San Marino is its own landlocked country inside Italy, situated right between Emilia Romagna and the Marche, a 30-minute drive inland from Rimini and the Adriatic coast. San Marino has nine castelli, or, generally translated, municipalities, with “Città” being the most popular of the municipalities with tourists. Città di San Marino is located at the tip-top of San Marino, on Monte Titano, boasting both mountain and sea views, as well as a walkable old town and its three castle-like towers.
While the food can be iffy, San Marino restaurant views are on point.
While San Marino is a fully operational country with its own customs, food, and culture, to many tourists, San Marino, particularly Città di San Marino, is somewhat of a “gimmick.” An easy way to tick off another country while visiting Italy, and a pretty place to stop for a few hours, take photos, and depart back into Italy. As such, many restaurants in Città are simply not great, because there is no reason to be. They cater to tourists who are looking to get in and out and will never return (at least not in the near future). This results in a lot of not wonderful meals. In planning our trip, I did a DEEP dive into San Marino restaurants and found some winners, and one big loser. This post details where you should eat and drink, and where you should not eat and drink in San Marino based on my personal experience. For the rest of the trip, including where we stayed, the towers, and the cableway, here is how we spent a long weekend in San Marino.
We spent a weekend in San Marino in May 2026, meeting up with our friend Meghan before attending our friends Laura and Tom’s wedding in Lucca, Tuscany. While it was a tad out of the way, visiting San Marino was beautiful, interesting, and generally a fun time. This post details what we did over a weekend in San Marino.
Sunset over San Marino.
SAN MARINO QUICK FACTS
Where it is: A landlocked country of its own inside Italy, wedged between Emilia Romagna and the Marche, a 30 minute drive inland from Rimini and the Adriatic coast.
How to get there: Train to Rimini, then a taxi or a shuttle bus up the mountain. Our Frecciarossa from Milano Centrale to Rimini took just over two hours, and the taxi took another 30 minutes.
How long to stay: Two nights was plenty. One night covers the towers and the views, and after our wine tasting Dan spent a good part of the second afternoon asleep.
Currency: The euro, used under a monetary agreement with the EU even though San Marino is not an EU member.
Passport: Bring it and expect nobody to ask. There is no routine border check in either direction.
Language: Italian, with a Romagnol dialect spoken alongside it.
Where to stay: Città, the highest of the nine districts, where the towers, the restaurants and the balconies are.
When we went: Late May 2026, which happened to land on the same weekend as the Borgo diVino in Tour wine festival.
SAN MARINO
Before getting into our itinerary, for those unfamiliar, San Marino is its own country landlocked inside of Italy. Situated between the Marche and Emilia Romagna, San Marino feels a lot like Italy, but also a lot not like Italy. While it’s a separate country that, fun fact, is not part of the European Union, there is no routine passport check and one can generally move freely between Italy and San Marino. San Marino is not in the Schengen Area either, so random police checks are possible, but nobody looked at our passports in either direction.
San Marino on the map.
For those planning to visit, San Marino uses the euro under a monetary agreement with the EU, has Italian as its official language (you will hear a Romagnol dialect too), and observes many of the same rules and customs as Italy, at least from a general tourist perspective. It does, however, have many of its own things, including delicious wine, shopping without VAT, and stunning views of both mountains and the Adriatic Sea. San Marino has been in a customs union with the EU since 1991 but sits outside the EU VAT system, charging a single stage import tax called the monofase instead. That is why the leather shops in Città advertise “tax free” prices. From personal experience, San Marino does have good leather prices.
HOW TO GET TO SAN MARINO
San Marino has no airport and no train station, so every route runs through Rimini. We took the Frecciarossa direct from Milano Centrale to Rimini in just over two hours, then hired a taxi for the last 30 minutes up the mountain. A shuttle bus runs the same stretch from Rimini railway station in about 50 minutes (on the bus, not waiting for it, etc.) for 7.00 euro one way. We paid for the taxi to save time, though the bus would have cost a small fraction of what we spent.
Rimini also makes San Marino easy to pair with the rest of the Adriatic coast, including Senigallia down the coast in the Marche, or with a fast 24 hours in Milan at the start of the trip.
OUR WEEKEND ITINERARY IN SAN MARINO
For those stealing our trip, here’s exactly what we did in San Marino, day by day.
Day 1: Taking the train from Milan, and the BEST dinner in San Marino.
San Marino was our first stop on this trip. As such, we took the Frecciarossa train directly from Milano Centrale to Rimini, which took just over two hours. Once in Rimini, we hired a local taxi, San Marino Taxi, to pick us up and drive us to San Marino, which took another 30 minutes. There is also a popular public bus, but we opted for the more expensive taxi to save time. The views driving up to San Marino were truly stunning.
Photos from the car en route to Hotel Cesare in San Marino.
We were dropped right in front of our hotel, Hotel Cesare, located in the Città district of San Marino. Of nine districts, Città is the highest point in the country, and also the most touristy. We were able to check in right away, and we stayed in the hotel’s sole Deluxe room, which truly did offer stunning views of San Marino and the surrounding hills.
After checking in and getting settled, it was just about sunset. As such, our first order of business was for an Aperitivo on one of Hotel Cesare’s many balconies. We met our friend Meghan here! I ordered an Aperol Spritz, and watched the sun set over San Marino. The views in San Marino are truly unbeatable. If you are only here for a few hours, find yourself a balcony and have a drink or coffee (there are many places to do this in Città).
Aperitivo in San Marino! Can’t beat it.
After aperitivo, we walked about one block to Ghetto da Ottavio for dinner. I found this restaurant on Facebook after doing a very deep dive on decent San Marino restaurants, many of which are apparently not great. It turned out to be delicious, by far one of the best meals of this entire trip in San Marino and Italy (and that’s saying a lot!). I have a full guide to where to eat in Città di San Marino, but if you are in San Marino, you must eat at Ghetto da Ottavio.
This pasta was insane at Ghetto da Ottavio.
We called it a night after dinner, as we were exhausted from traveling all day. That being said, there did not seem to be much going on in San Marino after the dinner hours.
Day 2: San Marino Wine Tasting, A San Marino Wine Festival, and a bad dinner with great views
We began our first official morning in San Marino with breakfast at Hotel Cesare. The breakfast was included, served buffet style, and it was giving old school Italian hotel. While not the best hotel breakfast I have had in Italy, it was serviceable.
Breakfast views at Hotel Cesare.
