Things to Do at Delhi Airport

Most guides to Delhi airport are really guides to Terminal 3. That is fine if you are flying international, and useless if your boarding pass says T1 and you are sitting in front of a Nescafe counter wondering where everyone found the spa.

So let us start where it actually matters.

First, work out which terminal you are in

Indira Gandhi International (DEL) runs three passenger terminals, and in 2026 all three are open. That last part trips people up, because T2 shut for a refurbishment in April 2025 and a lot of advice on the internet was written during those five months. It reopened in October 2025. If a guide tells you T2 is closed, it was written last year.

The rough split:

• Terminal 3 - every international flight, all of Air India, and a chunk of IndiGo domestic. The big one.
• Terminal 2 - domestic only. Freshly renovated, and by some distance the calmest of the three.
• Terminal 1 - domestic low-cost. IndiGo, SpiceJet, Akasa.

Airlines get moved between T1 and T2 more often than you would like, so check the terminal on your boarding pass on the day, not on the ticket you booked in March. If you have a connection, check both legs. A DEL itinerary that quietly changes terminal is the single most common way people miss flights here.

Terminal 3: the one everything is written about

T3 is where the airport shows off. It is also enormous, so budget walking time.

Eat. The good stuff is Indian, not the chains. Moti Mahal Deluxe does the butter chicken it more or less invented. Dilli Streat and Dhaba cover chaat and north Indian comfort food, Carnatic Cafe handles dosas, Biryani Blues does what the name says, and Punjabi Kulfi is worth the detour on the way to your gate. If you want a drink before a long flight, The Irish House and the Heineken Bar are both there, and Caffe Tonino is the sit-down Italian. Chai Point for a ten rupee-shaped decision that improves any layover.

Shop. T3 carries the luxury: Coach, Bally, Michael Kors, Montblanc, Rado, Polo Ralph Lauren, Porsche Design, Birkenstock, Lacoste. More interesting are the Indian labels you cannot buy at home - Amrapali for silver, Ahujasons for pashmina, Forest Essentials and Biotique for ayurvedic skincare, Bikanervala for sweets that survive a long-haul.

Duty free is T3 only. Roughly a dozen GMR Delhi Duty Free stores sit in international departures and arrivals, open around the clock. You need an international boarding pass and your passport, and there is genuinely useful arrivals duty free on the way in, which is rare. You can pre-order at delhidutyfree.co.in and collect in store, which is the move if you want a specific bottle rather than whatever is left on the shelf at 2am.

Look at the art. This is the free thing nobody does. The 12-foot brass and copper Surya Namaskar sequence by Nikhil Bhandari, the wall of nine giant hasta mudra hands emerging from a field of copper discs, Satish Gupta's bronze Surya in international departures, the mother elephant and calf near domestic departures. Twenty minutes of walking, no rupees, better than another lap of the duty free.

You can browse the full T3 shop directory and restaurant list with terminal locations before you fly.

Terminal 2: quietly the best one to be stuck in

Nobody writes about T2, which is precisely why it is pleasant. Post-refurbishment it has a proper spread of food - Chaayos, Costa, Subway, Pizza Hut Express, a Dosa Factory counter, Gujarati Svado, and a Taste of India food court - plus two actual bars in Hello Goodbye Bar and Network Bar.

Retail is thin. Ethos for watches, Samsonite if your bag has died. That is roughly it, so do not plan a shopping trip around T2.

The trade is space. On an evening when T3 is a scrum and T1 is a queue, T2 has seats.

Terminal 1: get through it efficiently

T1 is a domestic low-cost terminal and it behaves like one. Food is functional: KFC, Cafeccino, Nescafe, Flying Bites. Do not arrive hungry expecting a discovery.

Shopping, oddly, is more practical than T3's. Croma if you forgot a charger, Apollo and Guardian pharmacies, Shoppers Stop, Miniso, Hamleys for the nephew you forgot, Relay for reading material, Haldiram's and Mishthaan for edible gifts that clear domestic security. Biba and Nappa Dori are the ones actually worth a browse.

