City Park Ice Rink (Városligeti Műjégpálya)

The City Park Ice Rink is the outdoor rink on the lake in front of Vajdahunyad Castle, a few minutes’ walk from Heroes’ Square, and people have skated here since January 1870. Its 12,070 square metres of ice make it, by its operator’s count, the largest outdoor artificial ice surface in Europe, laid out in front of a Neo-Baroque skating hall of 1895.

The season runs from November to about the start of March. This page covers the hours in its two ticket periods, how tickets and skate hire work, lockers, the rules for children, lessons, and when the ice is quietest and when it looks best.

City Park Ice Rink opening hours

The rink works to two timetables, with a ticket for each. The normal period is Monday to Friday morning, and the peak period runs from Friday afternoon to Sunday evening. These are the hours from the 2025/26 season.

• Public holidays and the winter school break count as peak. In 2025/26 only peak tickets and season passes were valid for the whole of the winter break
• Closures around Christmas. In 2025/26 the rink shut all day on 24 December, on the afternoon and evening of 31 December and on the morning of 1 January. In the last week before the Christmas break, mornings were kept for school groups and pensioners with passes, with no public skating
• Last entry. The ticket desks close an hour before the rink does, and the rink gives the same time for last entry. Nobody at all is let in during the last 45 minutes, even with a ticket. Be through the gate with more than an hour to go
• The ice clears first. Skaters leave during the last song, 10 minutes before closing time
• Weather can move the hours. The final weekend of 2025/26 started its afternoon sessions at 17:00 instead of 16:00. The rink’s home page shows the hours for the current week, which is the one to check before you go

Every other timetable in the park, from the museums to the castle towers, is on our City Park opening hours page.

City Park Ice Rink tickets

Tickets are sold only by the rink, on its own website and at the ticket desks in the foyer of the old skating hall. Neither of the partners we work with sells them. The rink advises buying entry and skate hire online, because it gets you in faster, and an online ticket arrives as a QR code by email that you show on your phone.

What you choose between:

• Normal or peak. A normal ticket is valid on any Monday to Thursday or Friday morning, a peak ticket on any Friday afternoon, weekend or public holiday. A peak ticket also works in normal time. A normal ticket used in peak time needs a top-up ticket from the desk
• Adult, student or pensioner. Students and pensioners show their ID at the entrance
• Family tickets for three, four or five people, with children aged 6 to 14. The price list asks for at least one child on the three-person ticket, two on the four and three on the five
• Passes, a 10-visit pass for adults or students and a mornings-only season pass for pensioners, sold only in person at the rink

Under-6s skate free. Everyone else who goes in needs a ticket, including a parent who only wants to watch, because there is no companion ticket.

A ticket is not for a particular date. It lasts until the end of the season, so a spare one is not wasted if the weather turns. It allows one entry and one exit, and an online ticket cannot be exchanged for a different type.

The ticket covers the ice, the cloakroom or a locker, the toilets and accident insurance, which applies to skaters under 80. Skate hire, helmets, Bobby the seal, sharpening, lessons and food are all paid for separately.

Bear in mind that the house rules give no refund for crowds, bad ice after rain or part of the rink being closed. The ice is in full view from the fence, the bridge and the park, so look before you buy if it matters.

Special evenings have their own tickets. In the 2025/26 season the rink ran night skating with DJs from 21:30 to 00:30, open only to holders of a night ticket.

How a visit to the ice rink works

1. Get your ticket, or skip the desk with an online one

   The ticket desks are in the foyer of the historic skating hall, and with an online ticket you go straight to the gate and have the QR code scanned.

   Getting there by metro, bus, trolleybus or car is on our how to get to City Park page. The nearest station is Hősök tere on the M1.

2. Leave your bag in a locker or the cloakroom

   Bags cannot go on the ice, so the locker or the cloakroom is compulsory and comes free with the ticket. The hosts give you a card that opens one locker for that session, and the cloakrooms are at both ends of the lacing hall. You can hand in and collect your things once, so take out what you need before you lock up.

3. Collect your skates, with cash for the deposit

   Hire skates come in sizes 26 to 50, and the smallest children can have double-bladed ones. If you paid for hire online, collect them at the rear hire desk, behind the lacing hall and the cloakroom on the right-hand side of the building, where online tickets have their own queue.

   Each pair needs a deposit, paid in cash and returned with the skates. An adult can sometimes leave an ID document instead, but the rink can insist on cash on Fridays, weekends and in the winter break, so bring it. Return the skates to the desk you got them from, and if the size is wrong, they swap them free.