A taxi from San Marino Taxi picked us up promptly at 10:15 AM to drive to Cantina di San Marino for what I thought was a visit to an actual winery in San Marino. Nope! Instead, it is a wine tasting at Cantina di San Marino, which is a consortium of grape growers in San Marino. The Cantina makes San Marino wine out of the grapes it receives from various San Marino growers. Very interesting! We sampled four local wines here, as well as paired the wine with local bread, meat, and cheese. We taxied back to Città after our tasting, arriving around midday. This was actually quite interesting, and a bit off the beaten path in San Marino! We were the only tourists there, and we saw several locals come and fill large containers of wine for home consumption.
San Marino red wine.
Cheese at Cantina di San Marino.
Charcuterie at Cantina di San Marino.
Due to the wine tasting, Dan was in need of a nap. Meghan and I explored the town a bit while he rested, including doing some tax free leather shopping (very good prices, such as a purse for 60 euro and a belt for 30 euro right in town) and taking the cableway down to San Marino’s Borgo Maggiore area and back up. The cableway was a fun little activity that only took about 15 minutes roundtrip.
Views from the San Marino cableway.
We returned to Hotel Cesare to pick up Dan before continuing with the day, which included exploring San Marino’s Towers, eating a traditional San Marino piadina, and having aperitivo overlooking the surrounding area.
Torre Guaita.
Aperitivo in San Marino.
A San Marino piadina.
This evening, as luck would have it, there was a wine festival in San Marino at the exact time we were in town. The wine festival is a traveling one called Borgo diVino in Tour, which apparently goes all around Italy. We had already planned to visit, but our guides at Cantina di San Marino told us to be sure to book the complimentary tasting in Cava dei Balestrieri, which we did earlier in the afternoon when exploring town. We had no idea what this was or what we were in store for. But hey, it was free!
Part of the wine festival in San Marino when we visited.
As such, around 6:00 PM, we checked in and were seated at the most stunning tasting table in the center of Cava dei Balestrieri. There were only 24 seats. We sampled four San Marino wines, and learned a lot about them (in Italian) from the wine makers. This experience was fabulous and truly, entirely free. We could not believe we lucked into this. It was a magical evening in San Marino.
Cava dei Balestrieri set up for a wine tasting.
One more of the wine tasting. Very elegant.
Us and our friend Meghan pre-wine tasting.
We sampled various wines at the Borgo diVino wine festival after our formal wine tasting. There were wines from all over Italy, including the Marche (where we were visiting next), Tuscany, Piedmont and Umbria (our favorite Italian wines!), among other regions.
The wine at Borgo diVino.
Post-wine tasting, it was time for dinner, on which I was sadly a bit iffy. I had made a reservation at La Terrazza Ristorante based on the great reviews it received online. However, I was getting the feeling that the reviews were all done by tourists and highlight the views and not the food and I, unfortunately, was not wrong. I go into the whole meal in where to eat, and where NOT to eat, in Città, but the views were indeed great and the food was, as my not super picky husband described it, inedible. The prices were also higher than almost everywhere else in San Marino. We fished up shortly after sunset.
Dinner views from Ristorante La Terrazza.
This was the best of the dishes we ordered. It was mid at best.
The one highlight of dinner, or rather directly after, was walking out through Piazza della Libertà, which is particularly beautiful at night when it is (largely) devoid of tourists. La Terrazza Ristorante is located just next to Piazza della Libertà.
Piazza della Libertà.
Day 3: Breakfast, more views, and departure for Lucca!
We set our alarms early on our final morning, as we wanted to enjoy every last minute of Hotel Cesare’s amazing views. While it was a bit chilly, we had breakfast outdoors solely for the views.
San Marino Taxi picked us up exactly as scheduled and drove us to the Rimini train station, where we boarded a local train to Bologna, before transferring to Florence and eventually Lucca.
Arrivederci, San Marino! This is the insane view from Hotel Cesare.
The outdoor terrace suitable for breakfast at Hotel Cesare.
HOW LONG TO STAY IN SAN MARINO
Two nights and one full day gave us a full day in Città, a morning at Cantina di San Marino, and enough time to sit on a balcony and do nothing, which is most of the point. One full day is enough to walk the towers, ride the cableway, eat a piadina and have an aperitivo before sunset. If you come up from Rimini only for the afternoon you will see the country, but you will miss the part we liked best, which is Città in the evening once the cableway has stopped running and the piazza has emptied out. I don’t think I would stay more than a 3 nights in San Marino unless you have a specific reason for staying longer.
IS SAN MARINO WORTH VISITING?
For us yes, though not for the reasons we expected. We came solely just to “see it”, as we have traveled a lot around Italy and never been to San Marino. What we did not expect was the food, at least at Ghetto da Ottavio, and the wine. Ghetto da Ottavio was by far one of the best meals of our entire trip through Italy, and the complimentary tasting in Cava dei Balestrieri during Borgo diVino was far better than many tastings we have paid for. The towers are fine, the views are unbeatable, and the restaurant with the best online reviews served us the worst food we ate in Italy. Come with moderate expectations, and you will have a great time.
STEAL OUR WEEKEND IN SAN MARINO
Some links on Wareontheglobe are affiliate links. If you book or buy through them we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.
Hotel Cesare: Salita Alla Rocca, 7, 47890 Città di San Marino, San Marino.
Ghetto da Ottavio: Contrada Santa Croce, 29, 47890 Città di San Marino, San Marino. Open Wednesday through Monday 12:00 PM to 11:00 PM. Reservations recommended. I made a reservation via Facebook Messenger.
Cantina di San Marino: Strada Serrabolino, 89, 47893 Valdragone, San Marino. Open Monday to Friday 8:30 AM to 12:30 PM and 2:30 PM to 6:30 PM and Saturday 8:30 AM to 12:30 PM. Closed Sunday. Email for a tasting.
San Marino Cableway: The cableway runs every 15 minutes from 7:45 AM, with the closing time varying by season. The cost is 4.00 euro one way, 7.00 euro round trip, and 10.00 euro for a day pass. It also closes for maintenance twice a year, which in 2026 meant February 23 to March 20 and October 21 to 23.
La Terrazza Ristorante: Contrada del Collegio, 31, 47890 Città di San Marino, San Marino. Open daily 12:00 PM to 2:30 PM and 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM. Reservations recommended.
San Marino Taxi: This is the taxi company that I personally used, referred to me by Hotel Cesare. I contacted San Marino Taxi via email. The owner was responsive via email and WhatsApp. Email: https://www.sanmarinosite.com/en/how-to-reach/ropeway/. WhatsApp: +39 331 628 2025.
Borgo diVino in Tour: The traveling wine festival was in San Marino from May 22 to 24, 2026. The dates and the host towns change every year, so check the schedule before planning a trip around it.
