Free Chicago Museum Days: How They Work and How to Plan Around Them
How Illinois resident free days work, the library pass most families miss, and how to make a free day actually enjoyable.
Photo: Dallas Krentzel / Flickr, CC BY 2.0
Chicago has some of the best museums in the country, and a family of four can easily spend more than a hundred dollars getting through the door of one of them. Free days change that. Almost every major museum in the city sets aside days when Illinois residents get in for nothing, and if you plan around them you can work through the big names over a year without paying general admission once.
The catch is that the schedule moves. Museums publish their free days a season or a year at a time, and the dates shift every year. So rather than a list that will be out of date by next month, here is how the system works and how to use it well.
Who gets in free
Free days are almost always for Illinois residents. Expect to show a driver’s license, state ID or something with an Illinois address at the door. Children usually don’t need ID, but the adult with them does. Some museums also ask you to reserve a free ticket online ahead of time, and on popular days those reservations run out.
Free general admission usually means exactly that: the main halls. Special exhibitions, 3D films, planetarium shows and similar extras normally still cost money. You can often upgrade at the desk, but you don’t have to.
The patterns worth knowing
Each museum runs its own program, but a few patterns hold year to year:
- Weekly free days. Some museums keep a regular free day or evening for Illinois residents, often midweek. The Field Museum, the DuSable Black History Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art have all run weekly free days or free evenings recently.
- Free blocks of dates. Others, such as the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry, Shedd Aquarium and the Adler Planetarium, release a handful of free dates at a time, often clustered in the quieter months.
- Free evenings. Several museums open free in the evening rather than all day. They’re great with older kids and less useful with a toddler who needs to be in bed by seven.
- Always free. A few places never charge: Lincoln Park Zoo, the Chicago Cultural Center and the Clarke House Museum among them.
Your library card is the other free pass
If you live in Chicago and have a Chicago Public Library card, look up the library’s Explore More Illinois program. It replaced the old Kids Museum Passport, and it lets cardholders reserve free admission at participating museums and attractions across the state for a specific date. Unlike free days, these passes aren’t tied to the museum’s own calendar, so you can sometimes book a Saturday. Suburban libraries run their own pass programs too, so it’s worth asking at yours.
How to actually enjoy a free day
Free days are busy. A few habits make a real difference:
- Arrive at opening. The first hour is the calmest of the day. School groups and the after-lunch crowd haven’t arrived yet.
- Pick one wing, not the whole building. You’re not paying, so there’s no pressure to get your money’s worth. Two good hours beat five exhausted ones, and you can come back next free day.
- Pack lunch. Museum cafés are where a free day quietly becomes a sixty-dollar day. Most museums have somewhere you can eat food you brought.
- Go midweek when you can. If your kids aren’t in school yet, a Tuesday or Wednesday free day is a completely different experience from a holiday week.
- Take transit. Museum Campus parking costs more than many tickets. The CTA and Metra get you close, and the walk along the lakefront is part of the day.
Where to find this year’s dates
Go straight to the source. Every museum lists its free days on its own website, usually on the tickets or plan-your-visit page, and that is the only list you can fully trust. Local outlets such as the Chicago Sun-Times and NBC Chicago also round up each month’s free days, which is handy for seeing everything at once. Check the museum’s own page before you set off anyway, because dates do change.
Put a reminder in your calendar at the start of each season to look up the next batch. Ten minutes of planning four times a year adds up to a lot of free days out.
