Maya did not want to meet 7 p.m. sharp in a queue: the Lotte Town Christmas Market, between the free ticket and the Fast Pass

At half past six on Saturday 21 November, Maya came through the ticket gates at Jamsil Station and turned straight towards the familiar side. It was the underground passage towards Exit 4, the way she had walked to the Lotte World Folk Museum. Ten steps on, she slowed down. The word she had written at the top of her notes the night before was not “4” but “10”. Maya gave a small laugh to herself and turned back through the crowd.

Maya is a twenty-one-year-old traveller from Singapore who records Seoul in photos to show her followers. Wherever she goes, her habit is to step back and take in the whole scene first. Since the cold had made her bring out her thick coat, she had wanted to photograph Seoul at night more often, and at the top of her list was a Christmas market that switches its lights on once the sun goes down. Today, sitting on top of everything in her bag, were the gloves Lulu had given her on a night walk on Namsan.

Where Maya is going today is the 2026 Lotte Town Christmas Market (2026 롯데타운 크리스마스 마켓), held on the World Park lawn plaza in front of Lotte World Tower in Jamsil. Until five days ago she had thought it was somewhere you could simply drop into one evening, but this year it was a market you could only get into by booking a ticket first, free or paid. So Maya worked out when it opens, which ticket to use, how long booking stays open and which Jamsil Station exit to take, one by one, before she got on the metro this evening. What finally made up her mind between the free ticket and the 15,000-won one was a single cell in the slot table that said 7 p.m.

The Cue — At a glance

The 2026 Lotte Town Christmas Market runs from Thursday 19 November 2026 to Sunday 3 January 2027 at World Park by Lotte World Tower in Jamsil, and whether your ticket is free or paid, you book a date and a time slot first. The free General Admission ticket is booked on the Lotte Department Store Mall and you queue on site, while the 15,000-won Fast Pass gets you in first with no wait. The evening show runs on the hour from 6 to 9 p.m., so the 19:00–21:00 fifth slot catches it three times, and by metro, come out at Jamsil Station Exit 10.

When is the 2026 Lotte Town Christmas Market on? 19 November to 3 January, 11:30–22:00

This year’s market opens on Thursday 19 November 2026 and runs until Sunday 3 January 2027, from 11:30 to 22:00. It is held at 300 Olympic-ro, Songpa-gu, Seoul, on the World Park lawn plaza in front of Lotte World Tower. It is an open-air plaza with no roof, so if you are going in the evening, bring gloves and a thick coat. Maya, too, had left with her gloves not in a pocket but on top of everything in her bag.

Open in Kakao Map — Jamsil Station

Maya first looked the market up five days earlier, on Monday night, 16 November, sitting on the bed in her room. The search brought up posts from people who had been last year, and after reading them she wrote “Saturday evening, just go” in her notes. But when she opened this year’s information, the way in had changed from last year. The day was split into five slots, and whether the ticket was free or paid, you had to book a date and a slot before you could get in.

Maya put a line through “just go” and wrote “Book first” underneath. If you made your plan from last year’s posts, that is the line to fix first. With this market, what you need to settle before anything else is not when to go but which ticket you are using and what time you are going in. That night Maya read through the ticket information carefully, from the top.

Lotte Town Christmas Market tickets: free General Admission and the 15,000-won Fast Pass

There are two kinds of ticket, and both have to be booked first. The free General Admission ticket is booked in advance, and then you queue on site to get in. The Fast Pass costs 15,000 won and gets you in first with no waiting. The two tickets have exactly the same slots and times, so when you choose between them, the thing to weigh is not the time but the queue. One ticket lets one person in, and one person can book up to four tickets.

The row to look at first is “Where to book”. On Naver Booking you can only book the Fast Pass, and the free General Admission ticket can only be booked on the Lotte Department Store Mall (롯데백화점몰) app or website. Maya did not know this and spent a long time looking for the free ticket on Naver Booking. However far she scrolled, only the Fast Pass came up, so she brought her phone up close to her face and tilted her head. If you are after the free ticket, go straight to the Lotte Department Store Mall.

If you are going with children, there is one more line to read. Preschool children, meaning under-sevens, can come in free, up to two per ticket. If you are going as a group, one person can book up to four tickets, so it is easiest for one of you to book them all together for the same date and the same slot. If you are 30 minutes or more late for your slot, entry may be refused, so aim to arrive a little before your slot begins.

How long is booking open for the Lotte Town Christmas Market? Three rounds, and November dates close on 19 November

Booking is taken separately in three rounds, split by the date you will go. Tickets for 19 to 30 November opened on Monday 9 November, and this first round closes on Thursday 19 November. Tickets for 1 to 17 December are booked from Friday 20 November until 6 December, and tickets for 18 December to 3 January from Monday 7 December. Even if there is a December date you want, you cannot get a ticket until the round that covers it has opened. The free General Admission ticket and the Fast Pass both follow these same three rounds.

