Top 10 Things to Do in Hong Kong on a Rainy Day in 2026

M+ is Asia's global museum of contemporary visual culture, and it is big enough to fill a whole wet day. The building by Herzog & de Meuron with Farrells opened in November 2021 on the West Kowloon waterfront. It has around 65,000 square metres of floor space, about 17,200 of them for exhibitions, with a slim tower rising over a broad, low base. After dark, LED lights built into the facade turn it into a giant screen for art, visible across Victoria Harbour. The collection is wide by design. It spans visual art, design and architecture, moving image and Hong Kong visual culture from the 20th and 21st centuries. Its anchor is the M+ Sigg Collection, one of the world's largest holdings of Chinese contemporary art, built on 1,463 works by 325 artists donated by the Swiss collector Uli Sigg. Galleries rotate themed displays drawn from the collection alongside major special exhibitions, and past headline shows have included Yayoi Kusama: 1945 to Now and a large exhibition on the architect I. M. Pei. A standard ticket costs HK$190, or HK$100 for concessions, and covers every gallery and exhibition. Children aged six and under do not need one. That makes M+ the most expensive museum on this list. There is a way to taste it for free, though: the Mediatheque, the Grand Stair, the B1 and B2 levels and the Found Space are open to everyone without a ticket. The Roof Garden is free too, but it is outdoors and best saved for a dry spell. On Fridays the museum stays open until 10pm, so it is the one place on the list where a rainy evening can still turn into a long museum visit.

The Hong Kong Heritage Museum in Sha Tin is the best place in the city to understand Hong Kong pop culture, and it costs nothing to get in. It opened in December 2000 beside the Shing Mun River, a six-minute walk from Che Kung Temple MTR Station, and entry to every gallery is free. The museum has six permanent galleries and six more for changing exhibitions. Hong Kong Pop 60+ traces the city's music, film, television, radio, comics and toys from the end of the Second World War to the early 2000s. The Jin Yong Gallery is devoted to Louis Cha, the martial arts novelist known as Jin Yong, with manuscripts, artworks and audio-visual material. The Cantonese Opera Heritage Hall shows off ornate costumes and stage sets. The T. T. Tsui Gallery of Chinese Art and the Chao Shao-an Gallery cover ceramics, bronzes and Lingnan School painting. Two long-running exhibitions add weight. A Man Beyond the Ordinary: Bruce Lee is scheduled to stay open until July 2029, and Miss You Much, an exhibition marking Leslie Cheung's 70th birthday, runs until May 2027. Both are free. For families, the Children's Discovery Gallery has eight hands-on play zones about nature, history and culture, which makes this one of the few art-and-history museums that works for small children too. The trade-off is distance. From Tsim Sha Tsui the MTR journey takes around 40 minutes, so it is best as a half-day on its own rather than one stop in a busy itinerary. The public car park has been closed since August 2025, so come by train. The box office closes 30 minutes before the museum, and the museum is closed on Tuesdays.

The Hong Kong Space Museum is hard to miss: a white, egg-shaped dome on the Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront, next to the Museum of Art. It opened in 1980 and houses the only planetarium in Hong Kong, which makes it one of the more unusual ways to sit out a storm. It shares its Salisbury Road address with the Museum of Art, and the Star Ferry pier at Tsim Sha Tsui is close by for anyone crossing from Hong Kong Island. There are two permanent exhibition halls. The Hall of the Cosmos covers astronomy, from the solar system to the origins of the Universe. The Hall of Space Exploration follows human spaceflight and the technology behind it. Together they hold more than 100 exhibits, over half of them interactive, along with models of planets and replicas of spacecraft. It is compact, so you can see both halls properly in about an hour and a half. The real draw is the Space Theatre under the dome. Its seamless dome screen wraps around the audience, and the programme rotates between sky shows, science documentaries and 3D dome shows through the year. Theatre tickets are sold separately from the halls and are for timed shows, so pick a show before you plan the rest of your visit. Children under three are not admitted to the theatre. The halls cost just HK$10, and they are free on Wednesdays. A theatre seat costs HK$30 or HK$40. Note the opening times: on weekdays the museum does not open until 1pm, and it closes on Tuesdays. That makes it a natural afternoon stop after the Museum of Art, which sits a few steps away.

