Only 17 of the 44 castles Cadw runs charge for entry, and Cardiff Castle is not one of the 44

Cadw is the Welsh Government's historic environment service, and the name is a Welsh word its own site translates as to keep or to protect. Cadw looks after 44 castles. Nowhere does Cadw say how many of the 44 cost anything, so Cover opened every castle page on its place finder on 3 September 2026 and counted: 17 charge for entry, and 27 state free entry. That is the first useful thing to know before a day out. The second is that a Cadw ticket, pass or membership card will not open the gate at Cardiff Castle, Powis, Chirk or Pembroke, because not one of those four is Cadw at all.

What the 17 charge

Adult admission runs from £6.50 to £14.90 in the band Cadw is charging until 31 March 2027. Castell Caernarfon is the dearest at £14.90, and Denbigh Castle, Laugharne Castle and Castell Rhuddlan share the cheapest at £6.50. The ladder tracks the fame closely: all four of the World Heritage castles sit at £10.40 or above, and not one castle priced below £10.40 is on the UNESCO list. Three of the 17 still show a lapsed band: Weobley at £5.35, Castell Carreg Cennen at £7.35 and Castell Oxwich at £12.00.

Who runs the castle you searched for

Cadw's own castles page calls Cardiff Castle owned by Cardiff City Council, and it charges £16.50 for an adult Castle Ticket, with a guided House Tour another £5.00 on top. Powis Castle at Welshpool and Chirk Castle in Wrexham belong to the National Trust. Chirk asks £19.00 for an adult non-member on the day and Powis £13.00, and Powis is on that off-peak rate because the Castle Rooms are closed for conservation work, against a peak rate of £18.00. Pembroke Castle, held by a private charitable trust since 1969, charges £13.00 at the gate and £11.70 booked online. So two of the four cost more than any castle Cadw runs. Castell Coch and Caerphilly Castle are Cadw. Cardiff Castle, six miles from Castell Coch, is not.

The £1 ticket, and who qualifies

Cadw sells a £1 admission ticket to anyone on Universal Credit, Pension Credit, Working Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit, Employment and Support Allowance, Income Support or Jobseeker's Allowance. It must be booked online in advance, covers 19 Cadw sites, and a household can take six tickets a visit. Cadw asks for the benefit paperwork plus a second piece of identification in the same name, and says plainly that the second piece need not carry a photograph: a bank card, a utility bill or a work ID will do. At Castell Caernarfon that turns £14.90 into a pound.

The pass, and the visit where membership pays

For a single trip the Explorer Pass is the cheaper instrument, at £28.00 for a three-day adult pass and £42.00 for seven days. Cadw sells the pass at 19 sites and accepts it at 21, the two extra being Castell Carreg Cennen and Weobley Castle, which take the pass without selling it. Past roughly five visits a year the arithmetic turns. Adult membership costs £65.60, under the £74.50 that five full-price adult visits to Castell Caernarfon would come to at £14.90 each. Family membership for two adults is £98.40 and pays from the third full-price family day at Caernarfon, which costs £47.70.

One World Heritage listing, not four

Beaumaris, Castell Caernarfon, Castell Conwy and Castell Harlech, with the town walls at Caernarfon and Conwy, share a single UNESCO inscription made in 1986, not four separate ones. Cadw dates the building of the four between 1283 and 1330, and puts the cost of Edward I's whole Welsh castle programme of 1276 to 1295 at about £30 million in today's money. Outside that listing sits the biggest castle in Wales: Caerphilly, at 30 acres, second in Britain only to Windsor.

What is shut, and what only looks shut

A short stretch of Conwy's town walls, between the Watch Tower and the Wing Gate, is closed while Cadw makes that section safer, though Castell Conwy itself stays open and ticketed. At Castell Caernarfon the upper floors of the King's Gate and the lift are unavailable pending a reopening, and the castle stays open at full price. Castell Coch has a conservation project running against water getting into the building, which has damaged the painted interiors, and that castle stays open too. Caerphilly's Great Hall reopened in July 2025 after an £8 million Cadw programme, and a year on visitor numbers ran 20% above the pre-pandemic mark.

How many castles Wales has, depending which page you read

Cadw's Castles of Wales page says Wales holds 427 castles and that Cadw looks after 44. A second Cadw page, headed 'Is Wales the castle capital of the world?', says over 600. Both were live on the same morning and neither mentions the other's figure. This guide counts from the castles page and its 44. Cadw's naming varies too: Castell Caernarfon and Castell Coch in Welsh, Beaumaris Castle and Raglan Castle in English, which is the name Cadw gives each place rather than any difference in the castle.

Before setting off

Castell Rhuddlan and Laugharne Castle shut completely from 2 November to 27 March. Castell Cricieth and Denbigh Castle open 10am to 5pm and close Tuesdays and Wednesdays until 1 November, then drop to 10am to 4pm and close Monday to Thursday. The bigger sites run 9.30am to 5pm until 31 October and 10am to 4pm from 1 November to 28 February. Prices here run to 31 March 2027, and Cover will update this guide when the next band goes up. For the coast rather than the castle wall, Cover's guide to the 2026 Blue Flag list is at /story/blue-flag-beaches-2026.