Top 10 Best Museums in the World 2025

The best museums in the world 2026 are led, as they have been for decades, by the Louvre in Paris — which welcomed around 9 million visitors in 2025, more than any other museum on Earth. Ranking the “best” museum is partly subjective, but visitor numbers offer the clearest objective measure of which institutions capture the world’s imagination, and the latest figures come from The Art Newspaper’s annual global attendance survey. Below is the verified 2026 ranking of the world’s greatest museums by attendance, spanning art, history, and culture across four continents.

There’s good news for culture lovers: global museum attendance is rebounding strongly, with the world’s top 100 art museums surpassing 200 million visits in 2025. One of the biggest stories is the rise of Asia, led by a dramatic surge at Seoul’s National Museum of Korea. A quick note on method — this list ranks by visitor numbers, and figures vary slightly between surveys, but the Louvre’s dominance is beyond dispute. Let’s count down the ten best museums in the world.

Top 10 Best Museums in the World 2026 – At a Glance

Rank	Museum	City / Country	Visitors (2025)	Famous For
1	The Louvre	Paris, France	~9 million	Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo
2	Natural History Museum	London, UK	~7.1 million	Dinosaurs, gems
3	Vatican Museums	Vatican City	~6.9 million	Sistine Chapel
4	National Museum of Korea	Seoul, South Korea	~6.5 million	Korean art & history
5	The British Museum	London, UK	~6.4 million	Rosetta Stone
6	The Metropolitan Museum of Art	New York, USA	~6 million	Temple of Dendur
7	Shanghai Museum East	Shanghai, China	~4.6 million	Chinese art
8	Tate Modern	London, UK	~4.6 million	Modern & contemporary art
9	The National Gallery	London, UK	~3.9 million	European paintings
10	American Museum of Natural History	New York, USA	~3.9 million	Dioramas, planetarium

Visitor Numbers Compared (2025)

1. The Louvre – The Best Museum in the World (Paris, France)

The Louvre is the most visited museum in the world, drawing around 9 million visitors in 2025 — a scale no other institution comes close to matching. The world’s largest art museum, it displays roughly 35,000 works at any time, from Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa to the ancient Greek Venus de Milo and the Winged Victory of Samothrace. Housed in a former royal palace and entered through I. M. Pei’s iconic glass pyramid, the Louvre began as a medieval fortress in the late 12th century. Its immense popularity has brought challenges — overcrowding around the Mona Lisa prompted an €800 million modernisation plan, including a dedicated gallery for the famous painting, with work beginning in 2026. The museum’s scale is staggering: it holds around 380,000 works in total, only a fraction of which are on display at once, and its galleries stretch across several kilometres of corridors. Around 77% of its visitors come from outside France, making it a truly international institution sustained by global tourism rather than local attendance alone.

2. Natural History Museum – (London, UK)

London’s Natural History Museum surged to become one of the most visited museums in the world, welcoming around 7.1 million people in 2025. Famous for its towering dinosaur skeletons, dazzling gem collection, and cutting-edge science exhibitions, the museum tells the story of the planet and life itself. Housed in a magnificent Romanesque building in South Kensington, and free to enter, it is a beloved destination for families and researchers alike, blending Victorian grandeur with world-class modern science.

3. Vatican Museums – (Vatican City)

The Vatican Museums drew around 6.9 million visitors in 2025, coming to see one of the greatest concentrations of art on Earth. The highlight is unquestionably the Sistine Chapel, crowned by Michelangelo’s breathtaking ceiling frescoes, but the collections also include the Raphael Rooms and vast holdings of classical antiquities amassed by the popes over centuries. For many visitors the experience blends sightseeing with pilgrimage, uniting immense religious significance and artistic treasure in a single unforgettable institution. The museums stretch across roughly seven kilometres of galleries, and visitors typically walk the entire length to reach the Sistine Chapel at the end, passing tapestries, maps, and sculptures accumulated over more than five centuries of papal patronage.

4. National Museum of Korea – (Seoul, South Korea)

The breakout star of 2025, the National Museum of Korea in Seoul saw a dramatic surge of around 70% year-on-year to reach roughly 6.5 million visitors — propelling it into the global top five. As the flagship museum of Korean art and history, it showcases the peninsula’s heritage from ancient times to the present. Its meteoric rise reflects both South Korea’s soaring global cultural influence and a broader shift in the museum world’s centre of gravity toward Asia.