K11 MUSEA is a shopping mall on paper, but it was built to be visited as much as shopped. It opened in August 2019 as the centrepiece of Victoria Dockside on the Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront, and entry is free. It connects to Tsim Sha Tsui MTR Station at Exit E and to East Tsim Sha Tsui Station at Exits J1 and J2, so on a wet day you can get from train to atrium without going outside. The design is the reason to come. The ten floors were shaped by a team that included Kohn Pedersen Fox and James Corner Field Operations, and the result feels more like a gallery than a mall. The main atrium is lined in brass and centred on the Gold Ball, a ten-metre-wide sphere wrapped in 285 carved glass panels. More than 50,000 square feet of green walls climb through the building, softening the escalator voids and lower levels. Artworks turn up throughout the mall, on landings, walls and in public spaces, rather than being kept in a single room. On the eighth floor, the Nature Discovery Park is a sustainability garden with a glasshouse. It holds rare plants native to Hong Kong's shores, tropical and native species, an aquarium and butterflies drawn in by the planting. Parts of it are open to the air, so save the outdoor sections for a lull in the rain. Beyond that, there are more than 250 shops, from global fashion and beauty brands to design boutiques, plus restaurants and cafes at every price level. The mall also links to the Rosewood Hong Kong hotel next door. Hours are 10am to 10pm every day, which makes K11 MUSEA a good evening fallback once the museums nearby have closed.

When the rain sets in and everyone has had enough of museums, Cityplaza Ice Palace is the most active thing on this list. The rink sits in the middle of Cityplaza in Tai Koo, the largest shopping mall on Hong Kong Island, and the mall connects directly to Tai Koo MTR Station. You can go from the platform to the ice without seeing the sky. The rink has been refitted with a refrigerant system that produces what it calls Fast Ice, along with upgraded lighting and sound. Getting on the ice is now largely self-service: you buy tickets at a kiosk, use a digital skate rental system that the rink describes as a first for Hong Kong, and store bags in digital lockers. Refreshments can be reached straight from the rink, so you can grab a drink without taking your skates off. Public skating runs in fixed blocks. On most weekdays the day is divided into sessions from 9:30am until 10pm, each about two to two-and-a-half hours long. At weekends, mornings are kept for the skate school, and public sessions start in the afternoon. Tickets for each session go on sale at set times on the day. Prices in the current timetable are HK$95 from Monday to Thursday, HK$105 on Fridays and HK$120 at weekends and on public holidays, and standard admission includes skate hire. The rink publishes a new timetable every two weeks, and some sessions share the ice with lessons, so check it before you set out. The rink also hosts ice hockey matches and figure skating shows, and Cityplaza's shops, restaurants and cinema are right outside when your session ends. For beginners, children and couples, it turns a washed-out afternoon into something to remember.

Horse racing is woven into Hong Kong life, and The Hong Kong Racing Museum tells that story for free. It sits on the second floor of the Happy Valley Stand at Happy Valley Racecourse and covers more than 170 years of racing in the city, from its early days to the modern Hong Kong Jockey Club. The museum is laid out as a series of small galleries built around the horses, the history and the stories of the Jockey Club. Expect cases of artefacts and memorabilia, a wall of trophies and awards, and a milestones display that walks through the big moments in local racing. There is also a reading corner for anyone who wants to dig deeper. It explains how racing helped shape the city's economy and social life, which gives it a wider appeal than its subject might suggest. The best way to see it is on the free guided tour. It runs every day at 2:30pm, lasts about 30 minutes and is offered in Cantonese, Putonghua and English. No booking is needed: gather at the reception counter ten minutes before the start. Places are limited to ten people and handed out on a first-come, first-served basis. Groups of ten or more must apply in advance. The museum opens from noon to 6pm every day, and stays open until 9pm on night and twilight race days. Happy Valley has no MTR station of its own, so the nearest is Causeway Bay, Exit A, followed by a walk through the streets to the racecourse; several bus routes also stop close by. On a race night, the museum makes a dry, calm start to an evening at the track.

ifc mall is the easiest place in Central to wait out a downpour. It sits at the foot of the International Finance Centre towers, directly above Hong Kong Station, the terminus of the Airport Express and the Tung Chung Line. From Exit F or E1 of the station you walk straight into the mall, so it works as a dry base whether you are arriving from the airport or crossing from Kowloon. The mall itself covers about 74,000 square metres over four storeys and holds more than 200 international brands, from mid-priced labels to luxury fashion. Its anchors are the Lane Crawford department store, the PALACE ifc cinema and a c!ty'super supermarket, which is a good place to pick up food gifts to take home. Tall glass-roofed atriums run through the building, with escalators climbing through them, and some of the upper levels look out towards the harbour. Food is the other reason to linger. The dining directory runs from coffee bars that open at 8am to fine-dining restaurants, and several stay open until 10pm, so a long lunch or dinner with a harbour backdrop is easy to arrange. If the rain still has not stopped, the cinema can take care of another couple of hours. Be clear about what this is. There is no art programme or museum here, and nothing to buy a ticket for. It is a well-designed, well-connected mall, and for a visitor based on Hong Kong Island, that makes it a practical rainy-day anchor. Pair it with the Racing Museum or an evening film, and it can fill an afternoon without an umbrella.