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You don’t need a velvet jacket, a working knowledge of Puccini or even a ticket budget to spend a night at the Metropolitan Opera this season. A new program will give New Yorkers 70,000 chances to go for free.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the Met announced Opera for All today, Wednesday, September 23. The opera house will release 10,000 free tickets each month during its 2026–27 season, with seats available throughout the house—not just the very last row. (Standing room is excluded, though.)
There is one catch, albeit a generous one: the lottery is for New Yorkers who have not purchased a Met Opera ticket since 2019. If you’ve never been, you’re in. If your last visit was years ago, you may be in, too. Enter the monthly lottery at on.nyc.gov/opera or through the Met’s app.
The season includes familiar titles such as La Bohème and Macbeth, alongside Lincoln in the Bardo. The idea is to make it easier to try an art form that can feel intimidating from the outside, especially when the performance takes place in one of Lincoln Center’s grandest buildings.
The city is also spreading the word through New York City Public Schools, NYCHA, the New York Public Library, CUNY and other agencies and community partners. According to the announcement, the 70,000 tickets amount to about 10% of the Met’s tickets for the season and the opera company has committed to continuing the program in future seasons.
Mamdani announced the initiative in a video filmed on the Met’s stage with the cast of La Bohème, pointing to a New York precedent: in 1943, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia helped establish City Center as a home for what he called “the people’s opera,” with tickets priced from 75 cents to $2.
Eighty-three years later, the price is even better. Enter the lottery and you could be settling into a seat at the Met before you’ve learned how to pronounce La Bohème.