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TKTS Booth Leicester Square

History of TKTS

For more than 40 years, we have run an in-person ticket booth in Leicester Square. Originally known as ‘The Half Price Ticket Booth’. The first booth was a small, wooden hut painted in green and yellow stripes, which stood on the West side of Leicester Square. It, in 1980, was the first ticket booth of its kind in Leicester Square, and has subsequently spawned many imitations.

Following the installation of an electricity sub-station beneath the garden, Leicester Square was reopened by the Queen in 1992, and the booth was welcomed to its new home in the Clocktower Building by the Mayor of Westminster.

The Half Price Ticket Booth was renamed ‘TKTS’ in 2001, adopting the name of its Broadway counterpart in New York.

In March of 2020 the booth was forced to close as a result of the global Coronavirus pandemic, so we built a brand new online platform for our TKTS deals, which you can find on the TKTS page or by clicking the ‘On-The-Day TKTS’ button on our Theatre Tickets page.

In September 2021, we re-opened a temporary booth in a new location in Leicester Square Gardens while a major maintenance project was carried out underneath the gardens. In July 2022, we moved back into the Clocktower building as we continue to bring you on-the-day and advance tickets in person alongside our friendly expert advice.

Got a question, tweet us @London_Theatre or DM us on the Official London Theatre Facebook and Instagram. If you have purchased tickets and have a query, email ticketing@officiallondontheatre.com with your booking reference number and our colleagues at See Tickets (who help power our online ticketing technology) will be able to help.

Sign-up to our Official London Theatre newsletters to ensure you are kept up to date with the future of the TKTS booth, and thank you for every ticket bought, which helps us to continue the important work we do as a not-for-profit organisation.