Disclosure: this post is not sponsored and nobody paid me to write it. It does contain my referral link, and I earn a bonus if you are approved through it. Fleming and I have carried this card for years and we pay the annual fee ourselves.
Many of you know we are NY/NJ based and fly out of Newark Airport (EWR) constantly. Fleming and I have carried the United Explorer Card for years, and I recommend it to almost everyone locally. Chase renamed it in 2018, so if you are searching for the United MileagePlus Explorer Card, this is the same product. I have earned the signup bonus on this card three separate times. This post is the math on why I keep coming back.
The highlights
As of September 2026, the United Explorer Card has a $0 annual fee for the first year and $150 after that. You and one companion each get a free first checked bag on United and United Express flights, worth $90 to $100 per round trip domestically per person ($180 to $200 for a couple on the same itinerary) as long as you buy the tickets with the card and put your MileagePlus number in the reservation. Award tickets count if you pay the taxes and fees with the card. You also get two United Club one-time passes a year. The current welcome offer is 50,000 miles after $3,000 of spend in three months, plus 10,000 more for adding an authorized user in that same window. With the first year free it is really easy for this card to more than pay for itself.
Why the card is worth it
1. Free the first year, then $150
The card is free the first year, then $150 per year after that. Chase refunds the annual fee if you close the card within 30 days of the fee posting. I usually recommend keeping the card until right at your third anniversary year. That is what makes the next part work: open it, cancel just before the third anniversary, and you pay $150 total for almost three years of benefits.
2. Free checked bags for you and a companion
You and one companion on the same reservation each get a free first checked bag. Great for a couple or a family. Two free checked bags cover the fee on a single trip.
As of September 2026, United charges $45 for a domestic first checked bag (and short international like Canada/Mexico/Caribbean and certain latin american countries) if you prepay online and $50 at the airport each way. So around $180-200 for a couple round trip. $30-50 more than the fee which is waived the first year. Take two trips in two years eleven months and you are positive $200+ not counting signup bonus miles or any other card benefits.
International basic economy is even better. United gives you a free bag on long haul international flights unless you are flying basic economy. On an international basic economy fare the first bag runs $75, so two free bags cover the annual fee one way (note United groups Canada, Mexico, Caribbean and certain Latin America in with the domestic flights.) You are up $150 by the time you land back in the states. One exception worth knowing: most transpacific basic economy fares already include a checked bag, so on those routes there is nothing for the card to save you.
For a couple flying transatlantic, you can book basic economy, save the fare difference, and still check a bag for both of you. That is the entire annual fee covered on one trip.
You have to pay with the card
You have to buy the tickets with the Explorer Card. Your MileagePlus number also has to be in the reservation.
Two more conditions. The free bag only covers flights operated by United and United Express, so a United-marketed flight actually operated by Lufthansa or Air Canada will not get it. And if you are already exempt from bag fees for some other reason, you do not get an additional free bag on top.
Award tickets do count, as long as you pay the taxes and carrier charges on the award with the card. If you have United Travel bank money you can book with that as long as some portion of the flight is on the card.
3. Two United Club passes a year
You get two United Club one-time passes every year the account is open. United sells the same pass for $59 a person. In practice the value is whatever you would have spent at the bar, and at Newark that adds up fast.
Seating pods along the windows in the Terminal C club by gate C73. Fine for an hour before a flight, not a destination.
On the year 3 passes, before you cancel: they have always landed in my account on the anniversary, ahead of the cancellation. Chase reserves the right to pull United Club passes when you close the card, so treat it as a nice-to-have rather than something to plan around.
The booths go first. This was a weekday evening and it was busy without being full.
One annoying thing. United Clubs are frequently closed to one time pass users due to capacity. I wouldn’t count on access.
I live with it at Newark because the alternatives are thin. There is no Chase Sapphire Lounge and no Capital One Lounge at EWR, and the only Priority Pass options are a Be Relax spa in Terminal A and Minute Suites in Terminal C, neither of which is a lounge in the sense of free food and drinks. Amex has announced a Centurion Lounge for Terminal A, still unopened as I write this, which does not help me because I usually fly out of Terminal C.
Cashing in one of the two passes before our flight to Italy. Photo by Pryor.
4. The signup bonus, and paying the fee with miles
Currently 50,000 miles after you spend $3,000 on purchases in the first three months your account is open, plus 10,000 more if you add an authorized user in that same window. I never do. I prefer for Fleming to just get her own cards.
One thing I learned while researching this post. Chase now lets you redeem MileagePlus miles against the annual fee through Pay Yourself Back in the rewards dashboard. It takes 10,000 miles to pay the $150 fee. Points optimizers may tell you 1.5 cents a mile is not the best redemption but that means you could theoretically have this card for six years with no cash out of pocket: year 1 free, years 2 through 6 covered by miles. That is six years of free checked bags and two lounge passes a year for nothing.
I do not actually recommend that plan if you travel with a companion. More on that below.
Otherwise the sign up bonus is worth at least $400 in flights. Points maximizers can definitely do better. I will note I may consider using the points to offset the fee in the future, I am not the best at maximizing value from airline miles.
5. The small credits
Benefits I do not lean on much, but that are worth knowing: up to $10 a month in Instacart credit (up to $120 a calendar year, and the benefit is scheduled to end 12/31/27), up to $5 a month in rideshare credit (up to $60 a calendar year, and you have to opt in every year), up to $120 every four years toward Global Entry, TSA PreCheck or NEXUS, and at least 10% off award bookings, which rises to at least 15% with MileagePlus Premier status. There is also up to $100 in JSX credit per cardmember year.
The award discount applies to United and United Express award flights only. Not partner bookings.
The free Global Entry or TSA PreCheck deserves to be higher if you don’t already have it. Both are good for five years. You can also use this for your partner if you already have PreCheck or Global Entry. The fee credits based on the charge, not the name of the person.
How Fleming and I get six years out of one card
This works perfectly for a couple, because Chase gives you two lounge passes a year and extends the free checked bag to your companion. Here is how we do it:
Partner 1 opens the card and earns the welcome bonus. Year 1 has no annual fee.
Pay the $150 fee at the first anniversary. I like to keep a card open past two years so as not to annoy the bank.
At the third anniversary, wait for the fee to post, then call and cancel within 30 days. Chase refunds the fee and closes the account, unless they offer a retention bonus worth keeping.
Shortly before cancelling, Partner 1 refers Partner 2 through Chase’s Refer-a-Friend. It currently pays 10,000 miles per approved referral, up to 100,000 miles a year, and it pays out on any United MileagePlus card the referred person is approved for, not only the Explorer.
Partner 2 opens the card, earns their own welcome bonus, and the couple gets three more years of free checked bags and lounge passes.
