Claridge’s afternoon tea is served every day from 2.45 to 5.30pm in the Foyer & Reading Room. It costs from £95 a head and is booked online only, up to 90 days ahead; from 3 November to 3 January the festive tea is the only one on offer.
You want the Foyer’s art deco room and its ritual for a birthday or a first London tea, with children at the table and no jacket required.
The tea and its pricesYou need a table in the morning or the evening, or your day is already full: The Ritz seats tea from 11.30am to 7.30pm, and The Connaught, 6 minutes away on foot, from 2.30pm.
Other teasThe room is half the tea. The menu gives a whole chapter to its “ten secrets”, and most of them can be checked from your chair.
Tea at Claridge’s began more than 120 years ago, the menu says, with a Parisian-style patisserie in the Foyer and a band in red satin jackets playing to the turn-of-the-century crowd; the room went on serving it through 2 world wars.
Look down and the carpet reproduces Marion Dorn’s designs, the ones the Bright Young Things once crossed; look up and Dale Chihuly’s Gilded Dawn Chandelier hangs over the centre, 800 pieces of glass polished by hand in the small hours. The Lalique door panel has been there since the 1930s, and Thierry Despont’s restoration in the 1990s brought back the art deco lines and the silvered mirrors (the menu).
The china is Galerie Royale, made for Claridge’s by Bernardaud in Limoges in the house jade, and the same stripes come home on the tea sets the hotel sells. Tea also costs a fraction of a night: £95 a head, against the £751 to £1,254 of the autumn nights read on Google Hotels.
We studied Claridge’s afternoon tea from 4 sides on 30 September 2026: the tea page, the September menu, the March children’s menu and Maybourne’s dining terms; Google’s results for the search in the UK and the US, where the hotel’s own tea page did not appear in the first 28 results in Britain or the first 21 in America; 2 questions put to ChatGPT; and the 2,000 most recent Google reviews of the hotel with text, out of 4,204. Of those, 363 mention afternoon tea and 313 of them give 5 stars. Guests remember the room and the people who served them.
Tea at Claridge’s comes in 3 courses, and the menu says where much of what is on the plate comes from. What follows is the September 2026 menu, from the morning you book to the hour the bar takes over.
Tables go on sale at 7am, up to 90 days ahead, and only online: there is no waiting list, and for a day that has gone the dining team, at dining@claridges.co.uk, suggests alternatives. Counting 90 days back, 24 December went on sale on 25 September and 3 January goes on sale on 5 October.
The ritual, the menu says, begins as it always has at 2.45pm, with the choice of tea: 26 loose-leaf teas and infusions sourced by Rare Tea Company, from the house Claridge’s Blend to a Pu’er from Malawi, and coffee from Workshop Coffee for anyone who would rather. Bond Street station, on the Elizabeth line, is 4 minutes’ walk away.
5 finger sandwiches on a long platter: cucumber with lemon crème fraîche and mint, Cacklebean egg mayonnaise, Severn & Wye smoked salmon on rye, roast Devon chicken with tarragon mayonnaise, Dorrington ham with honey mustard on onion bread, and a seasonal savoury from the chef (September menu). The kitchen reckons it slices about 57,792 loaves a year, lengthways, for this service alone.
Raisin and plain, baked every day, with Cornish clotted cream and Claridge’s own jam, whose secret, the menu admits, is an infusion of Jasmine Silver Tip. The tea suggested here is the Claridge’s Blend; your pot is strained at the table and the leaves kept for a second infusion.
4 pastries that change with the season: in September a plum and almond crumble tart, a vanilla St Honoré, a chocolate and malt brownie and a blackberry and mint mousse (September menu). 2 teas carry a £5 supplement, Bhutan Black and Malawi Antlers; another glass of Champagne is £35, or £45 for the rosé.
Tea ends at 5.30pm. Claridge’s Bar is in the same building, but children may go in only if they are staying at the hotel, with an adult and until 6pm; the Fumoir takes no children and no reservations.
