Jubilee line
27 stations from Stanmore to Stratford via the West End, South Bank and Docklands, with a Night Tube service along its full length.
About the Jubilee line
The Jubilee line runs between Stanmore in suburban north-west London and Stratford in east London, calling at 27 stations. It is printed silver-grey on the tube map, a colour chosen to mark Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee, after which the line is named. Opened in 1979, it is the newest line on the Underground, though parts of its track date from 1932.
North of Baker Street it runs out through Kilburn, Neasden and Wembley Park, sharing its route with the Metropolitan line between Wembley Park and Finchley Road. In central London it calls at Bond Street, Green Park and Westminster, then crosses to Waterloo and London Bridge before serving Docklands at Canada Water, Canary Wharf and North Greenwich and running alongside the DLR from Canning Town to Stratford.
The extension to east London opened up areas that had been poorly connected to the Underground, and passenger numbers grew sharply: the Jubilee is now the fourth-busiest line, with over 276 million journeys in 2019. Its busiest station in 2024 was Waterloo, with 77.39 million entries and exits, ahead of London Bridge with 57.89 million.
Jubilee line stations
27 stations, 10 of them with a change to another tube line (marked with a navy ring and the colours of the other lines).
Stanmore to Stratford
Main route, 27 stations
History
The oldest part of the line is the branch from Wembley Park to Stanmore, opened by the Metropolitan Railway in 1932. Its success overloaded the Metropolitan’s tracks into Baker Street, and in 1939 the solution was a new Bakerloo line branch from Baker Street through new stations at St John’s Wood and Swiss Cottage, taking over the Stanmore service. These replaced three Metropolitan stations on the parallel route.
After the Second World War, planners worked on new cross-town routes. A route via Fleet Street, the “Fleet line”, was discussed by 1965, and construction began in 1971. The first stage joined the Stanmore branch at Baker Street to a new tunnel running via Bond Street and Green Park to a new terminus at Charing Cross, relieving the Bakerloo’s West End section. In 1975 a London Transport advertising manager suggested renaming it the Jubilee line; the name was adopted after the Queen’s 1977 Silver Jubilee, and the planned battleship grey became a lighter, silver grey. The Prince of Wales officially opened the line on 30 April 1979, with passenger services from 1 May.
Further phases along Fleet Street and towards Lewisham and Thamesmead were approved by Parliament in the 1970s and 1980s, but lack of funds stopped any progress until the late 1990s. Instead, the regeneration of Docklands reshaped the project. The Jubilee Line Extension opened in three stages in 1999, leaving the original line at Green Park and running to Stratford with ten intermediate stations; the Charing Cross platforms closed to passengers but are still used for reversing trains during disruption, and as a film set.
Later changes added capacity. The line closed for three days from 25 December 2005 to add a seventh car to every train, reopening two days early on 28 December. Automatic train operation followed in 2011. The Night Tube, covering the whole line, began on 7 October 2016; suspended in March 2020, it returned to the Jubilee in May 2022.
Trains and service
TfL lists one route pattern, Stanmore to Stratford, and its timetable shows the line’s heaviest flows at the eastern end: 27 trains leave Stratford in the busiest weekday hour, against 18 from Stanmore. On weekdays the first train from Stratford is at 05:16 and the last at 00:11; from Stanmore the weekday service runs from 05:23 to 00:13. On Friday nights trains from both ends run all night, and Saturday’s service runs all night too, with up to 24 trains an hour from Stratford and 19 from Stanmore. Sunday service carries on from the Saturday night, ending with last departures at 23:37 from Stratford and 00:02 from Stanmore.
All 27 stations are served by the Night Tube on Friday and Saturday nights. The Jubilee connects with a long list of lines: the Bakerloo, Northern and Waterloo & City at Waterloo, the Northern at London Bridge, the Piccadilly line and Victoria line at Green Park, the Elizabeth line at Canary Wharf and the cable car at North Greenwich. More times are on our tube times page.
The trains
The line is worked by 1996 Stock, introduced with the Jubilee Line Extension and similar on the outside to the Northern line’s 1995 Stock. The trains originally ran as six cars; a seventh was added to each in December 2005, raising capacity by 17 per cent, and four extra trains brought the fleet to 63. Since 2011 they have run under automatic train operation using the SelTrac S40 moving-block system, which has capacity for 30 trains per hour. The extension stations were the first on the Underground with platform edge doors and were built step-free throughout. In March 2020 the tunnels between Westminster and Canning Town became the first section of the Underground with 4G and 5G coverage. Trains are maintained at Stratford Market depot and also stabled at Neasden.
Frequently asked questions
It was named after Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee in 1977. The colour originally chosen when it was still the Fleet line was battleship grey, a nod to the naval meaning of “fleet”; it became a lighter grey to represent the silver of the Jubilee.
Yes, on Friday and Saturday nights the whole line, all 27 stations from Stanmore to Stratford, is covered by the Night Tube. The overnight service started on 7 October 2016, was suspended in March 2020 and returned to the Jubilee in May 2022. See our Night Tube guide.
The stations built for the 1999 extension beyond Green Park were designed with step-free access throughout, along with wide passageways, many escalators and lifts, and platform edge doors – the first on the Underground. The older stations north of Baker Street were not built for the Jubilee: most were opened by the Metropolitan Railway, and St John’s Wood and Swiss Cottage by the Bakerloo in 1939.
No. The Metropolitan Railway opened the branch from Wembley Park to Stanmore in 1932, and the Bakerloo line ran it from 1939 via new tunnels from Baker Street. It became part of the Jubilee line when that opened in 1979.
When the extension opened in 1999 the line was diverted at Green Park towards Stratford, and Charing Cross lost its Jubilee passenger service. The platforms are kept for reversing trains when the line is disrupted and are popular as a film and television set.