That is six years of benefits for $300 total.
Quick note on Chase’s 5/24 rule if you aren’t familiar. If you have opened five or more credit cards from any issuer (not just Chase, Amex, etc.) in the past 24 months you will be automatically denied the card. A denied application does not count, only cards you actually open. Being an authorized user on someone else’s card does count, though you can call Chase and ask them to disregard it.
One other thing, the fee, the benefits and the offer can all change, so check the current terms before you apply.
I would not use miles to pay the fee year after year. If you travel as a couple you can swap which one of you has the card every 3 years or so and get the first year free again.
Why you can do this again in year six
Amex generally limits welcome bonuses to once per card per lifetime, with occasional offers that drop the lifetime language. Chase’s rule is different. Chase’s current wording for this card is that it is not available to current cardmembers, or to previous cardmembers who received a new cardmember bonus on it within the last 24 months.
So guess what? In year 6 you can start all over again with Partner 2 referring Partner 1 for the card, referral bonus, new signup bonus and new first year free. Things change, but I have personally earned three welcome bonuses on this card. Like I said in the title, it is a no-brainer.
Who should get this card
You need this card if your home airport is one of United’s hubs:
Newark Liberty (EWR)
Chicago O’Hare (ORD)
Denver (DEN)
Houston Intercontinental (IAH)
Los Angeles (LAX)
San Francisco (SFO)
Washington Dulles (IAD)
The card also works if you fly United at least once a year with a companion. One round trip with two checked bags pays for it.
Frequently asked questions
Is the United Explorer Card worth it?
Yes, if you check a bag and fly with a companion. Two checked bags on one domestic round trip run $180 to $200 against a $150 fee, so one trip covers it. The first year is free anyway.
Do I have to pay with the card to get the free checked bag?
Yes. You have to buy the ticket with the United Explorer Card and have your MileagePlus number in the reservation. The free bag also only applies to flights operated by United and United Express, not to codeshare partner flights.
Does the free checked bag work on award tickets?
Yes, as long as you pay the taxes and carrier charges on the award with your Explorer Card.
Does the free checked bag work on basic economy?
Yes. Chase’s benefit terms contain no basic economy exclusion. This is where the benefit is most valuable, because basic economy fares are the ones that do not include a bag to begin with.
What is the United Explorer Card annual fee?
$0 for the first year, then $150. Chase refunds it if you close the card within about 30 days of the fee posting. I wouldn’t cut it too close, call to cancel within days 10-20.
Can you pay the United Explorer annual fee with miles?
Yes. Chase’s Pay Yourself Back lets you redeem MileagePlus miles against the fee, 10,000 miles for the $150 charge. The fee has to have posted within the last 90 days, and partial redemptions are allowed. I haven’t personally done this so I am unfamiliar with the mechanics.
Which airports are United hubs?
United operates seven hubs (not counting Guam): Newark (EWR), Chicago O’Hare (ORD), Denver (DEN), Houston Intercontinental (IAH), Los Angeles (LAX), San Francisco (SFO) and Washington Dulles (IAD).
Can you get the United Explorer signup bonus more than once?
Yes. Chase’s terms make the card unavailable to current cardmembers and to previous cardmembers who received a new cardmember bonus on this card in the past 24 months. Outside that window you are eligible again. I have earned it three times.
Last updated: September 6, 2026. Card terms, bag fees and welcome offers change often. I re-check this post twice a year, but confirm the current terms with Chase and United before you apply.
If this was useful, here is my referral link. I earn a bonus if you are approved, at no cost to you.
We have attended over forty Broadway shows this year; thirty-one of them were through Broadway lottery and rush programs for an average ticket price of about $47. Lottery and rush are both free to enter. Here is how the programs work.
I include Off-Broadway, so Little Shop of Horrors at the Westside and Heathers at New World Stages sit in these numbers alongside the Broadway shows.
Before you start entering, it helps to know how much time you actually have: my Interactive Tracker of Broadway Closing Dates lists every announced closing date and links straight to the lottery for each show still running.
Fleming mentioned in the pre-theatre restaurants post that we see a lot of Broadway, and that most of it comes from lotteries. This is the promised follow-up.
My experience with the Just in Time lottery shows the real benefit of the lottery. Fleming and I were heading to see Book of Mormon for a Sunday matinee and decided we could see a show Monday too. We entered the Just in Time lottery and won second row tickets. Great seats. They would easily sell for over $130 a ticket even with discounts. A couple of months later we wanted to take Fleming’s mom. Because we needed three tickets and we had a set day and time we had to buy in advance. Thankfully, the cheapest seats available were $99 each. Sometimes you can’t take advantage of the lottery because you need a specific time and more tickets. Parting note: the cheap last row seats for Just in Time were really good still; it’s a small theatre.
Just in Time, Orchestra Aisle, Row E. Won by lottery, on Fleming’s account. $49 all in.
Just in Time, Orchestra Aisle, Row K. Bought at full price. $99 all in.
The lottery seats were amazing and cost half as much.
Oh, Mary! is an even better win. On Monday, August 24, Fleming won the Telecharge lottery for Oh, Mary! at the Lyceum: two tickets, $94.00 all in, for the Tuesday, August 25, 7:30pm performance. That evening I opened the ordinary Telecharge sale page and priced the same seats for the same performance one week later, Tuesday, September 1. Two tickets, $450.00, with $44.00 of that in fees.
Oh, Mary!, Center Orchestra, Row O. Won by lottery, on Fleming’s account. $47 a seat, all in.
Oh, Mary!, the same seats one week later. Priced on the public sale page. $225 a seat, all in.
The same seats for $175 less is a major win!
The same two seats, one week later, on the ordinary Telecharge page. $450.00 for the pair.
By the time you read this, some of the shows named below will have closed. Death Becomes Her announced its closing in May and was gone by June, and I saw it twice. Moulin Rouge plays its final Broadway performance on August 30, and Chess closed in June. So treat the titles as examples. The platforms and the timings are the part that lasts.
The Broadway lottery is free to enter and there is no catch
Yes, it is free, and there is no catch. This is the first thing to tell anyone who has never done it. You can enter lotteries completely free and you only pay if (1) you win and (2) you choose to claim the win.
You do not put a card on file. You do not pay a deposit. You are not penalized for winning and then not paying. If you win and let it lapse, the seats go to a standby list and nothing happens to you. We have let thirteen wins expire this year, performances we won but could not attend.
Which means the correct strategy is to enter everything you are interested in seeing and think you can make. The biggest caveat is you can only win one show per timeslot per lottery platform. This means if you enter six Telecharge lotteries for Saturday at 7pm, you automatically lose the other five if you win one. You diminish your chances of seeing your number one show but maximize your chances of seeing a show at all.
