Events

Barracks, Bombs, and Buckingham Palace: Heritage Open Days Festival

Dates: 13 September 2025 — 14 September 2025

Join us for a weekend filled with free family fun in the heart of central London – part of England’s largest festival of history & culture!

  • Visit the historic re-enactors camp
  • Live vintage music from Lancashire Belle
  • Handle objects from the collection
  • Try on genuine soldier’s uniforms
  • Immerse yourself in 380 years of history
  • Learn more about London’s most iconic buildings
Book Now

The Guards Museum is bringing history out from its cases and into your hands in a weekend you don’t want to miss! Better yet, it’s FREE!

We are celebrating our third annual Heritage Open Days festival! On the 13th and 14th September, we are opening our doors to the community, inviting you to explore all things heritage and history.

Highlights of your weekend will include a trip to the historic re-enactors camp, testing your aim with the Army Cadets, and the chance to immerse yourself in heritage – whether its handling objects from our collection, or stepping into the King’s Guard iconic uniforms yourself – all to the sounds of live music from Lancashire Belle! Our experts will be giving free museum and chapel talks, from soldier’s stories to Royal tales. For the little ones, a whole host of activities from wordsearches to code-breaking to a trip through the battlefields of Waterloo.

As for this year’s theme, we are lucky to be surrounded by some of London’s most exceptional architecture.

Each building has a story to tell, from the makers, to the menders, to the protectors. The museum sits on the site of Wellington Barracks, a Grade II listed building made in the 1800s, designed to give the Guards’ close proximity to Buckingham Palace in an emergency. It is here that the famous Changing of the Guard ceremony begins, as the soldiers’ set off for their duties. Just next door is the stunning Guards’ Chapel with its own story to tell, having been destroyed by V-1 flying bomb in the Second World War and rebuilt in the legacy of this tragedy.

We invite you to come along and uncover the secrets behind these structures, and of course dig deeper into the Guard’s internationally renowned role protecting some of the world’s most famous buildings – our Royal Palaces.

Book your tickets here or if you have any questions, contact us

Full schedule coming soon! Watch this space.