San José, Costa Rica: Museum Prices, Opening Hours and What Shuts on Mondays

Verified on 25 September 2026, on the official websites of six San José museums and cultural sites, and on the Banco Central de Costa Rica’s reference exchange-rate feed.

Entry to the four paid sights on this page that publish a price costs a foreign adult about USD 54 to USD 56 in total: the Museo Nacional USD 11, the Central Bank’s Pre-Columbian Gold Museum CRC 8,800 (about USD 19.38), the Jade Museum USD 16 on its information page or CRC 8,000 in its online shop, and a guided visit of the Teatro Nacional CRC 3,500 (about USD 7.71). The contemporary art and design museum, the MADC, is free. Conversions and the total are our arithmetic at the Banco Central’s reference sell rate of 454.15 colones to the dollar on 25 September 2026.

Mondays cut the list: the Museo Nacional is closed, the MADC’s exhibition rooms open Tuesday to Saturday only, and the Museo de los Niños publishes no Monday hours. The Gold Museum, the Jade Museum and the Teatro Nacional all publish seven-day opening.

Each of the four paid sites charges foreigners more than Costa Ricans — between 1.75 and roughly 2.9 times the national adult rate (our arithmetic on each site’s own two figures), with the Gold Museum at the top of that range and the theatre at the bottom.

Prices and hours, from each site’s own page

All read on 25 September 2026. Two of the paid sites, the Gold Museum and the theatre, price foreign visitors in colones, so what you pay in dollars moves with the exchange rate — how the colón is quoted and where the spreads sit is on our currency and ATMs page.

What each price buys, and the discounts

Museo Nacional. The museum’s 2026 fee block lists USD 11 for foreigners and USD 6 for foreign students. Under its nationals column it lists children free and Sunday free. The student rate and both free categories carry an asterisk whose condition the page does not explain. The entrance and box office are on the Plaza de la Democracia side, at Avenidas Central and Segunda; the museum says its main entrance and its Butterfly Garden have reopened. Box office: +506 2211 5700.

Museos del Banco Central. The Central Bank’s museum complex publishes a single fee schedule; its site lists the Pre-Columbian Gold Museum and the Numismatics Museum alongside temporary exhibitions. Foreign students pay CRC 6,950 (about USD 15.30, our conversion); Costa Rican and resident students CRC 1,000. Entry is free for children under 12, Costa Rican seniors, tour guides and members of Indigenous peoples, among other listed groups, and free for everyone on International Museum Day, 18 May. The museum is underground, on three sub-levels beneath the Plaza de la Cultura (Avenidas 0 and 2, Calle 5). Guided group tours in Spanish or English are priced on request only.

Its 2026 closure list: 1 January, 2 to 5 April (Holy Week), 11 April, 1 May, 25 July, 2 August, 15 September, 1 December, and 24, 25 and 31 December — plus two unannounced days between November and December for work on the building’s electrical substation. The museum says it will give those dates nearer the time.

Museo del Jade. The museum’s information page prices foreigners in dollars; its online ticket shop prices the same categories in colones, and the two do not match:

We are not choosing between them; the shop itself says its special discounts apply only at the physical box office. The information page also lists USD 2 for children 6 to 12 and USD 11 for foreign seniors, and free entry under 5; the online shop adds free entry for people with disabilities. Wednesdays are 2-for-1 for foreign visitors on the regular adult rate, at the box office only (Sundays are the equivalent for nationals and residents). ID is required for any discount. The permanent collection runs through five rooms; the museum is at Avenida Central, Calles 13 and 13 bis.

Teatro Nacional. The theatre offers guided visits in Spanish and English: CRC 3,500 for foreigners, CRC 2,000 for nationals, CRC 1,500 for national seniors, and free for all children under 12, national or foreign. Its planning page gives 09:00 to 16:00, Monday to Sunday, without saying whether that is the tour window or the building’s. Both theatre pages carry an update stamp without a year (27 July on the tour page, 24 June on the planning page).

MADC. Admission is free for national and foreign visitors. Its exhibition rooms keep Tuesday-to-Saturday hours, 10:00 to 16:50, at Avenida 3, Calle 15.