4. Skate with the flow, and leave on the last song

   Skate in the marked direction. Chains of skaters, games of tag and stunts are not allowed, and neither is food or drink on the ice. You can walk in skates only on the rubber-matted stairs and paths.

   If you fall and think you are hurt, go to the first-aid room before you leave. The accident insurance on your ticket only pays out if a report is made there.

The best times to skate at the City Park Ice Rink

Skate after dark, when the castle is lit

The evening sessions are the reason this rink is on postcards. Vajdahunyad Castle and the skating hall are lit, the ice is floodlit, and there is music. For most of the season it is already dark when the weekday evening session opens at 17:00, so any evening visit gets the view.

The catch is that everybody else knows it too, and evenings at the weekend are the busiest time on the ice. For the lit castle with more room, a Monday to Thursday evening is the one to pick.

Pick a weekday for the quietest ice

The weekday sessions in normal time are both quieter and the cheaper ticket. The rink shuts between 13:00 and 17:00 from Monday to Friday, so a weekday visit is a morning or an evening, never an afternoon.

Mornings are not always empty. In the week before Christmas the rink keeps them for school groups, and outside that week school groups can book weekday mornings too. A beginner gets the most space on an ordinary weekday evening outside the holidays.

Keep away from busy evenings if you are learning

There is no barrier round the outer edge of the ice to hold on to, which makes a packed session hard going for anyone who has not skated before. Friday and Saturday evenings, the holidays and the winter break are when it is fullest, and the queues for tickets and skate hire are longest then too.

If those are your only free times, buy the ticket and the skate hire online before you come, hire Bobby the seal for a small child, or book a lesson, which puts a beginner in a group of the same level.

Head for the castle end for the classic view

Vajdahunyad Castle stands at the edge of the ice, and its Gothic tower over the skaters is the photograph most people come for. Skate the length of the rink towards it rather than circling near the building.

Phones and cameras are fine on the ice at your own risk, but drones are banned, and a photo shoot of any professional kind needs the rink’s permission in advance.

Skating lessons at the City Park Ice Rink

The rink runs group lessons all season, for beginners and for improvers, from the age of three. You sign up on the promenade beside the ice before the lesson starts, with no booking ahead, and you need a lesson ticket and an entry ticket. Gloves are compulsory in lessons.

The times are set each season. In 2025/26 the rink’s lessons page gave these:

• Ages 3 to 5: weekends only, 35-minute lessons at 10:30, 11:15, 12:00 and 12:45, in single-blade skates
• Age 6 and over, and adults: 45-minute lessons on weekdays at 18:00 and 19:00, and at weekends at 10:30, 11:30 and 12:30 and at 17:00, 18:00 and 19:00
• The winter break brings extra lessons

Children at the ice rink

• Under 6: free entry
• Under 12: only with a parent or another adult
• 12 to 14, up to the 15th birthday: may skate without a parent with a signed consent form from the rink’s website. Bring it printed. The house rules ask for the written original, with the parent’s mobile number on it, or for the parent to email it to the rink
• Bobby the seal is a plastic, seal-shaped skating aid. An adult pushes a small child sitting on it, or a young learner holds on and pushes it along. It is hired by the half hour from the seal desk on the promenade with a cash deposit, and the rink can refuse it to teenagers and adults
• Helmets can be hired from the rink’s shop in a limited range of sizes, with a deposit, and the house rules recommend a hat or a helmet
• Prams stay off the ice, and no child, in a pram or not, may be left unattended anywhere in the rink

What to bring to the ice rink

• Cash for the skate, seal or helmet deposit
• Gloves. The rink strongly recommends them, and they are compulsory in lessons
• A hat or a helmet, which the house rules recommend
• Your ID, if you are buying a student or pensioner ticket
• The consent form, printed and signed, for a 12 to 14 year old skating without a parent
• Very little else. Bags, backpacks and shoulder bags bigger than A4, food, drink, balls and hockey sticks are all banned on the ice. Hot tea and toasted sandwiches are sold in the rink’s hut, and chimney cake at the food trucks on the far side of the ice

Accessibility

Wheelchairs are on the house rules’ list of things not allowed on the ice, and the rink publishes no information on step-free access to the building. Assistance dogs are the only dogs allowed in. In February 2026 the rink held a quiet morning session for autistic visitors and their families, with no music and no announcements. If access matters, contact the rink before you go, at the email address on its contact page.

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