Entries are for one or two tickets, and you pick the quantity when you enter. You cannot change it afterwards, so if you are going with someone, enter for two. I hear you can contact Telecharge if you win for two and want to change it, but I can’t personally verify that. Also I know a lot of people use the Theatr app to sell tickets (only allowed to sell at face value) and will sell unused lottery tickets in that manner. I haven’t yet bought or sold on Theatr but I check it.
Which Broadway lottery platforms should you prioritize?
There are five or six worth having, but two of them did almost all the work. Telecharge and Broadway Direct produced 18 of my 23 lottery wins, and 23 of my 31 discounted performances once you add Telecharge rush. Everything else is a secondary tier that is worth entering because it is free, not because I have won with it.
Varies wildly by show (lottery). Rush is separate and opens at 9am.
Assume 30 minutes
$30 to $49
Hamilton app
App only
Weekly. Opens Friday 10am, closes Thursday noon
2 hours
$10
Four differences that matter in practice.
Telecharge gives you two shots a day and offers a relaxed five-hour payment timeline. My Outsiders win arrived at 10:21am with a 3:00pm deadline. Broadway Direct only gives 60 minutes. I get a lot of my information from the Broadway subreddit and just saw a post complaining that the Broadway Direct wins land during Broadway matinees when your phone is off (a thread on the timing of Broadway lotteries). Unfortunate.
Every single one of them warns you in writing that your two seats may not be together. Lucky Seat goes furthest and reserves the right to put you anywhere in the theatre, including boxes reachable only by stairs, and standing room. In all of my wins I have never received seats that were separated.
As of August 16, 2026, Broadway Direct’s live prices were Aladdin and The Lion King at $35, Schmigadoon, SIX, Stranger Things and The Lost Boys at $45, MJ at $49, and Wicked at $55. Those numbers move. The structure does not.
The confirmation emails break that figure out, which is worth knowing before you budget. My Lion King entry for August 26 lists the ticket at $30.00 with a separate handling fee. Add them together and you are at the $35 that gets quoted. Broadway Direct is genuinely all-in at the number on the page; it is just built out of two.
Broadway lottery times: when results come out
Telecharge draws at 10am and 3pm. Broadway Direct reports at 2pm, 3pm or 4pm depending on the show, and gives you sixty minutes to pay.
So a Broadway Direct win that lands at 2:00pm expires at 3:00pm, which is the exact minute Telecharge announces its afternoon draw. You have to commit to one ticket without knowing whether you have also won the other.
August 13 is the textbook case, from my own inbox:
Time
What happened
2:00pm
Broadway Direct: won The Lost Boys for the 14th. $90 for two. Pay by 3:00pm
2:04pm
Paid. Committed
3:09pm
Telecharge results land. No win on Ragtime
It worked out. Had Telecharge come through, I would have missed Ragtime or had one set of tickets I couldn’t use.
What to do about it:
Decide your priority order before 2pm. If a Broadway Direct result lands at 2:00 and you are also in for a Telecharge show that night, you are choosing blind. Know in advance which one you would rather see.
The 10am Telecharge draw is the friendly one. It resolves before any Broadway Direct result, so you can enter the afternoon lotteries already knowing where you stand. I think the 10am draw is pretty limited; I usually win on the 3pm draw. Fleming, however, won the 10am draw for Oh Mary!
A 4pm Broadway Direct result is the easy case. Telecharge has already reported.
The daily clock
Time (ET)
What is happening
12:01am
Telecharge posts performances one to two days ahead (enter any time before 10am for a shot at both drawings, or before 3pm for the main drawing).
7:00 to 10:00am
Broadway Direct entry windows open, varies by show
9:00am
TodayTix rush opens (unlock the show the night before). Popular shows can be gone within minutes
Telecharge digital rush opens and runs until 30 minutes before curtain
Around 12:30pm
Lucky Seat results for tomorrow
2:00pm
Broadway Direct results, some shows. 60 minutes to pay
3:00pm
Telecharge entries close, draw two lands, and the 2pm Broadway Direct window expires
3:00–4:00pm
Additional Broadway Direct lottery wins and/or standby win results.
30 min pre-curtain
Telecharge rush closes. Broadway Direct tickets go up at the box office
Digital rush is a great option
I refer people to the lottery, but digital rush is a great way to get discount seats to shows that have less than full capacity. I find digital rush tickets available all the time on rush.telecharge.com. Rush tickets cost about the same as lottery tickets.
On rush.telecharge.com, cancellation tickets are listed as a separate offer sitting next to the regular rush. On August 24 The Great Gatsby had two tiles up for the same 7:00pm performance, one headed “The Great Gatsby Cancellation Tickets” and one headed plainly “The Great Gatsby.” They are separate pools. The cancellation tickets are generally pricey depending on the show, $90 to $180ish. I haven’t tried for them and I don’t really intend to. Worth double checking to make sure you aren’t clicking cancellation instead of rush.
Two tiles, one performance. Cancellation tickets on the left, rush on the right.
Here is a real Telecharge rush offer, transcribed off my phone:
TICKETS AVAILABLE
Maybe Happy Ending, Wednesday, August 12, 2026 at 2:00PM
10 rows from Stage
This seat offers a partial view of the stage. Moments on the extreme side of the stage may be out of view.
2 tickets. Offer available for 1:54
[ No Thanks ] [ Purchase ] $49.00, $5.00 fee included
The Telecharge rush tells you roughly what kind of seats you get and whether the view is obstructed, and the countdown in that box is two minutes.
Three rows from the stage, two tickets, and 1:58 on the clock.
A lottery win is take it or lose it, and you find out where you are sitting after you have paid. Rush is a decision made on full information. If you care what you are looking at, that is decisive.
One note on “partial view”. A lot of the partial views are still a great experience. If you are going to your dream show and only that show once, maybe buy a ticket at TKTS or another platform. But if you are looking to maximize bang for your buck, lottery and rush offer great tickets and obstruction usually isn’t that bad. At Lost Boys it was missing the top 5% of the stage during flying acts, at Aladdin it was a tiny half-inch pole eight rows in front of me. I think my worst obstructed views come from (un)luck of the draw when I have a particularly tall person sitting in front of me.
Aladdin from Balcony Right, Row K. $35 all in, and you can still see the whole stage.
Nothing at 11am does not mean nothing today
Telecharge digital rush opens at 11:00 but that is not all the availability for the day.
