Museum Of Contemporary Art Tokyo Tickets

Kiyosumi-Shirakawa is one of the quietest museum stops in Tokyo. You come up out of the Hanzomon or Oedo Line station, walk through a neighbourhood of small temples and stone merchants' houses, and reach a wide, low building set back behind a canal-side park: the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, known everywhere as MOT. Inside, the permanent MOT Collection hangs postwar and contemporary Japanese and international art, and the museum's temporary exhibitions are among the largest contemporary shows mounted anywhere in the city. It is a museum that closes between exhibitions, runs a calendar of free days most guides miss, and charges less for its collection than almost any other major art museum in Tokyo. This page sets out the prices, the booking route, the closures and the Grutto Pass rules, using the museum's own published figures.

What Are The Ticket Prices At The Museum Of Contemporary Art Tokyo?

The MOT Collection costs 500 JPY for adults, about 3 US dollars. Special exhibitions are 1,600 or 2,000 JPY depending on the show, and a combined ticket covering two special exhibitions plus the collection is 3,000 JPY. Tickets are sold online and at the museum counter on the day.

That 500 JPY figure is one of the lowest adult admission prices among Tokyo's major art museums, and it buys the MOT Collection, the museum's permanent display drawn from its holdings of postwar and contemporary art. The special exhibition price moves with the programme: some shows are priced at 1,600 JPY, larger ones at 2,000 JPY, and the museum publishes the exact figure on each exhibition's own page. If two special exhibitions are running at once, the 3,000 JPY combined ticket covers both plus the collection and is the cheapest way to see everything.

The full price list, including the concession rates for special exhibitions, is on the museum's own admission page, and that is the page to check for the show running on the dates you choose, because the special exhibition price is set per exhibition and changes with each one.

Do You Need To Book Ahead Or Can You Walk In?

No, you can simply walk in. The Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo sells same-day tickets at its counter and online tickets in advance, one entry per ticket and non-refundable. There is no timed entry and no sold-out-slot system like the ones the timed-entry Tokyo venues run, so arriving on the day works.

This matters more than it sounds, because Tokyo's ticketing landscape splits sharply. Three museums in this directory cannot be bought at the door at all, and several more run timed slots that sell out. MOT is not one of them. Its booking route is: an online ticket, valid for one entry and non-refundable, bought before you go, or the ticket counter inside the museum for same-day entry. Neither route is required. If you arrive at 10:00 on a weekday with no ticket, you buy at the counter.

Compare that with the neighbours. teamLab Planets TOKYO, across the river in Toyosu, sells advance only with no door sales at all, and teamLab Borderless runs timed slots you book ahead. Tokyo National Museum is a walk-in like MOT, but its collection ticket is sold online through a different channel. MOT's own advice, published on its visitor information page, is that online tickets exist for convenience, not because the museum runs out of room.

The one planning point that genuinely matters here is not booking but the calendar. MOT closes entirely between exhibitions, and a visitor who turns up mid-changeover finds a shut building. Check the exhibition dates before you travel, especially around the closure windows listed in the next section, because no ticket route, online or at the counter, gets you into a museum that is between shows.

When Is The Museum Of Contemporary Art Tokyo Open?

The museum is open 10:00 to 18:00, with galleries admitting visitors until 17:30, and closes on Mondays. On Fridays in November it stays open until 20:00. Last admission is 30 minutes before closing. It also closes for exhibition changeovers and publishes named holiday exception dates rather than relying on the usual rule.

The weekly closing day is Monday, and like every Monday-closing museum in this lineup MOT opens when that Monday is a national holiday and closes the following weekday instead. But MOT goes further and publishes the exact dates. It is open on 21 September, 12 October and 23 November 2026 and on 22 March 2027, and closed instead on 24 September, 13 October and 24 November 2026 and on 23 March 2027.

The changeover closures are the bigger trap. The whole museum shuts 17 to 28 August 2026, then again across the new year in three blocks: 7 to 20 January, 25 to 28 January and 1 to 5 February 2027, reopening 6 February 2027. It also closes 28 December to 1 January. These are not partial closures: nothing is open, and the dates sit on the museum's own site.

The November Friday evenings are worth knowing about beyond the hours: as the free-day section below explains, those late Friday openings in November carry their own discount, with students free and adults 20 percent off after 17:00.

What Free Days And Concessions Apply?

Yes, and several. The MOT Collection is free for everyone on 1 October, Tokyo Citizens' Day. Visitors 65 and over enter free on the third Wednesday of every month, Silver Day, and students get free entry on 10 to 12 October 2026. Concession prices apply every day, and disability certificate holders enter free.

