Hours
Taj Mahal Opening Hours and the Friday Closure
There is no fixed opening time. The gates track sunrise and sunset, and the complex shuts every Friday. The real clock times by season.
Check dates and availability ↗Approximate gate times through the year (Agra, IST). Sun times shift daily.
| Date | Sunrise | Gates open | Sunset | Gates close | Last tickets |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 15 January | 07:08 | 06:38 | 17:45 | 17:15 | 17:00 |
| 21 March | 06:20 | 05:50 | 18:29 | 17:59 | 17:44 |
| 21 June | 05:23 | 04:53 | 19:15 | 18:45 | 18:30 |
| 15 August | 05:49 | 05:19 | 18:55 | 18:25 | 18:10 |
| 23 September | 06:06 | 05:36 | 18:13 | 17:43 | 17:28 |
| 21 December | 07:03 | 06:33 | 17:28 | 16:58 | 16:43 |
The rule is the sun, not the clock
ASI does not publish fixed opening hours. The official rule is that the Taj Mahal opens thirty minutes before sunrise and closes thirty minutes before sunset. Because Agra sits at roughly 27 degrees north, that swings the opening time by well over an hour and a half across the year — around 06:38 in mid-January, but before five in the morning at midsummer. Closing moves similarly, from just before five in the evening in late December to a quarter to seven in June. Any site quoting a fixed “6am to 6:30pm” is approximating. Check the actual sunrise time for your date before setting an alarm.
Friday: closed to visitors, open for prayer
The Taj Mahal is closed to general visitors every Friday, without exception. This is not a soft closure or a reduced-hours day — ASI's booking system will not sell a Friday ticket at all, and the official fee table simply prints CLOSED against every visitor category. The complex opens on Fridays only for congregational prayer at the mosque within the grounds, which is a religious access provision rather than a tourist one. Crucially, this applies to the Taj Mahal alone. Agra Fort, Fatehpur Sikri, Mehtab Bagh and the other Agra monuments stay open on Fridays, so a Friday in Agra is far from wasted.
Sunrise or sunset
Both are worth it and they are genuinely different experiences. Uttar Pradesh Tourism's own guidance notes that sunrise is preferred by most visitors, describing the monument taking on a pink cast as the light arrives, with the practical benefits of thinner crowds and cooler air. Sunset draws more people; the light turns soft and silver, and patience is needed for a clear photograph. In winter, morning fog on the Yamuna floodplain can obscure the building entirely for the first hour, which argues for a later start between December and February. In summer, the argument for arriving at first light is simply the heat.
Ticket counters shut before the gates do
A detail that catches people out: the ticket windows at the West and East gates operate from one hour before sunrise until forty-five minutes before sunset. That is fifteen minutes earlier than the gates themselves close. If you turn up hoping to buy on the spot late in the day, you can find the counters shuttered while people are still inside. Online tickets do not solve this either, since the gates still close thirty minutes before sunset. Treat the last-tickets column above as your genuine cut-off, and add margin for the security queue, which can run long at peak times.
How long you can stay
ASI introduced a three-hour limit per ticket, enforced through turnstiles at the entry gates, and officials at the time described visitors exceeding it as needing to settle up at the exit counter. It is worth being aware of, though enforcement is inconsistently reported and ASI's current public pages do not restate the rule — they say only that visitors should stay as directed on the ticket or by ASI staff. In practice three hours is ample for the gateway, the gardens, the plinth, the mosque and the museum. Only serious photographers tend to press against it.