On August 10 I checked Telecharge rush for The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee at 11:00am. Nothing. Checked twice more around noon. Nothing. At about 12:53pm Fleming clicked and the tickets were there. We saw it that night from Left Orchestra, Row J, $49 a seat. Bonus: we got to see LJ Benet and Paul Alexander Nolan (from Lost Boys) as guest spellers since it was an off night for them.
Six days later, at 4:41pm on a Sunday, with 7:00pm curtains, there were two shows sitting available: Operation Mincemeat at Row 4 of the right front mezzanine, and Spelling Bee at five rows from the stage. Both $49.
The clearest version of this was Monday, August 24. Between 2:59 and 3:00pm, three separate rush offers were live at the same moment: The Great Gatsby at 16 rows from the stage, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee at 5 rows from the stage, and The Play That Goes Wrong at 3 rows from the stage. Two tickets each. Three in the afternoon, four hours before curtain, on a Monday.
Three shows, sixty seconds apart, on a Monday afternoon.
Telecharge rush inventory is not a single morning drop. It trickles in all day as holds are released and exchanges come back. Eleven o’clock tells you about eleven o’clock and nothing else. Check whenever you are free.
TodayTix rush runs on the opposite clock. It opens at 9am and the shows people want are gone shortly after. There is no all-day trickle, so if you want a TodayTix rush seat you set an alarm. Unlock the show in the app the night before.
I checked & Juliet at 9:04am on August 27 and the seats were still up: Orchestra Row Q, 105 and 106, $49 each. TodayTix gives you the actual seat numbers before you pay, which is more than Telecharge does. Telecharge tells you “10 rows from Stage”, not the exact tickets.
& Juliet on TodayTix rush at 9:04am. Two tickets, four and a half minutes to decide, and a note that Paulo Szot is on for Lance.
Two things about that $49. The fee inside it is $8 a ticket, not the $5 Telecharge takes, and the $49 was after a $10 Gold Rewards discount off $54. So the price without Gold Rewards is $54. Then the checkout starts its own clock. Mine said the seats were held for 4:35 (probably about 5 minutes and I let the clock run down) and the countdown was running while I read the page. All sales final, and rush tickets cannot be transferred.
Orchestra Row Q, seats 105 and 106. $49 a seat after a $10 Gold Rewards discount, with an $8 fee inside each one.
The checkout page also told me the role of Lance would be played by Paulo Szot that night. It’s nice to have that information displayed up front.
One digital rush purchase locks you out of Telecharge rush for a few days. This generally isn’t a problem unless you are traveling from out of town and want to do more than two shows with a partner (you can each purchase a rush).
The cooldown period is mostly meaningless for me as a local because Fleming can just check if I am on my cooldown.
It is Telecharge specific. TodayTix rush, box office rush and every lottery are unaffected.
The weekly lotteries, and why I have entered Hamilton 100 times
Telecharge and Broadway Direct require that you enter daily. A second tier runs on a much longer clock, which makes it nearly free in effort.
Hamilton, accessible only through the Hamilton app, opens Friday at 10am and closes Thursday at noon, covering the following week. Front row orchestra, $10. I have entered well over a hundred times and never won. Enter anyway, because it takes thirty seconds a week, but do not build a plan around it.
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child runs the Friday Forty: opens Monday at 12:01am, closes Friday at 1pm, winners notified that afternoon. Just like Hamilton you can enter for a week at a time. Unlike Hamilton, I have won this one three times, but two of those times Tom Felton was out, so I think my chances may have been higher. It is TodayTix app only.
Lucky Seat you can also enter about a week at a time; Hadestown and Book of Mormon are the big ones available through here (and previously Moulin Rouge, which closes on August 30). I have won Hadestown and Moulin Rouge on this one and Fleming has won Book of Mormon.
Both of you should enter, and here is what actually happens when you both win
Every platform caps you at one win per time slot per account. Not per household. So Fleming and I enter the same lotteries separately, and when both of us hit, we do not get two tickets. We get four. We almost always decline the second set if it’s for the same show or choose which show we want (in June we chose between The Outsiders and Death Becomes Her).
The best night of the year came out of it. Monday, June 15, Just in Time. Fleming won the 10am Telecharge draw. I won the 3pm draw, for the same performance. Four seats at $49 each. My sister and her boyfriend came with us. I found out about my half during intermission in the Eugene O’Neill watching The Book of Mormon.
We hit the double win four times this year and converted it into four seats exactly once. The strategy works perfectly. The problem is that the second pair is only useful if you have friends who are free on roughly eighteen hours’ notice. Three times out of four we did not, so one of us let the win lapse.
And the four seats are not together. Two separate orders are two separate orders, guaranteed. On June 15 my pair for Just in Time was Floor Seat Aisle 3, Row FB and Fleming’s was Orchestra Aisle, Row E. Different parts of the room. Everyone had a great time, but you won’t be sitting together.
The reverse case happens far more often, and it is just as much the reason to both enter. On August 24 Fleming’s Oh, Mary! confirmation came through at 10:23am for the next night’s performance. My own result for that exact same performance arrived at 3:05pm: “Unfortunately, you did not win.” One household, two accounts, one set of seats. Had only one of us entered, it was a coin flip whether we saw the show at all.
One more constraint: both of you have to claim inside the window, for Telecharge it is five hours but for Broadway Direct that is sixty minutes. Two people, two inboxes, one hour. Agree in advance who is buying if you both win.
What do Broadway lottery seats actually look like?
Of those thirty-one performances I have the section and row for twenty-four, taken off the actual stubs rather than from memory. By my reckoning nineteen were good or better, two were merely fine, and three were not great.
Most were better than they had any right to be:
Heathers, Center Orchestra Rows D and E, twice, for $49 a seat. Fourth and fifth row, dead center. Both of those were rush rather than lottery. IMHO Heathers rush tickets have always been amazing.
CATS: The Jellicle Ball, Stage Seating Row D, $49. On the stage, at an immersive production, in seats that normally price as premium.
Just in Time, floor seats at Circle in the Square. These are prime seats on the floor. Typically priced at more than $150.
Schmigadoon, Mezzanine Row A. Front row of the mezz, straight on. These seats were typically priced at $185 apiece.
Aladdin, Balcony Right Row K, $35 all in. These seats weren’t actually great but you can’t beat the price. Most seats in a Broadway theatre are fine and for $35 I would be happy any day of the week.
Schmigadoon from the front row of the mezzanine. Seats that normally price at $185.The Lost Boys at the Palace, won on Broadway Direct for $90 the pair.Schmigadoon at the Nederlander, before curtain.
Check whether your lead is on before you claim
Twice this year I got a “will not appear” email. Both times it was for a lottery win, and both times it arrived after I had paid.
