 59 minutes of purchase is free, which covers the immediate mistake.

Arriving late is allowed

A holder of a date and time-specific ticket who misses the slot may still enter on the same day by joining the back of the line currently being admitted. There is no penalty and no re-booking. Arriving early is the one that fails: entry before the reserved time is refused outright.

So if the choice is between a slot you might be twenty minutes late for and one you might be twenty minutes early for, take the earlier slot.

The no-show refund almost nobody claims

If someone in your booking cannot come, tell the on-site ticket counter on the day. Unused tickets are refunded minus a ¥300 handling fee per ticket, or ¥150 for disability-rate tickets and their companions. The conditions are strict: only tickets bought on the official site, only on the admission date itself, only if at least one person in the booking actually enters, and never by phone or email.

Weather is not a reason

There is no refund and no partial discount for a poor view caused by rain or cloud, and the operator will not comment on visibility in advance. If lift service to the decks is suspended for high wind, ask staff on site about resumption or a refund; nothing is promised in writing. Cancellations for transport suspensions or illness are handled under the standard policy with the standard fee, with the sole exception of an unscheduled closure of the tower itself.

The combined Deck and Galleria ticket from $19.44 (¥3,000) is the only one sold inside the tower's core product, and this page argues against buying it in advance for weather reasons rather than price ones. The maths is neutral: $19.44 (¥3,000) combined against $11.66 (¥1,800) plus $9.07 (¥1,400) upstairs is about a dollar in the bundle's favour, which is a small price for the option to look out of a window first.

Sumida Aquarium, four floors down

The aquarium sits on floors 5 and 6 of the Tokyo Solamachi complex under the tower, opens 10:00 to 20:00 with last admission at 19:00, and charges $17.50 (¥2,700) for an adult, $12.96 (¥2,000) for a high-school student, $9.07 (¥1,400) for junior high and elementary students and $5.83 (¥900) for toddlers of three and over, with half price for a disability-certificate holder and one companion. Against a $17.50 (¥2,700) full price, the combined card at $28.57 is a genuine saving if you were going to both. Prices read on the aquarium's own site at en.sumida-aquarium.com/about/price/, in Q3 2026.

The subway bundle

The 24-hour subway pass version attaches a Tokyo Metro and Toei day pass to the same admission. The pass is worth having on a day with three or four journeys in it, and the bundle is non-refundable and has to be booked before 23:59 the day before. Whether a day pass beats a stored-value card on your itinerary is worked through on the getting around page.

The Enjoy Pack, and the sting in it

The operator's own bundle, sold under the name Skytree Enjoy Pack, pairs admission with nearby attractions and transport: the aquarium, teamLab Planets, a 24-hour subway ticket, the Sky Hop Bus and several rail passes are all listed as plans. Three things to know. It goes on sale only one month ahead rather than two, it cannot be bought on the day, and every plan listed above is explicitly non-refundable, with no refund if you skip one of the included facilities.

The disability discount does not apply to it either, because it is already discounted.

There is no same-day allocation. The operator states that tickets are sold in advance and that same-day purchase is possible only for time slots with remaining availability, and that no additional tickets are released on the day for slots already sold out. Both the online store and the machines in the building draw on the same remaining stock.

A cross on the calendar the night before therefore means the counter cannot help you either.

The pattern, as far as it can be read

The operator publishes a crowd forecast on its own site rather than sales data, so the following is our reading and not an official figure. The slots that go first are sunset and the hour after it on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and national holidays, and everything during Golden Week, Obon and the New Year period. Weekday mornings from 10:00 to 12:00 stay open until close to the day itself, most of the year.

For the fireworks nights on the Sumida and for New Year's Day the release schedule itself is different, and the operator says only that details are announced as the date approaches.

If your date is gone

Three routes remain, in the order we would try them. Check the platform cards, which hold their own allocation: the admission ticket and the aquarium combo sometimes show availability when the official calendar does not. Move to a morning slot, which is nearly always open and is the better view anyway.

Or take a different high view for that evening and come here in the morning: what the other observation decks cost is compared on the things to do hub.

Children five and under go up free. Child rates apply to junior high school students and younger and adult rates from senior high school age upward, which the ticket FAQ restates as 15 and under paying the child rate and 15 and over the adult rate. No senior tier is published anywhere on the operator's site, so a visitor of 70 pays the adult fare.

The disability rate, and its one hard condition

A discounted rate is available, and the condition is nationality of the certificate rather than of the visitor: the operator states that the rate applies only to holders of a disability certificate issued in Japan and their companions, with companion tickets available for the same number of people as certificate holders. The certificate is checked at entry. A ticket bought at the regular rate cannot be converted afterwards; you would have to cancel and rebook.

Note that this is stricter than the equivalent rule at teamLab's two venues, where a certificate from any country is accepted.

The Fast Skytree Ticket is gone

The tower sold a priority admission ticket aimed at foreign visitors, called the Fast Skytree Ticket, from 19 February 2015. The operator's own history page carries the launch and adds, in a footnote to the same entry, that it is currently not available for purchase. It appears nowhere on the current English ticket page.

Guides and blog posts still publish its price list and describe a dedicated counter on the 4th floor near the West entrance; on the evidence of the operator's own pages, do not plan around it.

Buy the Tembo Deck ticket from the official store, for a weekday morning slot, and decide about the Galleria upstairs. It is the cheapest fare, the largest inventory, the clearest air of the day and the only version of this visit where a $9.07 (¥1,400) upgrade is bought with the horizon already in front of you.

Two things change that. If you want the ability to cancel inside the last month, buy the platform admission card instead and accept the small premium, because the official policy charges 20 per cent from thirty days out. And if the weather has already collapsed, buy the aquarium combo rather than a bare deck ticket, because it turns a wasted view into an afternoon indoors.

Where the visit sits in a full day is worked through on the Tokyo Skytree page and in the two-day itinerary.