The Connaught is 6 minutes away on foot, The Ritz 12 and The Lanesborough 20; Bond Street station is 4.
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What the tea page and the September menu said on 30 September 2026; the children’s menu is dated March 2026.
The Foyer and the tea room, tea served, Claridge’s Bar, a Superior Room’s bathroom, a room with a balcony, the Residence and the spa.
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From the Claridge’s section of Maybourne’s restaurant and bar terms, read on 30 September 2026.
| Booking | Online only, up to 90 days ahead, from 7am; no waiting list |
|---|---|
| Card and cancelling | A card holds the table; changes are free up to 24 hours before, and a later cancellation is charged in full |
| Gift vouchers | Put the code under “Special requests” when you book and bring the voucher itself; it can also pay for lunch or dinner at Claridge’s, though not at The Connaught |
| Dress | No dress code; most guests choose smart casual |
| Photographs | Guests are asked not to take photographs, out of respect for other guests’ privacy |
| Diets | Vegan, gluten-free, vegetarian and nut-free menus, with at least 24 hours’ notice |
| Access | Fully accessible; write to the dining team beforehand for anything particular |
| Celebrations | Champagne, a large cake or a bouquet at extra cost; candles and a message in chocolate with the hotel’s compliments |
| Dogs | Not in the Foyer; service dogs are welcome throughout the hotel |
If one afternoon is not enough, the same Foyer serves breakfast the next morning, to hotel guests only.
The Superior Room, 35 m², sleeps 2; the Claridge’s Room, 50 m², sleeps 3, the size for a family after the children’s tea. On Google Hotels, read on 28 September 2026 for 2 adults, a night cost £791 on 15 October, £1,020 on 22 October, £751 on 16 November and £1,254 on 24 November, without saying for which room. Breakfast in the Foyer is for residents only.
The 28 rooms and suites, with photosHours, prices and rules from each hotel’s own page, read on 30 September 2026, and the minutes on foot from Claridge’s.
Google asks it in both Britain and America: The Ritz or Claridge’s? For adults they start level, at £95; for children The Ritz charges from £73 and Claridge’s £50. The difference is the ritual.
The Ritz seats tea at fixed times from 11.30am to 7.30pm, for 1 hour 45 minutes, asks gentlemen for a jacket and tie and allows discreet photographs; Claridge’s serves from 2.45 to 5.30pm, publishes no time limit and no dress code, and asks you not to take pictures.
The Connaught, Maybourne’s other Mayfair hotel, 6 minutes away, serves tea at Jean-Georges from 2.30pm, holds the table for 2 hours and adds 15% to the bill; The Lanesborough, 20 minutes away, serves a Bridgerton tea from £92, also with 15% added.
2 errors to avoid on the way: among Google’s results on 30 September 2026, TasteAtlas still priced Claridge’s tea at £58; and ChatGPT, the same day, took The Ritz’s Christmas dates from theritzlondon.pro, which is not The Ritz’s own site.
| Afternoon tea | Where | From its page | From Claridge’s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Claridge’s | Brook Street, Mayfair | Daily 2.45 to 5.30pm, from 12.45pm in August; £95, £110 and £125, children £50; no dress code | You are here |
| The Connaught, tea at Jean-Georges | Carlos Place, Mayfair | Daily 2.30 to 5.30pm; a harpist from Friday to Sunday; one menu Monday to Thursday and another Friday to Sunday. | 6 minutes on foot |
| The Ritz London | Piccadilly | Sittings at 11.30am, 1.30, 3.30, 5.30 and 7.30pm; from £95, children from £73; jacket and tie for men, but not for under-16s. | 12 minutes on foot |
| The Lanesborough, the Bridgerton tea | Hyde Park Corner | £92; £102 with a themed cocktail; £110 and £115 with a glass of Laurent-Perrier; a discretionary 15% on the bill. | 20 minutes on foot |
Minutes on foot computed on OpenStreetMap’s streets from Claridge’s on Brook Street to each hotel on 30 September 2026, the day we read their tea pages.
