Revealed: London’s busiest tube stations

There’s nothing quite like a city-wide tube strike to remind us how much we rely on the good ol’ London Underground. Walk outs on Tuesday June 2 and Thursday June 4 have made whizzing around the capital a little tricky to say the least, and platforms in what are usually some of the busiest stations have been eerily quiet on the recent days of industrial action.

Luckily, the early June walk outs are the last on the books (at least for now), so the normal crowds of commuters will be back jostling for a prime position behind the yellow line from Friday onwards.

As we prepare ourselves to descend the escalators once more, you might have been wondering which tube stops are officially the busiest. Well, Transport for London recently revealed the 2025 figures for tube station passenger numbers, showing an annualised average of which stops typically saw the most entries and exits per week. 

The crown went to Kings Cross St. Pancras, which saw nearly 73 million passengers swipe in or out of the Underground network over the 12-month period. King’s Cross is no stranger to the top spot, which comes as no surprise – it serves six tube lines (the Circle, Piccadilly, Victoria, Northern, Metropolitan and Hammersmith and City lines) and has plenty of connections to rail services.

Second place went to Waterloo, with almost 70 million ins and outs throughout the year, followed by Tottenham Court Road in third place, with 59,937,561 annual swipes. That’s a hell of a lot of Oyster Card top ups. 

As for the least used station, that accolade went to Roding Valley on the Central line in Essex, which saw just 201,559 passengers swipe in and out throughout the year.

A recent Freedom of Information Act (FOI) request also named Bond Street (42.4m) as the busiest Elizabeth line stop, Canary Wharf (6.1m) as the top DLR station and Shepherd's Bush (6.7m) as London Overground’s most popular stop. However, the results of that study were based on actual entry and exit taps, rather than an annualised average.

Here are the top 10 busiest tube stations in London, according to an annualised average of TfL data from 2025

1. King's Cross St. Pancras
   
2. Waterloo
   
3. Tottenham Court Road
   
4. Victoria
   
5. Liverpool Street
   
6. Paddington
   
7. London Bridge
   
8. Stratford
   
9. Oxford Circus
   
10. Bond Street

Did you see that one of London’s best weekend trips just got a brand new train service, with tickets from just £30?

Plus: 7 London bus routes will be hit by strikes in June 2026. Here's the full list of routes and strike dates.

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