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The Royal Institution: Free Faraday Museum, Welcome Tours and the 2026 Christmas Lectures

The Royal Institution, behind a row of giant columns on Albemarle Street in Mayfair, is where Michael Faraday worked out the electric motor and where the televised Christmas Lectures are still filmed. Its Faraday Museum is free and open on weekdays, and a 45-minute tour costs £10. Here is what the Royal Institution in London holds, the opening hours, how the 2026 Christmas Lectures on the science of time work, and how to fit a visit into a day in W1.

What the Royal Institution is

The Royal Institution of Great Britain, usually shortened to the Ri, was granted its royal charter in 1800 and has been at 21 Albemarle Street ever since. It is an independent charity whose job is to connect the public with science. For two centuries scientists both lived and worked in the building: Humphry Davy, Michael Faraday, John Tyndall, James Dewar and the Braggs among them. The Ri counts 14 Nobel Prize winners who have worked there.

Today it is a working venue for talks and events as well as a museum, so parts of the building can be closed for private events. The Ri asks visitors to ring ahead on 020 7409 2992 if a visit matters to you.

The Faraday Museum

The free museum spreads over the lower floors and holds the actual apparatus used in some of the most famous experiments in British science. The highlights:

• Faraday's magnetic laboratory, displayed as it was in the 1850s, facing a modern nanotechnology lab.
• Objects from Faraday's work on the electric motor, the electric generator and the liquefaction of gases.
• Davy's discoveries, including the safety lamp that saved the lives of countless miners. Davy discovered nine chemical elements in the building.
• Tyndall's radiant heat experiments, which showed how gases in the air trap heat: the basis of the greenhouse effect. Tyndall's apparatus also included the tube that explained why the sky is blue.
• Dewar's vacuum flask, the original thermos, invented here, and his work liquefying hydrogen.
• The X-ray crystallography of William Henry and William Lawrence Bragg.

Upstairs, a display of paintings, props and film clips covers the people who have lectured in the famous theatre, and children can try a game spotting the ten chemical elements discovered at the Ri. Allow an hour for the museum; longer if you are a science reader.

Opening hours, prices and tours

Because the Ri is closed at weekends, it is one of the few W1 museums best saved for a weekday. The building is also on our list of free things to do in W1.

The 2026 Christmas Lectures

Faraday started the Christmas Lectures at the Ri in 1825 to bring science to young people, and they have run every year since apart from a few years during the Second World War. In 1936 they became the first science programme broadcast on British television.

The 2026 lecturer is the physicist and broadcaster Professor Jim Al-Khalili, and his subject is time: whether it has a direction, whether humans have already time-travelled, and why clocks on GPS satellites run faster than those on Earth. The three lectures are filmed in the Ri's theatre in front of an audience of 11 to 17-year-olds:

• Lecture one: Tuesday 8 December
• Lecture two: Thursday 10 December
• Lecture three: Saturday 12 December

Tickets for the filming go only to Ri Members and Patrons, and went on sale in two tranches in October. Everyone else can watch on the BBC and iPlayer in late December; the Ri says the exact dates and channel will be confirmed in the BBC Christmas schedules in late November. The lectures are aimed at 11 to 17-year-olds but are watched by whole families.

Evening talks

Outside the Christmas season the Ri runs a programme of ticketed evening talks and events in the same theatre, with scientists and writers presenting new work. The current listings are on the Ri website. They are a good alternative to a West End show if you want a science-led evening out in Mayfair.

Getting there and access

Green Park station, on the Jubilee, Victoria and Piccadilly lines, is about five minutes' walk. Piccadilly Circus and Oxford Circus are each within ten minutes. Buses 9, 14, 19, 22 and 38 stop on Piccadilly by the end of Albemarle Street. The Ri is inside the Congestion Charge zone and parking is limited; the nearest car parks are on Old Burlington Street and Arlington Street.

The visitor entrance on Albemarle Street is step-free, there is a lift to all floors, and the theatre has an induction loop and space for four wheelchair users. Large bags have to go in the small cloakroom by reception.

Make a day of it

The Ri sits between Piccadilly and Bond Street, so it pairs well with the Royal Academy of Arts, a few minutes away on Piccadilly, and with the galleries of Cork Street. For more ideas see our museums near Oxford Circus and our Mayfair guide.

Sources: Royal Institution, Visit us; Faraday Museum; CHRISTMAS LECTURES 2026 FAQs; The 2026 CHRISTMAS LECTURES. Checked 11 November 2026. Hours and prices can change; check before you go.

More things to do in central London on the W1 London homepage.