The full list of free and discounted windows, all published by the museum and all applying to the MOT Collection rather than special exhibitions unless stated:

On 1 October, Tokyo Citizens' Day, the collection is free for everyone. On the third Wednesday of every month, Silver Day, it is free for visitors 65 and over, and the same applies on 21 September 2026, Respect-for-the-Aged Day. On 10 to 12 October 2026 students enter free. On the third Saturday of each month and the following Sunday, Family Day, a Tokyo-resident guardian accompanying someone under 18 pays half price. And on Fridays in November after 17:00, the Autumn Night Museum, students are free and adults and visitors 65 and over get 20 percent off.

Day to day, the concessions are generous. University and vocational students and anyone 65 or over pay 400 JPY for the collection, high school and junior high students 250 JPY, and elementary school students and younger enter free. Disability certificate holders enter free, and up to two attendants come with them free as well.

None of these windows makes the museum free in general. The free days are concessions, not general admission, and they cover the collection. Special exhibitions are priced separately and keep their own rates. The two museums that are genuinely free to visit outright in this directory are the Sumo Museum and the Meguro Parasitological Museum, and both carry a catch: the Sumo Museum shuts on Saturdays, Sundays and national holidays, and Meguro closes both Monday and Tuesday.

What Does The Grutto Pass Do Here?

The Grutto Pass gives free entry on the MOT Collection and a discount on special exhibitions here. The pass is not a free-entry card everywhere: each facility is either free entry or a discount. It excludes both teamLabs, the Ghibli Museum, Warner Bros. Studio Tour and Sanrio Puroland, among many others.

MOT is one of the pass's free-entry venues, which means showing the pass at the collection gets you in without paying the 500 JPY. On special exhibitions the pass works as a discount rather than free entry, so you pay a reduced rate set by the museum. One use per facility, and the pass runs for two months from first use, with a hard expiry of 31 March 2027. The 2026 edition costs 2,500 JPY and covers 107 facilities: 47 art museums, 44 museums, three zoos, one aquarium and twelve gardens. The full facility list and the free-entry-versus-discount split for each venue are on the official Grutto Pass site.

The exclusions are where most guides go wrong, so here they are in full. The pass excludes both teamLab Borderless and teamLab Planets TOKYO, the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka, Warner Bros. Studio Tour Tokyo and Sanrio Puroland. It also excludes the National Art Center, the Nezu Museum, Artizon, Meiji Jingu, the Railway Museum, the Hakone Open-Air Museum, SMALL WORLDS, the Unko Museum, Madame Tussauds, Tokyo Trick Art, both Yokohama museums, Edo Wonderland, and special exhibitions at most facilities. There is no pass shortcut to any of the four capacity-managed attractions, all of which run their own dated ticketing.

On the arithmetic: MOT's 500 JPY free entry is one of the five free-entry door prices in this lineup, and all five together total exactly the 2,500 JPY pass price. The pass does not repay itself in three or four visits on free entries alone. What makes it worthwhile is the discounts and the breadth on top, and MOT is one of the venues where the free entry is straightforward and the collection alone matches the pass price by a factor of five.

Where Is The Museum And What Should You Combine It With?

The museum stands at 4-1-1 Miyoshi, Koto-ku, east of the centre, with Kiyosumi-Shirakawa station on the Tokyo Metro Hanzomon Line and Toei Oedo Line as the nearest stop. The Fukagawa Edo Museum sits in the same neighbourhood, which makes the district a genuine museum afternoon.

Kiyosumi-Shirakawa is a station with two lines, so MOT is reachable without a transfer from the Hanzomon Line's chain through Shibuya and Otemachi, and from the Oedo Line's loop. The address is 4-1-1 Miyoshi, Koto-ku, Tokyo 135-0022. The Kiyosumi Gardens, a stroll garden with a large pond, sit beside the museum, though the garden has its own admission and is not part of the museum ticket.

Two pairings work well. The Fukagawa Edo Museum, a reconstructed Edo-period neighbourhood under one roof, is three minutes from Kiyosumi-shirakawa station exit A3, and its own page on this site covers its 400 JPY admission and its 2nd and 4th Monday closing pattern. And because MOT closes Mondays, a Monday plan for this district fails, while the Roppongi museums stay open: the National Art Center, Tokyo opens Monday and closes Tuesday instead, and the Mori Art Museum has no weekly closing day at all, though it shuts between exhibitions, including 24 September to 30 October 2026.

If contemporary art is the thread of your trip, the other walk-in art museums in this directory include Tokyo National Museum in Ueno for the historical counterweight, and the Sumida Hokusai Museum across the river in Ryogoku, which also closes Mondays. Plan the Koto day for any day but a Monday, check the changeover calendar first, and the 500 JPY collection is one of the better-value hours in Tokyo.

Questions People Ask