Beijing Travel Guide 2026: Everything You Need to Plan Your Trip

China is not visa-free for most Western travelers — see our full visa guide before booking flights, since the rules differ sharply by nationality and the 240-hour transit exemption only works with the right onward routing.

On timing: Beijing's best weather and air quality generally fall in September and October — see our air quality guide — while winter (Nov-Mar) brings the worst smog days alongside genuinely cold, dry weather, and summer (Jun-Aug) is hot, humid and occasionally smoggy from a different cause (ozone and heat rather than coal heating).

Beijing's subway is extensive, cheap and the fastest way to beat the city's famous traffic — see our subway guide for how ticketing actually works for foreign visitors. Didi (China's Uber-equivalent) works well and most drivers don't speak English, so having your destination typed in Chinese characters, which the app itself can usually generate, solves most communication problems.

Taxis are plentiful but a language barrier is near-universal; having your hotel's address written in Chinese to show the driver is a small habit that saves real frustration.

The essential sites — Great Wall, Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven, Summer Palace — are covered in depth in our things to do and itinerary guides. The single most common planning mistake is underestimating travel time to the Great Wall and trying to combine it with another major site in one day; the second most common is not booking Forbidden City tickets far enough ahead and getting turned away.

On food: Peking duck is the one dish worth planning a specific meal around, and a hands-on dumpling or home-cooking class is, by a wide margin, the activity past visitors rate highest — higher, in survey after survey of return travelers, than most paid attractions.