Of the 2,000 most recent Google reviews of Claridge’s with text, read on 30 September 2026, 363 mention afternoon tea and average 4.71 stars; Google’s own listing for the tea room shows 4.6 from 352 reviews. In the last 12 months 44 of them mention tea and average 4.34, in line with the hotel as a whole at 4.33. Guests who write about it remember the room and the people who served them; tea costs £95 a head, before any alcohol.
The price, the booking, the children, Christmas and the bill: what people ask before a Claridge’s afternoon tea.
£95 a head for the Traditional, £110 with a glass of Billecart-Salmon Le Réserve and £125 with Le Rosé, the tea page says; the September menu adds an alcohol-free version with Wild Idol at £105. The children’s tea is £50. From 3 November to 3 January only the festive tea is served, from £120 on weekdays and £130 at weekends. Older prices still turn up among Google’s results: £58 on TasteAtlas, £50 on a 2014 blog, £60 and £30 for a child in a 2017 Tripadvisor thread.
For children, yes: the children’s menu adds a discretionary 15%. For adults, the September menu prints none, and the tea page mentions none either. When we asked ChatGPT on 30 September 2026, it added 15% to every tea, reading a 2024–25 private-dining menu, which is not the tea. The Connaught and The Lanesborough print their 15% on their own tea menus.
Up to 90 days ahead, online only, from 7am (dining terms). There is no waiting list: for a day that has gone, the dining team at dining@claridges.co.uk suggests alternatives. A card holds the table, and a cancellation within 24 hours is charged in full.
No. Claridge’s runs no dress code and says most guests choose smart casual (dining terms). The Ritz, 12 minutes away on foot, asks gentlemen for a jacket and tie (The Ritz).
Claridge’s publishes no limit. The 2-hour seatings in Maybourne’s dining terms sit under its other hotels, The Connaught among them, not under Claridge’s, and The Ritz gives 1 hour 45 minutes. The “roughly 1.5 to 2 hours” ChatGPT offered on 30 September 2026 was a guess.
For the room and the ritual, most guests say yes: of the 363 recent Google reviews that mention tea, 313 give 5 stars (reviews). The bill is the thing to budget for: £95 a head, £110 and £125 with Champagne.
It depends on what you want from the afternoon. The Ritz has fixed sittings from 11.30am to 7.30pm, a jacket-and-tie code and a children’s tea from £73; Claridge’s serves from 2.45 to 5.30pm, with no dress code and a children’s tea at £50. Both start at £95 for adults.
Yes. The children’s tea is £50 a child, with ham, egg, cheddar, chicken and strawberry-jam sandwiches, scones and 4 sweets, from a strawberry and rhubarb tart to a sorbet cone, plus a discretionary 15%; the menu gives no age range. After tea, only children staying at the hotel may follow you into Claridge’s Bar, with an adult and until 6pm, and none into the Fumoir (dining terms).
From 3 November to 3 January, 25 December apart, the Festive Afternoon Tea replaces all the others, from £120 on weekdays and £130 at weekends (tea page). Counting 90 days back, tables for 24 December went on sale on 25 September, and those for 3 January go on sale on 5 October.
Yes: put its code under “Special requests” when you book online, give a card all the same, and bring the voucher itself on the day (dining terms). If tea is full it can pay for lunch or dinner at Claridge’s instead, though not at The Connaught. Vouchers are sold on Claridge’s gift site.
No: tea is open to anyone and booked online (tea page). Breakfast in the same Foyer, on the other hand, is for hotel guests only.
Not into the Foyer; service dogs are welcome throughout the hotel (dining terms).
Written and checked by Lumina, independently of Claridge’s. Lumina sells no rooms or tickets: every link leads to its source.
This guide is written with Lumina, the marketing system for hotels.
