No. The Gibraltar cable car closed on 18 November 2025 for a complete rebuild, and it isn’t expected to run again until 2027.
Nobody has confirmed a reopening date. It’s the biggest overhaul since the system went in back in 1966, and MH Bland, the company behind the original, is the one doing the work.
It was still shut when I went in August 2026. Almost every guide I read beforehand cheerfully told me to ride it.
So let me answer the question sitting underneath the question, because none of those guides do. **Can you still see the monkeys?
Yes.** Completely, easily, no cable car required.
The Barbary macaques live all over the Upper Rock and they’ve never had anything to do with the lift. I saw more of them than I could count, babies included, and the tiny ones are a great thing to watch. Honestly they’re the thing I’ll remember longest about the whole trip.
You just have to get up there another way, and that’s really what the rest of this is about.
How Much Is the Cable Car to the Top of Gibraltar?
Nothing, because you can’t buy a ticket. The old site still lists a £49 adult return and a 09:30 to 19:15 running day, but that’s history now, not a price you can pay.
What you’ll actually spend is on getting up the hill some other way, and that’s where it gets messy.
With the lift gone, this is the single hardest bit of a Gibraltar day to plan and, I think, the easiest place to be quietly overcharged.
I got three different numbers for the same hill inside about an hour. The taxi rank wanted £60 for the trip up with Nature Reserve entry thrown in.
When we said we’d already booked our entry, that dropped to £40. Then the kiosk fifty yards further on was selling a shuttle seat with entry included for £40 all in, which is the exact thing the taxi had opened at £60 for.
Entry itself was £30 each, pre-booked online.
We paid for that entry from home and felt very organised about it, right up until we understood that getting up the mountain is a completely separate purchase.
Buy the transport and the ticket together, before you arrive. Nobody selling at the roadside has the faintest reason to give you the good number.
The Three Ways Up While It Is Closed
Bus then walk. Route 2 is the one that matters.
Ride it to the last stop it serves and you’re roughly 240 metres from the Nature Reserve entrance, which is as close as public transport gets.
It’s £1.80 a single and you can tap a card on board, so it’s cheapest by a mile.
Don’t let those 240 metres lull you, though. The walking has barely started.
Nature Reserve shuttle. £10 for a seat on its own, or £40 with your entry bundled in, from the kiosk beside Grand Casemates Gates. Best value going, and it’s not close.
Taxi. £60 for the guided tour with entry, or £40 if you’ve already got your ticket.
Ask precisely what you’re buying before you get in, because the drive on its own isn’t sold.
And even on a tour you’ll walk more than you’re expecting, because they genuinely can’t reach everything.
Then there’s the steep staircase running beside the old cable car line, which is the nearest thing to a stand-in while the lift is down. It’s only a stand-in in one direction, mind. Do not go up it.
I really wish I’d had a proper look at that gradient before we committed, because coming down it was punishing enough on its own.
As a descent it’s brilliant, a fast track off the top when you’re done, and I’d take it again knowing exactly how the following two days felt.
And this is where the monkeys come in, which is the best possible reason not to mourn the cable car.
There’s a lovely little pool off to the right about halfway down those steps, and when we passed it there were baby macaques swimming in it, which is a fun thing to come across.
Most of the babies we spotted in two days were along that one stretch of steps. One walked straight up to me and had a good look at my bag without opening it.
That’s the rule with them, by the way. Bag on your back and they’ll size it up.
Bag in your hand and they’ll go for it. Bag on the ground and it’s gone. They’re cheeky rather than nasty, and we watched one climb into a taxi driver’s car near the Skywalk and refuse to get out, which was very funny.
Just don’t feed them. That’s a £500 fine, and human food does horrible things to their diet.
When It Reopens
When it does come back you’ll spend far less of your day queuing for it, because the rebuilt system is meant to move around 1,150 people an hour instead of 260, with proper accessibility and refurbished stations at both ends. Expect 2027, and treat any earlier date you see quoted as a guess.
Until then, getting around Gibraltar has the full run of routes and fares, and the best things to do in Gibraltar covers what’s waiting at the top once you’ve got yourself there. If money is what’s deciding this for you, have a look at is Gibraltar expensive.
Everything else that’s changed here lately, and the things that stubbornly haven’t, is over on facts about Gibraltar.
