Originally Posted by
Maux
https://en.dpm.org.cn/visit/tickets/
The Palace Museum is limiting the daily number of visitors to 80,000, and recommending both individual visitors and tourist groups book tickets in advance online (booking address: http://gugong.228.com.cn). For detailed information and instruction, please refer to the "ticketing notice". Foreign visitors are required to provide passport numbers during the online booking.
The problem is that you need a chinese credit card to buy tickets. You need to use different websites that allow you to buy tickets by paypal.
While they might recommend booking in advance, I've also never failed to get in on a walkup basis, and I always go after lunch. I didn't bother attempting to complete a purchase on that website, but I'd be shocked if they didn't accept WeChat and Alipay.