The Barcelona Card is an all-inclusive tourist pass that covers the complete cost of your admission to approximately 25 of the city’s most noteworthy attractions. It also provides passholders with significant discounts on over 70 different attractions, tours, and services, and even functions as your ticket to free public transportation throughout all of Barcelona. The Barcelona Card is the city tourism board’s official tourist pass, and it makes for a convenient way to explore the many wonders of this fabulous city while saving time and money. Enjoy free admission at acclaimed institutions like the Picasso Museum, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), and the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, as well as discounts at the Barcelona Zoo, and Mirador Torre Glòries. The Barcelona Card is good for savings on a variety of guided city tours, too. The Barcelona Card is available as a three-day, four-day, or five-day tourist pass.
Top Included Barcelona Attractions
Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya
Fundació Joan Miró (Joan Miró Museum)
Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA)
Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB)
Picasso Museum
Jardí Botànic de Barcelona
Museu del Disseny
See the complete list of available attractions and tours in the sidebar, divided by type of activity.
How The Barcelona Card Works
The Barcelona Card is an all-inclusive tourist pass that gets you into roughly two dozen of the city’s finest attractions via one single convenient card. It also serves as your ticket to various means of local public transportation, and entitles you to claim discounts on admission to approximately 70 additional attractions, tours, and more.
When you buy a Barcelona Card, you’ll pay one flat rate up front for the pass. From that point on, you won’t need to pay anything else out of pocket at participating attractions. You simply present your pass, have it scanned, and start sightseeing!
After you’ve purchased your Barcelona Card, you can pick it up in person at one of the city’s numerous tourist information offices or within Terminal 1 or Terminal 2 at the airport—whichever option works best for you and your travel needs. The pass is activated the first time you use it anywhere in the city, and is valid for the length of whatever pass-duration you chose: 72 hours, 96 hours, or 120 hours.
What’s Good with The Barcelona Card
The Barcelona Card is basically a three-in-one pass: attraction ticket, public transportation card, and discount pass all wrapped up into a single product. The multifaceted nature of the Barcelona Card makes it a tremendously convenient tool for visitors looking to stretch their budget while not having to worry about keeping track of all types of different tickets throughout the city.
When you’re in possession of a Barcelona Card, you can walk right past the line to purchase tickets and head straight for the attraction’s main entrance. There you’ll get your pass scanned (without having to pay anything extra out of pocket) and start sightseeing in hardly any time at all; it’s a hassle-free experience. In the busy seasons the lines at some Barcelona attractions are enormous.
The Barcelona Card comes with a free travel guide (the guide is available in English, Spanish, Catalan, German, Italian, and French). This handy resource contains information on local attractions, deals, and discounts, as well as a city map. The Barcelona Card also gives you a free map of the Barcelona metro network.
If for any reason your plans should change after you’ve already purchased a Barcelona Card, don’t worry: you can cancel your Barcelona Card for free through the end of the calendar year during which you bought it.
What Could Get Better?
For as much as the Barcelona Card has to offer, it does lack several of the city’s most popular attractions. Most notably, the Barcelona Card doesn’t cover the cost of your admission to the city’s many landmarks designed by the legendary architect Antoni Gaudí; these include such big-name destinations as Sagrada Familia, Park Güell, La Pedrera, and Casa Batlló (though the Barcelona Card does entitle you to discounted admission at the latter two sites). In order to experience these famous attractions via a tourist pass—and you’re going to want to visit them, for sure, as they’re can’t-miss destinations—you will have to consider other options (like The Barcelona Go City All-Inclusive Pass).
While the Barcelona Card does give you three different options (in terms of pass-length) to choose from, some visitors wish it was available in an even shorter format. If you’re looking to purchase a one-day pass to cover a quick burst of Barcelona sightseeing, the Barcelona Card is not for you.
Get Your Money’s Worth with a Barcelona Card
A way to help decide is the Barcelona Card is worth it is to decide if you will be using public transportation. About half the purchase price is the unlimited use of bus and metro. For instance the 5 day pass is about 77 euro. The equivalent metro pass is over 40 euro. The price you are paying for 5 days of attractions is only about 37 euro. Less than 7.5 euro per day. Public transportation is great as driving yourself and ride shares are not a great way to save money in Barcelona.
The Barcelona Card features a steep discount for children between the ages of four and 12 years old, so if you’ll be traveling with small kids in tow, make sure and purchase the age-appropriate version of the pass for them; it’ll save you a chunk of money. Likewise, kids under the age of four years old typically don’t need to pay admission fees at various attractions, so don’t try and buy them a Barcelona Card, too.
In order to maximize your savings with a Barcelona Card, prioritize visiting those attractions with the most expensive admission list prices first; this means putting destinations like Moco Museum Barcelona, Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Joan Miró Museum, and the Picasso Museum at the top of your itinerary. That way, if you run out of time to see everything that’s on your to-do list, you’ll be stuck paying out of pocket only at those attractions with the cheapest standard admission prices. The above attractions also happen to be can’t-miss things to do in Barcelona.
Barcelona Card Savings Calculator
Barcelona Card Insider Tips
Once you’ve purchased your Barcelona Card, you’ll need to pick it up in person; there will be tourist information offices near Plaça de Catalunya, Plaça Espanya, Sagrada Familia, and the Columbus Monument where you can do this. However, if you’ll be arriving in Barcelona via plane, your best bet might be to pick up your Barcelona Card straightaway at the airport. That way, you can make immediate good use of your Barcelona Card by using it to access public transportation into the city.
Having said that, only use your Barcelona Card (for the first time) at the airport if it’s early enough in the day that you plan on doing additional sightseeing soon after you arrive. I just paid for the train ticket into Barcelona as I wasnt using the pass until about 4 hours after I got to my hotel.
In many cites its typical for attractions to open at 10 am. Barcelona operates the same way but many museums and attractions will close much later than they do in the rest of the world. Its common for museums to be open till 7-8 pm unless you are visiting in the slow season. These extended hours make it easier to get to more places.
The Barcelona Card is valid for a specified number of hours. Because it does not use calendar days, you can start using it midway through a day to squeeze a bit more out of the card. For instance if you have a 72 hour card, you could start using it mid-afternoon on day one and go to a couple of attractions. Use it the full day on day two and three. On day four, you will be able to use the card for more attractions, museums and public transport until the 72 hours are used up. Its like getting four days for the price of three.
This might seem weird but it makes sense to double up on tourist passes in Barcelona. The Barcelona Card is a fantastic deal but it does not include some of the must-see thing to do in Barcelona. If you are in Barcelona for a week, you could buy 72 hour Barcelona are to use at the beginning of the week and a Go Barcelona Pass or iVenture Pass for the 3 more days and see all the big tourist attractions and tours.