The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens is free 1st Thursday monthly. The first Thursday of every month is Free Day, with advance reservation required. Tickets release the last Thursday of the prior month at 9 a.m. through a virtual waiting room and sell out — you're assigned a random number in line, and there's a hard limit of 5 tickets per household per year. Required — released the last Thursday of every month at 9am until sold out, via a virtual waiting room; all guests including infants need a ticket; nontransferable Verified on The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens's own page, last checked 2026-09-14.
| Free day | 1st Thursday monthly |
|---|---|
| Who qualifies | Everyone, but reservation-gated; one email and one order per household |
| Reservation | Required — released the last Thursday of every month at 9am until sold out, via a virtual waiting room; all guests including infants need a ticket; nontransferable |
| What's included | General admission: gardens and galleries |
| Regular adult price | $29 adult Mon-Thu, $34 Fri-Sun and peak |
| Source | huntington.org · checked 2026-09-14 |
Regular adult admission at The Huntington is $29, so timing the visit to the free window keeps $58 in a couple's pocket and up to $116 for a family of four — each month it comes around. And since this free day is open to everyone, it's the cheapest possible way through the door. The catch is capacity, not money: free slots are reserved in advance and the popular dates go first, so the reservation is the real currency here.
Regular tickets ($29 adult Mon-Thu, $34 Fri-Sun and peak) are on huntington.org — skip third-party sellers, the official price is the floor. Planning a bigger Los Angeles itinerary? A CityPASS Los Angeles bundle can undercut separate tickets — just check the current lineup for The Huntington before paying.
California Science Center (always free) · Griffith Observatory (always free) · Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) (2nd tuesday monthly) · Los Angeles Zoo and Botanical Gardens (no regular free day) · Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHM) (weekdays 3pm–5pm) · The Broad (always free) · The Getty Center (always free) — or see the full free museum days in Los Angeles guide.
Los Angeles's free-day calendar, condensed to one email a month — verified dates and resident rules only.
↥ Check another museum → Browse all free museum & zoo days →
The first Thursday of every month is Free Day, with advance reservation required. Tickets release the last Thursday of the prior month at 9 a.m. through a virtual waiting room and sell out — you're assigned a random number in line, and there's a hard limit of 5 tickets per household per year.
Required — released the last Thursday of every month at 9am until sold out, via a virtual waiting room; all guests including infants need a ticket; nontransferable
General admission: gardens and galleries
$29 adult Mon-Thu, $34 Fri-Sun and peak. That figure is the payoff for planning around the free day.
At $29 per adult, two adults keep $58 and a group of four paying adult prices keeps up to $116 per visit — before parking and extras.