Find the date you want in this table and copy that row’s booking period into your calendar. The part to watch is not the first day of the period but the last. The first round closes on 19 November, the day the market opens, so even if you are going at the end of November, you need to have your ticket by that Thursday. The second round closes on 6 December too, so early December dates need booking before then, and for the days around Christmas you are in the third round and have to wait for 7 December.

Maya’s date, Saturday 21 November, fell in the first round, so when she opened the booking page on Monday night she could pick a slot for that day straight away. Had she opened the same page on Friday night, after the Thursday, the first round would already have closed. Next to the date, Maya wrote “Round 1, by the 19th” in small letters and moved on to the next line. Writing down the day booking closes before the day it opens was her way of never missing a date.

Which time slot should you book? For the evening show, the 19:00–21:00 fifth slot

If you want to see the evening show as well, book the fourth or fifth slot. The Christmas Time Show runs four times a day, on the hour, at 18:00, 19:00, 20:00 and 21:00. The times can change depending on conditions on the day. Lay the show times over the slot times and you can see at once how many shows fall in each slot.

The third column counts both the time a slot starts and the time it ends, so the 19:00 show appears once at the end of the fourth slot and once at the start of the fifth. It is the same single show written in two rows, and how many you actually see depends on when you go in during your slot. What made Maya choose the fifth slot was the two cells after that. Even if she missed 7 p.m., there were still 8 and 9 p.m., so she could photograph the same show again from another spot. For Maya, who likes to split a scene into one wide shot and one close shot, three shows meant three chances from three different places.

If you are worried the night will be too cold, the fourth slot is fine too. It runs from 17:00 to 19:00, so you see the 6 p.m. show and catch one more at 7, when the slot ends. It suits anyone who wants an early dinner, a look round the market and an early night. If you prefer to go out late, the market is open until 22:00, so the fifth slot gives you room.

After staring at the table for a while, Maya’s eyes stopped on one cell. The 19:00 that starts the fifth slot was exactly when a show begins. It meant that entry for the fifth slot starts at the very moment the light across the plaza changes. Maya tapped the two “19:00” cells in turn with the tip of her pen. Only then did she have something real to weigh up between the two tickets.

Free General Admission or the Fast Pass? Work it out with the wait and the coupons

Choosing between the two is easiest if you think about whether you mind queuing that day and whether there is anything you want to buy at the market. The Fast Pass comes with two 5,000-won market discount coupons. Each coupon can be used when you spend 10,000 won or more with one brand inside the market, and only on the day of your visit. There is also a condition that some brands do not accept them.

If there is nothing at all you want to buy, the 15,000 won is simply the price of skipping the queue. Use one coupon and the queue price drops to 10,000 won, and use both and it comes down to 5,000 won. But to use a coupon you have to spend 10,000 won or more with one brand, so the sum only works if you were planning to buy something anyway. As Maya jotted this down in the margin of her notes, she remembered that she had already been thinking of a small present for Lulu. One coupon could go on that present.

The real reason Maya picked the Fast Pass was not the coupons but 7 p.m. sharp. With the free ticket, you queue on site before going in. The 7 p.m. start of the fifth slot is also when the show begins in the plaza, and Maya did not want to meet that moment standing in a queue. With the Fast Pass, she could walk straight through the entrance at 7 without waiting and be standing inside the plaza. To Maya, the 15,000 won was less the price of skipping a wait than the price of meeting 7 p.m. sharp inside the plaza.

Her mind made up, Maya went back to Naver Booking, tapped the date and picked a slot. Saturday 21 November, and the fifth slot, 19:00–21:00. As she was going on her own, she put just one ticket in the number box, and once she had paid, she opened her calendar first and found the last day she could cancel for free. Writing down, then and there, the last day she could change her mind was simply Maya’s routine whenever she booked a ticket.

If there is no particular show you want to catch and nothing to buy, the free General Admission ticket is all you need. In the fifth slot, even if you miss 7 p.m., you still have 8 and 9. There are no shows in the daytime slots, so for a daytime visit, apart from the time spent queuing, the only difference between the two tickets is the coupons. Before you choose, try writing down in one line what you really want to see that day, and the answer comes quickly. Maya’s line was “7 p.m., first show, wide”.

When is the Live Stage? Saturday and Sunday evenings, twice a day

The Live Stage runs twice a day on Saturday and Sunday evenings every week, and on Christmas Day as well. If you want both the show and the stage in one night, book a weekend evening slot. That line was why Maya made her day a Saturday. On weekday evenings in November there is only the show on the hour, and no stage.

