Want to ride buses without paying anything at all? These free heritage rides are taking place in June.
A new 'Weekend Hopper' fare will allow unlimited bus and tram journeys inside a day, for six weekends this summer.
Normally London bus/tram passengers operate on a 'Hopper' basis, whereby you pay £1.75 for an hour's worth of travel. Inside those 60 minutes you can catch as many buses/trams as you like, but as soon as you hit minute 61, the dial resets and you're charged another £1.75.
The new Weekend Hopper — introduced by TfL and the Mayor of London, and applied on weekends from 25 July-31 August 2026 — will allow passengers to travel for an entire Saturday or Sunday (plus the bank holiday Monday of 31 August), capped at £1.75.
Despite its name, the fare doesn't give you unlimited travel for the entire weekend.
No doubt the new, if fleeting, fare will prove useful to the summer holiday crowds. It will also be irresistible to the city's network of transport influencers, who'll be seeing just how many buses they can catch in one day (expect those videos to drop on Sunday 26 July).
To mark the launch of the Weekend Hopper, three buses — on the 23, 49 and 295 routes — have been 'wrapped up' as frogs. Ribbiting stuff.
During his 10-year tenure, the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan has pushed the use of buses, introducing the original Hopper fare when he took office in 2016, and overseeing the introducing of the Superloop system. He is, famously, the son of a bus driver.