Museo de los Niños. The children’s museum publishes its hours — regular Tuesday to Friday 08:30–16:30 and weekends 09:00–17:00, with Tuesday-to-Sunday 09:00–17:00 on holidays and special dates — and sends buyers to a separate ticket site, which did not respond when we tried it on 25 September 2026. It is at Calle 4, Avenida 9.

Which days work for which sites

On the published hours, the Jade Museum — and at weekends the Museo de los Niños — stays open latest, to 17:00; the Teatro Nacional’s window ends first, at 16:00. Wednesday is the one weekday with a foreigners’ discount among these sites — the Jade Museum’s 2-for-1.

Leaving San José

The fares and timetables from the capital to the main destinations are on the route pages: San José to La Fortuna, San José to Manuel Antonio and, for the cloud forest, Monteverde.

What the museums don’t publish

These are gaps in the sites’ own information, not ours:

• Museo de los Niños prices. Its ticket site did not respond on 25 September 2026.
• What the Museo Nacional’s asterisks mean on the free-children and free-Sunday entries and the student rate.
• Why the Jade Museum’s dollar and colón prices differ, and which applies where.
• The Teatro Nacional’s tour times and length. It publishes a price and a daily window only.
• The two late-2026 closure dates at the Central Bank museums.
• Walking times between the sites. None of the six publishes one.

We also tried the Museo de Arte Costarricense in La Sabana park; its website did not load on 25 September 2026, so it is not on this page.

How we researched this

Scope: this page reports source research, not an on-site visit. We read each site’s own official web pages on the date shown; calculations, unresolved disagreements and information we could not verify are labelled explicitly.

On 25 September 2026 we read the Museo Nacional’s home page (its visitor-information sub-page returned an empty directory listing, so the fees and hours come from the home page’s own “Planifique su visita” block), the Museos del Banco Central home page, the Jade Museum’s information page, home page and online ticket shop, the Teatro Nacional’s tourism and planning pages, the MADC’s admission and hours pages, and the Museo de los Niños page. The Central Bank museums’ page also carried unrelated spam links; we took only its museum information block. Dollar figures for colón prices, the four-site total and the foreigner-to-national ratios are our arithmetic, at the BCCR reference sell rate of 454.15 on 25 September 2026.

Last verified: 25 September 2026. Museum prices and closure days change with each institution’s own decisions; check the site before you go.

Figures on this page labelled our arithmetic or our conversion are calculated by us from the sourced inputs cited below — currency conversions, the total and the ratios. Every other figure is reproduced as its named source published it.

Sources

• Museo Nacional de Costa Rica — the 2026 fee block (USD 11, USD 6, CRC 2,500, and children and Sunday free under the nationals column), the Tuesday–Sunday hours and Monday closure, the Plaza de la Democracia entrance, the reopened Butterfly Garden and the box-office phone.
• Museos del Banco Central de Costa Rica — CRC 8,800 / 6,950 foreign and CRC 3,000 / 1,000 national fees, daily 09:00–16:30, the free categories and 18 May, the 2026 closure list, the underground three-level building beneath the Plaza de la Cultura, and group tours on request.
• Museo del Jade — Información — daily 08:00–17:00, the four closure days, USD 16 / 5 / 2 / 11 foreign rates, national rates, the 2-for-1 rules, the ID requirement and the address.
• Museo del Jade — home page — Wednesday 2-for-1 for foreigners, Sunday 2-for-1 for nationals and residents, and the five permanent rooms.
• Museo del Jade — Boletería (online tickets) — CRC 8,000 foreign adult, CRC 2,500 foreign student, the national rates, free under-5s and people with disabilities, and discounts at the box office only.
• Teatro Nacional — Turismo — guided visits in Spanish and English at CRC 3,500 / 2,000 / 1,500 and free under 12.
• Teatro Nacional — Planee su visita — 09:00 to 16:00, Monday to Sunday.
• MADC — Precios de entrada and Horarios — free admission, Tuesday–Saturday 10:00–16:50 exhibition hours, and the address.
• Museo de los Niños — regular and holiday hours and the address.
• Banco Central de Costa Rica — reference sell rate, indicator 318 — 454.15 colones per dollar, dated 25 September 2026.

Written by Estuardo Enriquez. This site is independent, has no affiliate relationship with any museum or operator named here, and is not connected to any previous owner of this domain.