5. The British Museum – (London, UK)

The British Museum welcomed around 6.4 million visitors in 2025, drawn to its unrivalled collection charting the story of human civilisation. Home to some 8 million objects, its treasures include the Rosetta Stone, Egyptian mummies, and the contested Parthenon marbles. Admission is free, which helps make it one of London’s most beloved institutions. Founded in 1753, it was the first national public museum in the world, and it remains a cornerstone of global cultural heritage. Its collection can be explored online via the British Museum’s official catalogue.

6. The Metropolitan Museum of Art – (New York, USA)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, known as “the Met,” is the most visited museum in the United States, with around 6 million visitors in 2025 — boosted by the reopening of its revamped Michael C. Rockefeller Wing. Sprawling along Fifth Avenue, it spans 5,000 years of art, from the Egyptian Temple of Dendur to medieval armour, European masterpieces, and American art. Its vast, encyclopaedic collection cements New York’s role as a global cultural capital. Spanning more than two million works across its main Fifth Avenue building and the medieval-focused Cloisters branch, the Met offers everything from Egyptian artefacts to Impressionist masterpieces and contemporary installations, making it one of the few museums in the world that can genuinely claim to cover the entire span of human artistic achievement.

7. Shanghai Museum East – (Shanghai, China)

Shanghai Museum East, which opened in 2024, has rapidly become one of the world’s most visited museums, drawing around 4.6 million visitors in 2025 after a spectacular debut. A vast new branch of the renowned Shanghai Museum, it is dedicated to showcasing Chinese art and civilisation with state-of-the-art galleries and immersive displays. Its instant success is a striking example of China’s massive investment in world-class cultural institutions and Asia’s growing prominence in the global museum landscape.

8. Tate Modern – (London, UK)

Tate Modern, Britain’s national museum of modern and contemporary art, attracted around 4.6 million visitors in 2025. Housed in a striking former power station on the banks of the Thames, its industrial architecture — including the cavernous Turbine Hall — is as celebrated as the daring art within. Home to works by Picasso, Warhol, Rothko, and countless contemporary artists, it has transformed how the public engages with modern art since opening in 2000.

9. The National Gallery – (London, UK)

Overlooking London’s Trafalgar Square, the National Gallery welcomed around 3.9 million visitors in 2025. It houses one of the world’s greatest collections of European paintings, spanning from the 13th to the 19th centuries, with masterpieces by Van Gogh, Leonardo, Turner, and Botticelli. Free to enter, it celebrated its 200th anniversary in recent years and remains one of the most admired art institutions on the planet, drawing visitors from around the globe.

10. American Museum of Natural History – (New York, USA)

Rounding out the top ten, the American Museum of Natural History in New York drew around 3.9 million visitors in 2025. Famous for its lifelike dioramas, its planetarium, and one of the world’s great palaeontology collections, the museum tells the story of the natural world and humanity’s place within it. A New York institution featured in countless films, it continues to inspire wonder in generations of visitors young and old.

The Changing World of Museums in 2026

Two clear trends emerge from the 2026 data. First, the recovery from the pandemic is real but uneven: total attendance at the top 100 museums passed 200 million in 2025, but that’s still below the 230 million peak of 2019, and some Western institutions — like the National Gallery of Art in Washington — remain well down on their pre-pandemic numbers. Second, and most striking, is the rise of Asia. The surge at Seoul’s National Museum of Korea and the instant success of Shanghai Museum East signal a genuine shift, as governments across the region invest heavily in cultural infrastructure. The Louvre still reigns supreme, but the global museum landscape is becoming more diverse and more international than ever before — good news for culture lovers everywhere.

Tips for Visiting the World’s Best Museums

These institutions are extraordinary, but their popularity means a little planning goes a long way. The single most useful tip is timing: visiting on a weekday morning rather than a weekend afternoon can transform the experience, especially at the Louvre, where seeing the Mona Lisa at peak hours means joining a dense crowd. Booking tickets online in advance is now essential at the busiest museums — the Louvre and the Vatican Museums both strongly recommend or require it, and skipping the queue can save hours. For the giant encyclopaedic museums, trying to see everything in one visit is a mistake; the Louvre alone displays some 35,000 works, so choosing a handful of galleries or highlights beforehand makes for a far richer day. It’s also worth remembering that many of the world’s greatest museums — particularly in London — are completely free, so you can visit repeatedly and explore a different wing each time. Finally, check for temporary blockbuster exhibitions, which often drive the biggest attendance spikes and can be the highlight of a trip if booked early.

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