Free Museum Days in LA: August 2026

Bank of America and Merrill cardholders get free general admission on the first full weekend of every month, which in August is Saturday the 1st and Sunday the 2nd. In Los Angeles the program covers LACMA and the Skirball Cultural Center.

Bring the card and a photo ID that matches it. One free general admission per card, and special exhibitions are not included.

The Autry’s free day is the first Wednesday of the month, which lands on August 5. General admission is free from 10am to 4pm, with no card and no membership involved.

It holds the largest collection of Western and Native American art and artifacts in the country. The Griffith Park address means you can pair it with Travel Town, which is free every day it opens.

The Huntington’s monthly Free Day is the first Thursday, August 6. It is the hardest free ticket in Southern California to actually get, and the release schedule is why: tickets go out on the last Thursday of every month at 9am, for admission the following week.

There is a virtual waiting room. Every guest including infants needs their own ticket, tickets are non-transferable, there is a limit of five per household per year, and you have to arrive within one hour of your ticket time.

Free from 4 to 7pm on the first Friday of the month. No reservation, walk in.

For a collection this dense, three free hours is the most underrated art evening in LA County: Rembrandt, Goya, Degas, Picasso, and one of the strongest South and Southeast Asian sculpture holdings in the United States.

The American Museum of Ceramic Art runs pay what you can on the first Friday, 11am to 4pm. It is the only museum in the region devoted entirely to ceramics, and the drive out to Pomona is about 35 miles from downtown.

Free on the second Sunday of the month, 11am to 5pm. The building is a 1924 Chinese courtyard style landmark and the courtyard alone justifies the trip.

If Sunday does not work, the museum is pay what you wish every Thursday, so there is almost no week in August where you have to pay to get in.

Kidspace runs a free afternoon on August 14 from 2 to 5pm. Three and a half acres beside the Rose Bowl built around climbing, water and dirt rather than screens.

The free afternoon moves around the calendar month to month, so check the museum’s own listing before you build a day around it.

The Museum of Latin American Art is free every Sunday, and August has five of them. It is the only museum in the country dedicated exclusively to modern and contemporary Latin American and Latino art, and the sculpture garden is the part people remember.

Pay what you wish on Sundays, directly across Wilshire from LACMA. Craft, folk art and design in a building small enough to do properly in an hour, which makes it the right second stop on a Museum Row day.

Pay what you wish every Thursday, on top of the free second Sunday. Two free routes into the same collection in the same month.

Separate from the second Tuesday program, and far less used: every LA County resident with valid ID gets in free on weekdays after 3pm.

LACMA is closed Wednesdays, so in practice that means Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. Used properly it is a free membership.

NHM is free to LA County residents Monday through Friday from 3 to 5pm. The window is not the same as LACMA’s and it does include Wednesdays, which is the detail every copied roundup gets wrong.

Two hours is enough for the dinosaur hall and the gem vault, which is what most people come for.

General admission is free every day it opens. Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday 11am to 5pm, Thursday 11am to 8pm, Saturday and Sunday 10am to 6pm, closed Mondays.

Timed tickets are recommended, but walk-ups are available daily and extra tickets are released online every day. Parking starts at $19 for three hours with validation, and is a flat $19 after 5pm on weeknights and all day at weekends.

Free with an advance timed ticket. Daily 10am to 5pm and closed Tuesdays, which catches out anyone who assumes it keeps the Getty Center’s Monday closure.

Parking is $25 with the same evening reductions. Currently showing The Egyptian Book of the Dead, with manuscripts dating to roughly 1000 BCE.

Free, Tuesday to Sunday 11am to 6pm, closed Mondays. Parking is $9 for three hours with validation and a flat $9 after 5pm on weekdays and all weekend, the cheapest paid parking of any major museum on this page.

JazzPOP runs free at 8pm on August 6, 13 and 20.

Free general admission, underwritten by Carolyn Clark Powers. Tuesday to Friday 11am to 5pm with Thursday until 8pm, Saturday and Sunday 11am to 6pm.

Two blocks from The Broad, so the pair makes a full free day on Grand Avenue with one parking charge between them.

Free to enter and free to look through the telescopes. Tuesday to Friday 12pm to 10pm, Saturday and Sunday 10am to 10pm, closed Mondays. The noon weekday opening catches people out constantly.

The permanent galleries are free every day, 10am to 5pm, with no reservation. IMAX and special exhibitions are ticketed separately.

Free with no reservation required, in Exposition Park alongside the Science Center and NHM. The bag check is closed, so travel light. Large bags are not accepted.

Free, Wednesday to Sunday from noon to 5pm. Parking in Lot 4 is $5 an hour with a $17 daily maximum, so time it rather than leaving the car all day.

The Institute of Contemporary Art is free, Wednesday to Sunday 11am to 6pm, in a converted Arts District warehouse a short walk from Little Tokyo, and one of the more reliable hidden gems in Los Angeles for anyone who has already done The Broad.

Free admission and free parking, Friday to Sunday 10am to 5pm. Cold War art and material culture inside a former National Guard armory, and one of the strangest and best collections in the county.

Free, Tuesday to Sunday 10am to 5pm. Historic steam and diesel locomotives you can walk right up to. The miniature train ride costs extra, the museum does not, which makes it one of the better free date ideas in Los Angeles that does not involve a hike.

Free admission and free parking, Tuesday to Sunday 10am to 5pm. Convergence: Contemporary Artists of Armenian Descent is up through August 9.

Free Friday to Sunday, and the guided tours are free too. Two historic houses, one 1840s and one 1920s, on six acres.

Free, open Tuesday to Saturday from 10am until showtime during the summer season. Hours drop sharply once the season ends, so August is the month to go.

Free, Wednesday to Sunday noon to 5pm, on the site where Los Angeles was founded. Mexican-American history in LA, across the street from Olvera Street.

Free, Wednesday to Sunday 11am to 5pm, inside Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza on Level 2, Suite 283. Co-founded by Dr. Samella Lewis, and small enough that the staff will talk you through the collection.

Free, Tuesday to Friday 10am to 4pm, reopening August 18 with Paul R. Williams: An Architect Considered.

Williams is the pioneering Black Los Angeles architect behind the LAX Theme Building and the Beverly Hills Hotel. It is the most Los Angeles subject a free museum could pick, and it is worth the wait.