The Plaza in New York Is Closing for Four Years

The Plaza in New York is closing for at least four years.

The news came on 14 October 2026. For a hotel that opened in 1907 and has barely left the city's postcards since, it's a very long time to go dark.

What's confirmed

• When it closes: January 2027. The hotel stays open until the end of 2026.

  
  

• Why: to restore the landmarked facade.

  
  

• How long: at least four years, so January 2031 at the earliest. No reopening date has been confirmed.

  
  

• What else closes: the Palm Court and the event rooms.

  
  

• The staff: 378 union workers have the right to come back when it reopens.

What nobody has said yet

The building has 282 hotel rooms and 181 private apartments. Fairmont, which runs the hotel, hasn't said whether the residents will have to leave.

There's no firm reopening date either. Four years is the minimum. Anyone who has lived through a big restoration of an old building knows how those numbers tend to move.

Why this building matters

The Plaza stands 18 floors high at Fifth Avenue and Central Park South. Its guest list runs from F. Scott Fitzgerald to the Beatles, and it's also the home of Eloise, the little girl from the children's books, who never existed and whom half of New York can still describe.

It's also a good example of how hotels really work. The name on the building is often not the owner. Fairmont runs the Plaza, and over the years the building has had at least six different owners. This is normal in luxury: the brand brings the staff, the standards and the name, and the owner brings the building.

Most of the time you never notice. Then the owner and the brand disagree, and it shows in the details, like the old carpet nobody replaces or the spa that closes early. Four years without a single room sold shows you how much the building itself is worth here.

My take

Four years is a long time to be away. Guests find new favourites, and some never come back. Hotels live on habit, on the couple who always stay for their anniversary and the family that always does Christmas there. Break that for four years and you've got to win all of it again.

The staff matter just as much. Part of what a grand hotel sells is a doorman who remembers you. The right to return is good news, but four years is a long time to wait for a job, and not everybody will.

Even so, I think it's the right call. A building like this only works if it still looks like the Plaza. Nobody books it for the gym. If the facade goes, the reason to stay there goes with it.

If you always meant to stay there

You have until the end of 2026. I'd expect the last weeks to be popular, though that's my guess and nothing the hotel has said. If there's an afternoon in the Palm Court you've been putting off, this is the moment.

Hotel prices work in ways most guests never see, and that's a story of its own. We've explained it in how private hotel rates work.

Would you wait four years for it?