Looking at the other days in her schedule, Maya kept the Saturday clear. Tuesday evening was free too, but rather than a Tuesday with no stage, she wanted to photograph a weekend night with the sound of the stage mixed in. For Maya, the best shot is the moment people turn their heads towards a sound. And so, at the top of her notes, she wrote “Saturday 21 November, slot 5, Fast Pass”.

Cancellations, refunds and weather: full refund up to 2 days before, and the carousel stops in rain or at 0°C and below

You can cancel and get all your money back up to 2 days before your date, and after that, cancelling gets you no refund. Maya’s date was Saturday 21 November, so the last day she could change her mind was Thursday 19 November. She put a small dot on the 19th in her calendar. It was her reminder that this was the day to check the weather and think again.

On rainy days or days of 0°C or below, the carousel does not run, and tickets are not exchanged or refunded for that reason. If you really want to see the carousel, look at the forecast on the last free-cancellation day, 2 days before your date, and decide whether to keep the ticket. Only after reading that line did Maya realise she needed to set aside a day just for checking the weather. She had not been set on riding the carousel, but she had no wish to go and photograph the market in the rain either.

If you are booking a December date, the same sum works. For a ticket on Tuesday 1 December, for example, Sunday 29 November, 2 days before, is the last day for a full refund. Booking for that date only opens on 20 November, so the time between booking and the cancellation deadline is not very long. If you write the cancellation deadline in your calendar on the day you book, you will not get muddled when it comes to deciding by the weather.

On Thursday night, back in her room, Maya opened the forecast for Saturday. There was no rain, and though it would be very cold, it was not a night that would drop as low as 0°C. Maya kept the ticket and moved her gloves to the top of her bag. The market has no parking of its own, so on Saturday evening the metro was all she needed.

How to get to the Lotte Town Christmas Market: 285 m from Jamsil Station Exit 10, Gate 13 on the ground floor of Lotte World Mall

If you are coming by metro, come out at Exit 10 of Jamsil Station on Lines 2 and 8. It is the exit closest to the market, 285 m away. If you are on your way from browsing inside Lotte World Mall, come out through Gate 13 on the ground floor and you will be right at the entrance. The exit number and the gate number are both just numbers and easy to mix up, so write them in your notes with a label each, like “Exit 10, Gate 13”.

When Maya walked towards Exit 4 that evening, it was habit. She had taken that route to the Folk Museum, so in the same station her feet set off the same way before she had thought about it. Having turned back, Maya put on the coat she had been carrying over her arm underground and came up Exit 10, and as she stepped out at street level the cold wind hit her face. She pulled on her gloves, walked the 285 m and was standing in front of the entrance at about 6.45. There were still 15 minutes until the fifth slot opened at 7.

If you are 30 minutes or more late for your slot, entry may be refused, and with a free General Admission ticket you also need time to queue on site. If it is a station you have never used, allow for the walk from the ticket gates to the exit and arrive at the station with time to spare before your slot starts. Maya spent the 15 minutes in front of the entrance straightening her gloves and checking how much battery her phone had left. Tonight was going to be the night she used it most.

Jamsil Station exits differ by destination: Exit 10 for the market, Exit 4 for Lotte World Adventure and the Folk Museum

At Jamsil Station, the exit you are pointed to depends on where you are going. Just because it is the same station, coming out of any exit can easily leave you at street level on the opposite side from where you meant to be. Decide on the name of your destination before the exit number, and look at this table once before you go through the ticket gates. You will turn back in the underground passages less often. It is a table you can keep using whenever you come to Jamsil, long after the market has finished.

Even though they all share the Lotte World name, the theme park and the museum are Exit 4, connected underground, while the market on the plaza in front of the tower is Exit 10. The theme park and the museum are places you walk into straight from underground without going up to the street, whereas the market is a plaza under the open sky, so you come out of the exit and walk at street level. That day Maya started a new line in her notes, “Jamsil Station — exit depends on where”. It was the habit from her Folk Museum day, heading underground, that had pulled her feet towards Exit 4 first this evening. Next time she came to Jamsil, she meant to open her notes at that line in front of the ticket gates.

Inside the market: the 7 p.m. show, one step back

With the Fast Pass you go straight in without queuing. At 7 p.m., a few steps past the entrance, the light across the plaza was already starting to change. While people moved towards the light, Maya stepped aside to the edge of the plaza and took two steps back the other way. Hurriedly raising her phone sideways, Maya found herself holding her breath, her mouth open. It was a moment she met without even time to choose a spot, but she met it inside the plaza, not in a queue.

