Cheltenham's 2026 Heritage Open Days ran 58 free events from 11 to 20 September. Half needed booking, and some tours took only five people.
Cheltenham has 58 free heritage events to give away over ten days this month, and booking for about half of them has been open since 3 August. Heritage Open Days runs from Friday 11 to Sunday 20 September. Everything on the programme is free.
The tours people most want are also the smallest. Cheltenham Playhouse is taking five people at a time. The two Historical Cheltenham walks take seven. Cheltenham Ladies’ College, Pate’s Grammar School and a rooftop talk at Honeybourne Gate take ten each.
This is the twentieth year of Heritage Open Days in Cheltenham, according to the chair’s welcome in the Civic Society’s programme. The local events are run by Cheltenham Civic Society volunteers, with support and sponsorship from Cheltenham Borough Council. The society says this year’s programme includes 30 new events.
What is open, and when
We counted every Cheltenham entry on the national Heritage Open Days listing on 1 September and checked each venue’s postcode against the borough boundary. That gives 58 events inside Cheltenham borough, opening on 95 separate days between them. Fifteen run on more than one date.
The busiest day is Saturday 19 September, with 13 events. The quietest is the closing Sunday, with four. Beyond that the programme is unusually even. There is no single blockbuster day to plan around, and both weekends carry roughly the same load as the midweek days.
Twenty-nine of the 58 need pre-booking. Twenty-eight are drop-in, and one asks that you book if you can.
Six of the listed venues are not in Cheltenham
The national listing files six entries under Cheltenham that are somewhere else:
- Lodge Park, Sherborne, and the Sherborne Village Bat Walk, both about 14 miles east in Cotswold district
- Chedworth Roman Villa, about nine miles south east, also Cotswold district
- the Farming with Nature walk at Shipton, about seven miles east, Cotswold district
- the Creative Connections Wellbeing Walk and The Forgotten Past of Cleeve Common, both at Cleeve Hill in Tewkesbury borough, about four miles north east of the town centre
They are worth going to. They are not a night out in Cheltenham, and the listing does not make that obvious.
The bookings that will go first
Booking is almost all done one way: by email to hods@cheltcivicsoc.org. The programme says bookings run from 3 August until the day before each walk or talk, and that you will be sent a PDF ticket to show on the day. If you do not have email, the programme gives 07711 631962 for help with booking.
Four events book somewhere else entirely:
- Cheltenham Playhouse (Tuesday 15 and Wednesday 16, 1pm): book at cheltplayhouse.org.uk. Five places per tour
- Cheltenham Lido (Friday 11 and Friday 18, tours between 10am and 2pm): book at cheltenhamlido.co.uk/events. Twelve places per tour
- Cheltenham College Chapel: book by emailing archives@cheltenhamcollege.org. Eight places per tour
- Dean Close School (15, 16 and 19 September): four separate booking links, one per tour, listed on its Heritage Open Days entry
The two Historical Cheltenham walks are the odd ones out. They can only be booked in person, at the Tourist Information Centre in the Town Hall, Imperial Square, Monday to Saturday between 10am and 4pm. Seven places each.
The smallest caps on the programme, as published on each event’s own Heritage Open Days page, in places per tour or per time slot:
- 5 Cheltenham Playhouse
- 7 the two Historical Cheltenham walks
- 8 Cheltenham College Chapel, the Naunton Area walk, the From Pittville to Hollywood talk
- 10 Cheltenham Ladies’ College, Pate’s Grammar School, the Cheltenham from on High talk
- 12 Cheltenham Lido
- 13 the ‘Murder Most Unladylike’ tour at Cheltenham Ladies’ College
Two things the national website gets wrong
If you book from the national Heritage Open Days site rather than the Civic Society’s programme, you will hit two problems.
The Cheltenham Ladies’ College pages say booking “will open closer to the event in September 2026”. The Civic Society’s own programme says otherwise: book by emailing hods@cheltcivicsoc.org, and bookings opened on 3 August. There are two separate tours of the college on Saturday 19 September, both at 1pm, 2pm and 3pm. One is the general hour-long tour of the 1873 buildings and the College Museum. The other is a ‘Murder Most Unladylike’ tour for children of roughly 8 to 13, taking in the gym and the tunnel from Robin Stevens’s Deepdean books.
The WWI Battlefield Crosses Museum at Cheltenham Cemetery, Bouncers Lane GL52 5JT, has no entry of its own on the national site at all. It is in the Civic Society programme, open from Friday 11 to Sunday 20 during normal cemetery opening hours, with free parking and no booking.
One more oddity: Cheltenham Town Hall is listed twice on the national site for the same Sunday 20 September opening, once with the town’s name misspelled. It is one opening, 10am to 2pm, run by The Cheltenham Trust, with no booking needed.
If you have left it too late to book
Twenty-eight events need no booking at all. Among them:
- Cheltenham Masonic Hall, Portland Street, Saturday 12, 10am to 4pm. Built in 1823 by George Allen Underwood, with an 18th century pipe organ and a cantilevered spiral staircase
- Pittville Pump Room, Saturday 12, 10am to 4pm, with free parking, the cafe open and a self-guided trail in the Main Hall
- St Stephen’s Church, St Stephen’s Road, open every day of the festival, 9am to 5pm apart from Sunday 13 when it opens 1pm to 5pm, with talks at 11am, 1pm and 3pm on Monday 14
- four Cheltenham Promenaders mummers plays on Sunday 13, at Imperial Gardens, the Minster churchyard, Montpellier Gardens and Sandford Park Ale House
- Cheltenham Town Hall, Sunday 20, 10am to 2pm
There are also eleven free self-guided walks, written by members of Cheltenham Local History Society and Friends of Pittville. You collect them from the Tourist Information Centre at the Town Hall, Monday to Saturday 10am to 4pm, and do them whenever you like.
What it means for you
If there is a tour you want, email hods@cheltcivicsoc.org now rather than in the week of the festival. A five-place tour and a ten-place tour do not survive a weekend of publicity. The Playhouse, the Lido, Cheltenham College Chapel and Dean Close all book elsewhere, so going through the Civic Society for those will waste your time.
If you would rather not commit to a slot, Saturday 12 and Sunday 13 September are the best drop-in days, and Saturday 19 has the most on overall. The programme says organisers reserve the right to alter or cancel anything if unavoidable, so check the event’s own page before you travel.
Getting into town: our guide to things to do in Cheltenham covers the same venues outside festival week, and Cheltenham roadworks and travel has what is closed on the way in.
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