Luoyang Is a Timing Problem, Not a Money Problem
Luoyang is a timing problem rather than a money problem. The peony window is nine days long, the best hours at Longmen are after dark, and the tickets are released at ten past midnight.
Get those three right and the city is cheap and uncrowded. Get them wrong and you have paid full price to see half of it.
Longmen: the night ticket costs the same and covers less
This is the decision that catches people, because the two tickets are priced identically and are not equivalent.
Ticket | Price | Covers |
|---|---|---|
Daytime, 1 March – 30 November | ¥90 | West Hill, East Hill, Xiangshan Temple and Bai Garden — all four areas |
Daytime, December – February | ¥60 | The same four areas |
Night tour, from 30 March 2026 | ¥90 | West Hill and Xiangshan Temple only |
Students and teachers with ID pay ¥45 in the daytime; over-60s and children under 1.4 m go free. The night tour admits between 18:00 and 20:00, sells from 17:30 to 19:30, and clears the site at 21:00.
So: the night tour is not a cheaper option, it is a different one. The lighting on the West Hill Buddhas is genuinely the reason to do it, and the Fengxian Temple colossus at night is the image people come away with. But you are paying the full-site price for half the site. The efficient answer, if you can spare the money, is a daytime ticket for the full circuit on one day and the night ticket on another.
Booking opens at 00:10
From 1 April 2026 Longmen runs fully online real-name timed booking and there is effectively nothing available on site. Book through either of the two official WeChat accounts, 「龙门石窟」 or 「龙门石窟官微」.
The release time is the unusual part: 00:10 each day, for the date seven days out including the same day. Not 08:00, which is when almost every other Chinese attraction releases. During the peony festival that ten-past-midnight slot is the difference between going and not going.
If you are on site and stuck, the only remaining counter is at the Northwest Service Area ticket centre, and it is not a plan.
The peony window is nine days
The 43rd Luoyang Peony Culture Festival runs 1 April to 5 May 2026, which is the marketing window. The actual flowering peak is 13 to 21 April. Arrive on 3 April and you will see buds; arrive on 30 April and you will see the end of it.
Luoyang has grown peonies since the Tang dynasty and the city takes it seriously enough that hotel prices roughly double inside that window. Two ways to handle it. Either book accommodation in February for those nine days, or come deliberately outside them and accept that you are here for the grottoes and the archaeology instead, which is a perfectly good trip and about half the price.
During the festival, the White Horse Temple — the first Buddhist temple founded in China, in 68 CE — runs timed online booking with crowd caps. Entry from 07:40, ticket sales stop at 18:00, gates close at 18:30.
The city is open late
Yingtianmen, the reconstructed Sui and Tang palace gate, is ¥49 and open 09:00 to 22:30 all year. The light projection on the facade after dark is the reason to go at night rather than in the afternoon, and it is the one major site here that does not require planning.
Between Yingtianmen in the evening and the Longmen night tour, Luoyang gives you more to do after 18:00 than most Chinese cities of its size. Plan the daylight hours for the museums and the archaeology, and keep the evenings for the lit things.
Against Datong
Longmen and Yungang are the two great northern grotto complexes and they are not substitutes. Longmen is largely Tang, seventh and eighth century, by which point Buddhist sculpture in China had become entirely Chinese in proportion and expression. Yungang at Datong is two centuries earlier and still visibly Indian and Central Asian. If you are interested in how one became the other, see both, in that order — Datong first.
Luoyang sits on the Xi'an–Zhengzhou high-speed line, about 90 minutes from Xi'an, which makes the two an easy pair. The Xi'an guide covers that end, booking on 12306 with a passport covers the tickets, and the refund rules make an early booking free to abandon if the peony forecast shifts.
FAQ
How much are Longmen Grottoes tickets?
¥90 for the full daytime ticket from 1 March to 30 November, covering West Hill, East Hill, Xiangshan Temple and Bai Garden, and ¥60 in December to February. Students and teachers pay ¥45; over-60s and children under 1.4 m are free.
Is the Longmen night tour worth it?
It is ¥90 — the same as the full daytime ticket — and covers only West Hill and Xiangshan Temple. The lighting on the Fengxian Temple colossus is the reason to do it, but treat it as a second visit rather than a cheaper alternative.
When do Longmen tickets go on sale?
At 00:10 each day, for the date seven days ahead including the same day, through the official 「龙门石窟」 WeChat accounts. From 1 April 2026 booking is entirely online and effectively nothing is sold on site.
When is the best time to see Luoyang's peonies?
13 to 21 April is the flowering peak. The festival itself runs 1 April to 5 May, which is a much wider window than the flowers, and hotel prices roughly double during the nine good days.