If you try to capture a show from start to finish in one go, you end up missing a lot. At the 7 p.m. show, Maya barely moved her phone and kept just one wide shot. Instead, as soon as the show ended, she picked out the spot where she would stand for the 8 p.m. show. If you have the fifth slot, try splitting it the way Maya did, shooting the first show wide and the next one close, from the spot you picked in advance.

Where can you use the coupons? Spending 10,000 won or more with one brand in the market

The Fast Pass coupons are for buying things inside the market. You can use one when you spend 10,000 won or more with one brand. They can only be used on the day of your visit, so do not save them to use when you come back another day. Some brands do not accept them, so ask whether the coupon is accepted before you pay.

After the 7 p.m. show, Maya walked slowly along the rows of stalls. She had already decided that Lulu’s present would be a small decoration to hang up at home. Stopping in front of one stall, Maya took off her gloves, tucked them under her arm and held two decorations on her palms, weighing one against the other. One was a colour like Lulu’s winter scarf, and the other was the sky blue Maya loves. Maya chose the one for Lulu, asked first whether the coupon was accepted before paying, and then handed over one coupon.

Can anyone ride the carousel? From 20,000 won in market receipts

The carousel is not something just anyone can hop on. It is for people who have spent 20,000 won or more in total with brands inside the market, and you must bring the receipt. It runs from 11:30 to 21:30, and you book it by session. One booking lets up to two people ride, and children under seven can ride with a parent or guardian. Remember too that it stops on rainy days or days of 0°C or below.

Maya’s receipt was for one present, so it did not reach 20,000 won. She felt a moment of disappointment, then quickly made up her mind. She had always liked photographing carousels more than riding them. Maya stepped back until the whole two-storey carousel fitted in the frame. She waited for the moment people walked past in front of the turning lights, then pressed the shutter.

Sending that photo to Lulu, Maya wrote a quick “My receipt wasn’t enough so I couldn’t ride it, but I got the best photo instead”. The reply came fast, a single line: “Then buy one more present for me and make it 20,000”. Maya laughed out loud in the middle of the lane between the stalls, then quickly covered her mouth with a gloved hand. She decided not to tell Lulu yet that the present Lulu meant was the very decoration she had just bought. She wanted to save it for the moment she took it out of the bag the next time they met.

The Live Stage and the 8 and 9 p.m. shows: moving spots and watching again

As it was Saturday night, the Live Stage was on at one side of the plaza. When the music started, people nearby turned their heads towards the stage one by one. It was the scene Maya had been waiting for. Rather than the stage, Maya framed the backs of the people watching it, with the lights beyond them, in one shot. Everything that had made her choose a weekend evening was in that one photo.

She watched the 8 p.m. show from the spot by the carousel she had picked in advance, and the 9 p.m. show from the edge opposite where she had started. It was the same show, but every time she moved, the shapes of the people standing against the light changed. At the third show, Maya lowered her phone and simply watched for a while. She had already kept one wide shot and one close shot, so she felt she could simply take the last one in with her own eyes. It was the kind of breathing room the fifth slot had given her.

Before closing at 22:00: back to Jamsil Station Exit 10

The market closes at 22:00, so after the last show there is no need to hurry out. After the 9 p.m. show, Maya walked along the rows of stalls once more and then made her way out towards the entrance. In her hand was a small paper bag with Lulu’s present in it, and she had one coupon left. The coupon could only be used today, but rather than thinking it a waste, what came to Maya first was that her sums had worked out. Not buying something she had never meant to buy was part of the sum too.

The way back was through Exit 10, the same as on the way in. As she walked the 285 m, Maya filled in the last line of her notes. “Slot 5, Exit 10, one coupon left.” Compared with the “just go” she had first written, the line had grown quite a bit, but thanks to that, she had not stood in a single queue all night. At the ticket gates, Maya looked back once towards Exit 4 and gave a small laugh.

Common Mistakes

• 01

  Going one evening on the strength of last year’s posts

  Maya’s first note was “just go” too. This year even the free ticket means booking a date and a slot on the Lotte Department Store Mall first, then queuing on site to get in.

• 02

  Looking for the free ticket on Naver Booking

  Maya scrolled for ages and then tilted her head. The free General Admission ticket is booked only on the Lotte Department Store Mall.

• 03

  Missing a round’s booking period

  Even late November dates have to be booked by 19 November, when the first round closes, and December tickets open separately on 20 November and 7 December.

• 04

  Going on a rainy day just for the carousel

  The carousel stops in rain or at 0°C and below, and there is no refund for that reason. Check the weather and decide by 2 days before your date.

• 05

  Taking Exit 4 at Jamsil Station out of habit

  Exit 4 is for Lotte World Adventure and the Folk Museum. The market is Exit 10.

FAQ

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