Date
Show
Notice
Sent
Curtain
March 31
Chess
Nicholas Christopher will not appear
3:31pm
7:00pm
June 15
Just in Time
Jeremy Jordan will not appear
2:54pm
7:00pm
Christopher was Chess’s Tony-nominated lead. Jeremy Jordan is the lead in Just in Time. And the June 15 one is the double win, the night Fleming and I both drew the same performance.
I think a headliner being out loosens the lottery, because returns and exchanges flow back into the rush and lottery pools. I cannot prove it with two data points. But Just in Time’s own TikTok account promoted a standby performance with the line “A limited number of $40 rush tickets are available in-person at the Circle in the Square Box Office.” That is the production itself pairing “the star is out” with “cheap seats now.” Two of my Cursed Child wins came on nights Tom Felton was out. So did my brother’s only win. I am fairly sure the pattern is real.
For planned absences, the information is public before you pay. On the ordinary Telecharge ticket calendar, a performance with a principal out carries a small exclamation mark next to the time. Click it and it names the cover. I have now checked this across a lot of shows. And it is not only a same-day warning: on the Little Shop of Horrors calendar it told me “Jeff Sears will perform the role of Seymour at this performance,” with every date across a whole week carrying the mark, which is a scheduled absence rather than a sick day. Planned time off for a star shows up there in advance, which is worth knowing before you enter, never mind before you claim.
Shows with a real star draw often publish absences on their own websites. I won the Cursed Child lottery three times this year. Tom Felton was out for two of them. The one I claimed, July 17, is the one where he was on. The lottery kept handing me the nights he was not playing.
That being said, understudies and standbys bring a lot of energy and it’s great to see them perform. Matt Magnusson, who is Just in Time’s standby for Bobby Darin rather than an understudy (a standby covers a principal and does not otherwise appear; an understudy is usually in the ensemble), was terrific. Check who is on, then go anyway. Some of the best nights we had this year had a standby in the lead. I never mind seeing an understudy for lottery tickets but I am less thrilled sometimes if the purchase was $150–$250.
After you claim, work out how the ticket is going to reach you
Delivery varies by show, on the same platform, in the same week. Two Broadway Direct confirmations from consecutive days:
The Lost Boys, August 14: “Your tickets will be delivered to your email address from Broadway Direct 60 minutes prior to show time… these tickets must be displayed on your mobile device at the theatre and they cannot be printed.”
Aladdin, August 13: “You may pick up your tickets at the New Amsterdam Theatre Box Office beginning no sooner than 60 minutes prior to show time. Remember, a photo ID matching the name on the lottery entry MUST be presented at will call.”
Same platform. Opposite instructions. Read your confirmation email.
In practice I typically receive Telecharge lottery tickets the day before the show and Broadway Direct tickets 3-5 hours before the show.
Aladdin, Hadestown and Cursed Child all required in-person collection this year. And even the digital path for Telecharge and Broadway Direct lotteries have a in-person fallback: if the email does not arrive, you go to the box office with photo ID matching the name on the entry. This is in part why I wouldn’t risk trying to win lotteries for other people when I can’t attend the show.
Do not enter lotteries for shows you are not personally going to. In practice you can usually email a Telecharge PDF, and a Broadway Direct mobile ticket can normally be forwarded, so handing tickets to a friend often works. But Broadway Direct’s lottery terms say the prize is “non-assignable, non-transferable.”
Practical rules: bring photo ID to every lottery show even when the ticket is digital, charge your phone because Broadway Direct tickets cannot be printed, and if your ticket has not arrived an hour before curtain, walk to the box office rather than waiting.
When the lottery is the wrong tool
On August 29 we are paying $439.20 for four Saturday-evening seats to Schmigadoon. Full price.
Two friends are visiting from out of town. They are here for one window. It has to be Saturday evening. They want that specific show. And we need four seats together, which on the lottery would require both of us to win that exact performance.
The probability of getting four seats for a popular Saturday night show from the lottery is basically zero.
Look at some of my full-price shows this year and the same thing is true of three of them. The Book of Mormon at $223 a seat was the final performance of a one-week original-cast reunion for the show’s fifteenth anniversary, with Josh Gad and Andrew Rannells (of the original cast) back. Just in Time in August was three tickets, and the lottery cannot produce a party of three. Giulia: The Poison Queen of Palermo, Jennifer Nettles’s short run musical about the Palermo poisoner Giulia Tofana, played the Perelman Center, a venue that runs no lottery and no rush at all, which is a category of blind spot I will cover in the companion post.
So here is the rule I would actually give someone:
Lottery and rush are tools for flexibility. The moment you add a constraint, a fixed date, a specific show, a group bigger than 2, the lottery loses its value. Pay for those. Use the lottery for everything else.
In my opinion the discount channels are what make the full-price nights affordable. Averaging about $47 a seat across thirty-one performances is what let us spend $200+ for Ragtime, anniversary Book of Mormon tickets and the return of Aaron Tveit to Moulin Rouge.
Reddit is how I found the Tony Awards lottery
On May 27 somebody posted on r/Broadway (Reddit) that the Tony Awards were releasing a limited number of discounted tickets. I had been scoping it out on StubHub but the nosebleeds were like $900. I applied to the lottery that afternoon. Approved on May 29 at 7:52pm, card charged on approval. That is the one lottery in this post that requires payment information up front. On June 7 we were at Radio City Music Hall in black tie for the 79th Annual Tony Awards, hosted by P!nk.
$495 a seat, which is not cheap by any measure. But Tony Awards house seats do not otherwise reach the public at all, and the offer was not advertised on any of the six ticketing platforms I use. It surfaced on Reddit and was gone.
Here is the whole list, rebuilt from our order confirmations. Thirty-one performances between March 25 and August 25, sixty tickets, $2,815.00 all in. That works out to $46.92 a seat, and the median seat cost $49. Prices below are per ticket with every fee included.
Date
Show
How
Per ticket
Mar 25
Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York)
Telecharge lottery
$48
Mar 31
Chess
Telecharge lottery
$49
Apr 15
Maybe Happy Ending
Telecharge rush
$49
Apr 16
Stranger Things: The First Shadow
Broadway Direct lottery
$45
Apr 24
Death Becomes Her
Broadway Direct lottery
$45
Apr 26
MJ
Broadway Direct lottery
$49
May 4
The Great Gatsby
Telecharge lottery
$45
May 5
Hadestown
Lucky Seat lottery
$49
May 10
Dog Day Afternoon
TodayTix rush
$42.50
May 11
Heathers: The Musical
Telecharge rush
$49
May 13
The Lost Boys
Broadway Direct lottery
$45
May 15
Chess
Telecharge lottery
$49
Jun 2
Just in Time
Telecharge lottery
$49
Jun 3
Proof
Telecharge rush
$69
Jun 6
Death Becomes Her
Broadway Direct lottery
$45
Jun 9
CATS: The Jellicle Ball
Telecharge lottery
$49
Jun 10
Moulin Rouge! The Musical
Lucky Seat lottery
$49
Jun 12
What Happened Was
TodayTix lottery
$35
Jun 15
Just in Time
Telecharge lottery
$49
Jun 27
The Outsiders
Telecharge lottery
$49
Jul 14
Every Brilliant Thing
TodayTix rush
$45
Jul 17
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
TodayTix lottery
$40
Jul 20
Wicked
Broadway Direct lottery
$55
Jul 21
Are You Now or Have You Ever Been?
