Getting around London by bus or tram is about to cost a little more. Transport for London has confirmed that single adult fares on buses and trams will climb by 10p to £1.85 from 1 November 2025 — the first increase on those modes since March 2023.
The new price still includes the Hopper scheme, which lets you hop on and off as many buses and trams as you like within one hour for the price of a single fare. It remains one of the better bargains in a city where a one-stop Tube trip can easily set you back three times as much. Concessionary card holders will see a smaller bump, with their fares up 5p.
The timing is no accident. London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan pushed the fare freeze back from July to November over the summer, framing it as an emergency cost-of-living measure for lower-income Londoners — the seventh bus and tram freeze in the past decade. Even after the rise, TfL points out that bus and tram fares are only 35p higher than they were ten years ago.
There's a silver lining for anyone planning a trip before spring: caps on Tube, rail and Travelcard prices stay frozen until March, so zone-hopping by Underground won't get pricier for now.
The announcement lands alongside bigger news for the network itself. TfL is setting up Buses for London, a publicly owned bus operator, its first major move back into direct operations since the early 2000s. Route 6 between Willesden Junction and Victoria will be the first to run under the new company when it launches in late 2027. Buses have otherwise been run by eight private contractors across nearly 700 routes for the past three decades, and City Hall argues public ownership will mean better value, safer roads and improved conditions for drivers.
For visitors, the practical upshot is simple. Buses remain the cheapest way to cover ground in London, and the Hopper fare rewards anyone willing to piece together a route rather than defaulting to the Tube. If you're visiting between now and the end of October, you'll be paying the old £1.75 fare; from November it's £1.85, still cheap by the standards of most European capitals. Tap in with a contactless card or phone and the daily cap does the rest — no need for a paper ticket or a separate travel card unless you're making lots of Tube trips.
