Schönbrunn Palace tickets: which tour or pass, and where genuine tickets are sold

The short answer

Schönbrunn's operator sells three ways into the palace rooms and a set of passes that add the park attractions. On its ticket page, the Palace Ticket takes in the entire piano nobile with an audio guide, the State Apartments ticket covers selected rooms on the same floor, and the Guided Tour Maria Theresia begins in her summer apartments on the ground floor, the Bergl Rooms, before going up to the state rooms with a guide. Admission to the palace is at fixed admission times, and the same page says genuine tickets are available online exclusively at imperialtickets.com.[1]

The choice is therefore two decisions: how much of the palace interior you want, and whether to bundle the garden attractions, the zoo or the Sisi Museum in the Hofburg into one purchase.

Who sells the tickets

Schönbrunn Palace is run by Schloß Schönbrunn Kultur- und Betriebsges.m.b.H., a limited liability company whose shareholder is the Republic of Austria; its legal notice says it also operates the Sisi Museum with the Imperial Apartments and Silver Collection in the Vienna Hofburg, the Vienna Furniture Museum, Schloss Hof Estate and Schloss Niederweiden.[6] Of those, the Silver Collection has been closed since 1 April 2023 until further notice, according to the Sisi Museum's ticket page read on 9 October 2026.[7]

That is why one shop sells tickets for Schönbrunn, the Hofburg rooms and Schloss Hof. The Imperial Austria Ticket Shop at imperialtickets.com carries the same company's copyright line and calls itself the official ticket provider of Schönbrunn Palace, the Sisi Museum, the Vienna Furniture Museum and Schloss Hof.[8] Who runs Austria's imperial palaces and collections sets this operator beside the others in Vienna.

The three palace visits

The Palace Ticket and the State Apartments ticket both start, the page says, with an immersive presentation of Schönbrunn's history; the Palace Ticket then includes the private apartments of Franz Joseph and Elisabeth, the state rooms and Maria Theresa's Rococo chambers, while the State Apartments ticket shows a selection of rooms. The operator gives the Palace Ticket as about 75 minutes and the State Apartments as about 40 minutes.[1]

Of the three descriptions on the ticket page, only the Guided Tour Maria Theresia's includes the ground-floor Bergl Rooms, Maria Theresa's summer apartments with landscape murals by Johann Wenzel Bergl; the page lists daily tour times in German and in English.[1] XTOUR does not repeat those times, because the page can change them without notice.

For the two audio-guided tickets, the operator's audio guide page says audio guides in 21 languages or printed descriptions in 24 languages are included in the price, according to availability, and handed out after the turnstiles.[3]

The passes: palace plus park, zoo or Hofburg

The palace is the core of most passes, and what changes is what is added and how long the extra parts stay valid. The ticket page describes them this way:[1]

• Classic Pass: the palace with audio guide plus the Privy Garden, Orangery Garden, Maze and the Gloriette viewing terrace. It is sold in the summer season, which the page gives as 27 March to 2 November 2026, and is valid on the date of issue.[1]
• Classic Pass Plus: everything in the Classic Pass plus Schönbrunn Zoo, the Desert Experience House and the Palm House. The palace visit is on the day and at the time selected; the other attractions can be used once each until the end of the season.[1]
• Sisi Pass: the palace with a time slot, the Sisi Museum and Imperial Apartments in the Vienna Hofburg, and the Vienna Furniture Museum. It is valid for one year, with the palace visit on the day and time selected.[1]
• Exclusive Gardens at Schönbrunn: the Maze, Privy Garden, Orangery Garden and the Gloriette terrace without the palace, also a summer-season ticket.[1]

The page also sells a Children's Museum ticket for the ground floor of the palace's west wing, on its own or combined with the Maze or with the Maze and the zoo.[1]

Two points in the Sisi Pass description are easy to miss. It says that for the Furniture Museum and the Sisi Museum you do not need to reserve an entrance time, which is not how the Sisi Museum's own single ticket works: that is sold with fixed admission times. And it repeats the Sisi Museum's notice that from 6 October to 18 November 2026 the museum section of the Sisi Museum is closed for the final phase of its refurbishment, while the Imperial Apartments remain open.[1] The Hofburg side is covered in the Hofburg guide.

Genuine and fake tickets: the operator's warning

The operator is emphatic. Its FAQ opens with "Beware of Fake Tickets!", says there are more fake websites now, and states that real Schönbrunn Palace tickets are sold online only at imperialtickets.com. The same FAQ names the on-site ticket office as the other place to buy.[2]

There is one exception on the operator's own pages: holders of the Vienna City Card are told to buy their time-slot ticket at timeslot.schoenbrunn-group.com, a second Schönbrunn Group address.[1] XTOUR's reading is that "exclusively at imperialtickets.com" describes the general public shop, not every official channel.

On names: the English ticket page read on 9 October 2026 sells a Palace Ticket and a State Apartments ticket, and neither "Imperial Tour" nor "Grand Tour" appears on it.[1] The German-language shop at imperialtickets.com still describes the Classic Pass as combining "die große Tour", the grand tour, of the palace with four park attractions.[8] A listing that uses the older names is not necessarily fake, but the operator's warning is about where a ticket is bought, not what it is called.

The park, and what is not on these tickets

The park itself needs no ticket. The operator's FAQ says the Palace Park can be entered free of charge during opening hours, while the Privy Garden, Orangery Garden, Gloriette and Maze need individual tickets.[2] Its gardens page adds the zoo, the Palm House and the Desert House to that list.[5]

The carriage collection at Schönbrunn belongs to a different operator: the Kunsthistorisches Museum lists the Collection of Historical Carriages, housed in Schönbrunn Palace, among its own collections.[10] It is not among the attractions on the Schönbrunn ticket page's passes.[1] The Imperial Austria shop does list a ticket for the Kaiserliche Wagenburg Wien, the carriage museum, among its offers, under its role as ticket partner for other attractions on the Schönbrunn site.[8]

Where the operator's pages disagree

• Photography in the palace. The FAQ says filming and photography are generally permitted in the state rooms during opening hours, without tripods, selfie sticks or flash, but its answer about private wedding photos says photography is not permitted in the palace.[2] XTOUR cannot say which answer the staff apply; ask at the ticket desk.
• When the park opened. The anniversary page's timeline gives 1778 for the opening of the palace park to the public, and the gardens page says around 1779.[5][4] The Austrian Commission for UNESCO attributes the opening to a decree of Joseph II in the late eighteenth century.[9]
• The UNESCO criteria. The operator's anniversary page says Schönbrunn fulfils four of the ten criteria.[4] The Austrian Commission for UNESCO lists two, criteria (i) and (iv), for the 1996 inscription of the Palace and Gardens of Schönbrunn.[9] XTOUR follows the Commission for the inscription record; Austria's World Heritage sites sets out the inscriptions.

What XTOUR does not tell you

XTOUR publishes no prices: the operator's page shows them and says a new price season starts on 19 November 2026.[1] XTOUR does not publish opening hours, last-admission times, time-slot availability, how long a visit takes beyond the operator's own tour durations, accessibility for particular rooms or garden attractions, or how to get to Schönbrunn. It does not sell tickets for the palace.

The Vienna destination page places Schönbrunn among the city's other sights, and Austria gathers XTOUR's other Austrian guides.