TodayTix rush
$49
Jul 23
Heathers: The Musical
Telecharge rush
$49
Jul 30
The Book of Mormon
Lucky Seat lottery
$49
Aug 10
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
Telecharge rush
$49
Aug 11
Schmigadoon!
Broadway Direct lottery
$45
Aug 13
Aladdin
Broadway Direct lottery
$35
Aug 14
The Lost Boys
Broadway Direct lottery
$45
Aug 25
Oh, Mary!
Telecharge lottery
$47
Twenty-three of the thirty-one came from a lottery and eight from rush. By platform: Telecharge fourteen, Broadway Direct nine, TodayTix five, Lucky Seat three. The cheapest seats of the year were $35, once for What Happened Was on TodayTix and once for Aladdin on Broadway Direct. The most expensive was $69, a single Telecharge rush seat to Proof. Nothing on this list cost more than $69, and the full-price equivalent of several of them ran past $150.
Broadway lottery FAQs
How much do Broadway lottery tickets cost in 2026?
Between $10 and $55 depending on the show and platform. My 2026 average across 31 lottery and rush performances is about $47 a ticket including all fees. Broadway Direct runs $35 to $55 with fees included. Telecharge runs $38 to $49 with a $5 fee included in that. Hamilton is $10.
Do you have to pay to enter a Broadway lottery?
No. Entry is free on every platform, no card is required, and you only pay if you win and choose to claim. Letting a win expire carries no penalty.
What time do Broadway lottery results come out?
Telecharge draws twice a day, at 10am and 3pm ET. Broadway Direct reports at 2pm, 3pm or 4pm depending on the show and gives you 60 minutes to pay. Lucky Seat results arrive the afternoon before the performance. Hamilton draws on Thursdays between noon and 4pm.
Is rush cheaper than the lottery?
No, they cost roughly the same. The difference is certainty: rush shows you the seat location and any partial-view warning before you pay, and lets you decline. The lottery tells you nothing until the ticket arrives. The tradeoff is flexibility: lottery draws are generally for the next day’s shows, while rush is same-day and you need to get to the theatre, usually before a 7pm curtain. Lottery is definitely the better bet if you don’t work in the city and are coming in from the suburbs. The two rush platforms are also not interchangeable. Telecharge releases seats all day. TodayTix opens at 9am and is usually finished by 9:30.
Can I enter a Broadway lottery for a friend?
You can, but I would not unless you are planning on going together. Tickets are non-transferable and collection requires photo ID matching the name on the entry if you do not receive tickets by email. Forwarding a PDF usually works. When it does not, there is no recourse. Enter as a pair with a friend to double your odds, but go with them.
Are Broadway lottery seats bad?
Mostly no. Of the 24 seats I have documented, 19 were good or better and 3 were “bad”. The bad ones were boxes and extreme side seats rather than cheap sections. The $35 balcony seat was acceptable, and my two best discounted seats of the year, fourth and fifth row center orchestra, were $49 rush tickets. Still I don’t regret using the “bad” tickets.
Can two people both win the same performance?
Yes. The one-win-per-slot cap is per account, not per household. We did it four times this year. The two orders will not be seated together. I have no idea how many lottery seats are available by show but it is typically more than four from what I can tell.
Steal our lottery routine
Sign up once: Telecharge, Broadway Direct and Lucky Seat all run in a browser — rush.telecharge.com (free account), lottery.broadwaydirect.com (email only, no account) and luckyseat.com. TodayTix and Hamilton are app only, so install both before you need them.
Every morning: enter everything open on Telecharge and Broadway Direct, for two tickets. It takes a few minutes.
Every Friday: Hamilton opens at 10am. Thirty seconds.
Once a week: open Lucky Seat and enter every date that is live.
Both of you enter separately. Agree in advance who pays if you both win.
Before you claim: check the show’s Telecharge calendar for the exclamation mark, and check the show’s own site if there is a star you are going for.
If nothing lands and you have a hard date: TodayTix rush at 9am, then Telecharge rush at 11am, and again at lunch, and again at 5. Remember the three-day cooldown before you say yes.
Bring photo ID. Every time. Even for a digital ticket.
Everything that is not a lottery or a rush ticket, meaning the TKTS booth, Broadway Week, discount codes, TDF and the under-30 programs, will be in the companion post. If you want to eat first, Fleming’s ten pre-theatre restaurants in the Theatre District covers where we actually go, and Lillie’s Victorian Establishment is a block off Times Square and worth it at Halloween and Christmas for over-the-top decor.
Some of the shows named here will have closed by the time you find this. If a time or a price has changed, tell us and we will fix it.
Nothing in this post is an affiliate link. We paid for every ticket mentioned.
I had been wanting to go to European Christmas markets for years. Truly, YEARS. And finally in 2025, due to Dan’s job change, we found ourselves with an extra week of vacation in December and booked a last minute trip to the Alsace during Christmas market season. We visited Strasbourg, Colmar, Basel, and Paris over the course of a week! I will be posting more about this trip, including information about the Colmar market and comparing Colmar and Strasbourg, but this post details exactly what we did over the course of one week. Highly recommend taking an extra week of vacation to Christmas market hop!
A real, live Christkindelsmärik.
DAY 1: WELCOME TO STRASBOURG – THE CAPITAL OF CHRISTMAS
We arrived at Paris Charles de Gaulle after an overnight flight from Newark (NYC). We took the train, which we pre-booked, directly from CDG to Strasbourg, France. We arrived in Strasbourg in the early afternoon, left our luggage at our hotel, Voco Strasbourg City Center (by IHG), and promptly walked to the Place Kléber Christmas market, one of Strasbourg’s eight (!!) Christmas markets. I didn’t originally expect to jump right into the markets without a nap, but it being too early to check in, off to the markets we went.
Welcome to the Christmas Capital – this is Strasbourg’s largest Christmas tree in Place Kléber.
