The Last Supper releases tickets quarterly

Tickets for Leonardo's Last Supper are released once a quarter, with September opening the November to January window, plus around 215¹ extra tickets a day put online every Wednesday at 12:00 (2026).

The booking year has 4 doors

The release calendar for 2026 runs on quarters: September opens November to January, December opens February to April, March opens May to July, and June opens August to October.

Work backwards from that and the planning rule is unusual. What matters is not how far ahead of your trip you are, it is which side of a release month you are standing on. A traveler booking in early March for a May visit is 10 weeks out and has to wait; a traveler booking in late March for the same day is buying immediately.

Find the release month for your window, put it in your calendar, and be at the screen when it opens. That is the whole strategy for the quarterly channel.

Wednesday at 12:00 is the second door

Every Wednesday at 12:00 Italian time, around 215¹ extra tickets a day for the following week go online, sold through the online channel only.

This is the mechanism for anyone whose quarterly window has closed, and it is the reason a Milan visit booked 3 weeks out is not hopeless. It is also a weekly appointment: miss the Wednesday and you wait 7 days, by which time the following week is a different week.

Convert 12:00 in Milan into your own clock before Wednesday rather than on the day. Italy runs UTC+1 in winter and UTC+2 in summer, and the changeover dates are not the same as the North American ones.

15 minutes for 40 people sets the ceiling

Each visit lasts 15 minutes with a maximum of 40 people, and that pair of numbers is the entire supply constraint.

Multiply 40 people by the number of 15-minute turns in an opening day and you have the total number of human beings who can see the painting that day. No seller, official or otherwise, can exceed it, and any offer of guaranteed availability is drawing on the same fixed pool.

Understanding that turns a frustrating booking process into an arithmetic one. The scarcity is not commercial, it is a conservation setting applied to a room.

Be inside 30 minutes early

You have to be present 30 minutes before the booked time; anyone who is not loses the right to enter.

That is stricter than most Italian timed entries, and it exists because a 15-minute rotation has no slack in it. A late arrival cannot simply be pushed into the next turn, because the next turn is already 40 people.

Build the half hour into the day rather than into the taxi ride. Getting across Milan is the variable that eats it.

Why the room is run this way: 1494 to 1497

Leonardo painted the Last Supper between 1494³ and 1497³ on the wall of the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie, at 460³ by 880³ centimeters.

He worked a secco, on dry plaster, rather than in true fresco. That technique is the cause of the early deterioration, and everything else on this page follows from it: the 15-minute slot, the 40-person cap, the controlled room, the quarterly release.

The complex of Santa Maria delle Grazie including the Cenacolo has been on the UNESCO World Heritage list since 1980. What you are booking is not a gallery visit, it is 15 minutes inside a piece of conservation equipment.

The 2 questions this page cannot answer

Availability on a specific date is not something any page can tell you, because the 4 quarterly releases and the Wednesday release change it every week.

The other one is the price, which is set by the managing body and is not part of the release mechanism described here. Check the official booking site for the current figure rather than a reseller's landing page, and compare the two before paying.

What holds across all of it is the structure: 4 releases a year, 1 release a week, 15 minutes per turn, 40 people at a time. Those numbers are the reason the painting is hard to book, and they have not changed in years.

For the rest of the city, see Milano.

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