Booking a visit to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum means reserving a specific, timed entry pass online, and for most of the day that pass has to come with a guide. Admission to the grounds themselves is free; what you pay for is the guide.
How the entry pass system works
Every visitor to Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau needs a personalized entry pass, and the Museum states plainly that these are available only through its own booking site, visit.auschwitz.org — not at the gate. The number of people admitted each hour is capped, which is why the Museum recommends booking well in advance rather than assuming a spot will be available on the day.
According to the FAQ published on the booking platform, new dates open for reservation every day at 12:00 noon, up to 90 days ahead of the visit, for both individual visitors and organised groups. If the calendar shows no passes left for a date you want, that means the available allocation for that day has already been claimed, not a technical error.
Guided or unguided: how the choice actually works
The Museum's page for individual visitors lays out two ways to see the site. You can join a guided tour with a Museum educator, which is compulsory for anyone visiting in an organised group, or you can visit unguided during specific hours set aside for that purpose. Those unguided hours are not fixed year-round: in winter months they start in the early afternoon, and from April through September they open from around 5:00 PM, according to the Museum's published schedule. Outside those windows, the only way in is with a guide.
A standard guided tour for individual visitors runs about three and a half hours and covers both Auschwitz I and the much larger Auschwitz II-Birkenau site, with a shuttle transfer between them included in the ticket. Tours run in several languages at set times that change month to month — English departures, for instance, are far more frequent in the summer high season than in November or December. If you have a specific language in mind, check the current month's schedule on the booking site before you fix your dates, since the guided-in-your-language slots do not run all day.
What to bring, and what to leave in the car
The Museum limits the size of bags brought onto the site: backpacks and handbags cannot exceed 35 by 25 by 15 centimetres, and larger luggage should be left in a car or coach rather than carried in. Paid luggage storage is available near the entrance if you arrive without a vehicle to leave bags in — the Museum's basic-information page lists several locker sizes, the largest able to hold up to 30 kilograms.
Photography for personal use is allowed across most of the grounds without flash or a tripod, with two explicit exceptions the Museum names directly: the room displaying the hair of victims in Block 4, and the basement of Block 11. Filming or photography for commercial purposes, in areas closed to visitors, or by drone all require prior approval from the Museum — and the site sits inside a no-fly zone, so a personal drone is not an option regardless of what you intend to film.
What the Museum expects of you on site
The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial is a former Nazi German concentration and extermination camp and the burial ground of over a million people, most of them Jews, murdered there during the Second World War. It is also a museum with a legal obligation to preserve the site. The Museum's own guidance asks visitors to observe what it describes as appropriate solemnity and respect while on the grounds, and to dress in a manner suited to the place. This is not phrased as a strict dress code with specific banned items, but as a general expectation — plan accordingly rather than treating the visit as a stop on a sightseeing itinerary.
The Museum states it is not recommended for children under 14 to visit, and notes a facility exists near the site where children can be left under supervision during a visit, for anyone travelling with a family member too young for the recommended age.
Getting there and timing the day
The Museum sits in the town of Oświęcim, on provincial road 933, with its main car park and entrance at 55 Więźniów Oświęcimia Street. It is roughly 2 kilometres from the Oświęcim train station, connected by local buses, and there are two international airports within about 50 kilometres: Kraków-Balice and Katowice-Pyrzowice. Most visitors coming from Kraków for the day arrange either an organised transfer with a fixed pickup time or independent travel by train or bus to Oświęcim, timed to arrive at the Museum at least 30 minutes before their booked entry slot.
Opening hours change by month, running from 7:30 AM start times year-round but with the last entry — and therefore the last hour you can book — shifting from as early as 2:00 PM in December to as late as 7:00 PM in June, July and August. The Museum states that a visitor may remain on site for up to 90 minutes after the last entry hour of the day, so a late-afternoon booking in winter leaves less time on the grounds than the same booking would in summer.
What this guide does not cover
This guide covers booking, entry rules and what the Museum expects of visitors. It does not cover the historical exhibitions in detail, transport operators' current timetables and fares from Kraków to Oświęcim, or the Museum's separate education programmes and study-visit options for schools, which follow different booking rules than an individual or family visit.