T1 also has fewer lounges than T3, so if you are travelling on a credit card lounge benefit, check it is honoured at your terminal before you count on it. Our Delhi lounge listing is the fastest way to check.

Moving between terminals is a road trip

This is the part that catches people out. T1 and T3 are about 7 km apart. There is no airside walkway between them and no train. Changing terminals at Delhi means leaving one building and driving to another.

• Free shuttle. DIAL runs a free inter-terminal coach between T1, T2 and T3, roughly every 20 minutes, around the clock. Show a same-day onward boarding pass or ticket at the kiosk to get your coupon. Door to door, allow 20 to 30 minutes including the wait.
• Metro. T3 sits on the Airport Express line (New Delhi station in about 20 minutes for around ₹60). T1 is on the Magenta line at Terminal 1-IGI Airport station. They are different lines, so metro is not a sensible terminal-to-terminal hop.
• Taxi. Fine, fast, and unnecessary given the shuttle is free.

Give yourself 90 minutes minimum for a domestic-to-international change or the reverse. That is not just the drive. You are collecting bags, exiting, riding, re-checking, clearing security again, and at T3 clearing immigration too. Self-transfer itineraries booked as two separate tickets are where this goes wrong.

Can you actually leave the airport?

Depends on your passport and your ticket, and the answer surprises people.

Staying airside at T3, international to international, under 24 hours, one PNR, bags checked through: most nationalities need no Indian visa at all. You never clear immigration, so you never formally enter India.

Leaving the terminal for any reason: you need a real Indian visa. Tourist e-Visa, transit visa, whatever applies to your nationality. There is no walk-out-and-look-around allowance.

The trap is the middle case. If your connection requires a terminal change, you are leaving the secure area and clearing immigration to do it, which means you need a visa even though you never intended to see Delhi. Check your two flights are on the same terminal before you assume you are in transit.

Indian passport holders can obviously walk out whenever they like.

What to do, by how long you have got

Under 3 hours. Do not get clever. Clear security, find your gate, then eat. At T3 that means Moti Mahal or Dilli Streat. Anything else is how you become a name on a screen.

3 to 5 hours. Lounge or spa. Encalm runs the T3 operation - lounges, spa, salon - and a walk-in at Encalm Privé in international departures runs roughly ₹2,800 to ₹3,200, with a shower included. Priority Pass and DragonPass are accepted, subject to your card programme. A shower and a real meal before a long-haul is the highest-value thing you can buy at this airport.

5 to 8 hours. Still stay inside, but stretch out. Sleep pods in T3 international departures run roughly ₹500 to ₹1,800 an hour depending on the pod and the time - Delhi's are the priciest in India, and worth booking ahead in peak winter months. Encalm's transit hotel is airside, which is the key detail: a proper room and a bed without clearing immigration.

8 hours or more, with a visa. Now Delhi is on the table. Aerocity is the low-risk option, a few minutes from T3 with hotels, restaurants and day rooms from around ₹4,000. For actual sightseeing, Qutub Minar is the closest of the big sites, Humayun's Tomb and India Gate are doable, and Old Delhi is not - the traffic will eat your buffer. Get back three hours before departure. Delhi traffic does not care about your itinerary.

Overnight. Book Aerocity if you can leave, the airside transit hotel if you cannot. Sleeping on T3's benches is legal and survivable, not restful.

The small things that make a difference

• Delhi's free wifi wants an OTP on an Indian number. Sort your roaming or an eSIM before you land, or you are borrowing a stranger's phone.
• The 24-hour cloakroom takes bags from about ₹100 to ₹200 for the first couple of hours, a few hundred rupees a day. Useful if you are heading into the city.
• Digi Yatra face-boarding works at T1 and T3 and genuinely saves queueing. Enrol before your travel day, not in the queue.
• Security queues at DEL swing hard by hour. Check current wait times rather than guessing.
• Arrivals duty free exists at T3. If you are landing in India, buy on the way in.