- National museums draw millions of visitors and add over £1 billion a year to the economy
Free entry to museums was introduced in 2001. Earlier this year the government committed to working with the museum and tourism sectors, and local leaders, to explore whether charging overseas visitors could help museums’ finances, as part of the response to Baroness Hodge’s review of Arts Council England published in December 2025.
The government believes that charging overseas visitors could deter domestic visitors and that the impacts and benefits of charging would not be felt equally across the sector and therefore will not introduce charges for overseas visitors.
National museums also add more than £1 billion a year to the economy and bring in visitors from around the world. Seven of the UK’s ten most visited museums are national museums.
In 2025, 7.1 million people visited the Natural History Museum and 6.4 million visited the British Museum.
The £1.5 billion Arts Everywhere Fund is providing £760 million for museums, £600 million of infrastructure funding is supporting national museums and DCMS sponsored cultural organisations to address critical maintenance and works to estates, and enable these institutions to deliver on their commitments to share their collections and expertise nationally, drawing in visitors from around the world.
A further £160 million is being invested in our local and regional museums. The Museum Estates and Development Fund will help museums tackle maintenance backlogs, and the £13.6 million Museum Transformation programme will support organisations to move towards more sustainable business models.
In addition, the government will work with Arts Council and the sector to develop a long-term strategic plan for the future of museums. Further details will be released in due course.
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Editor's Note: "Government funding" is public money raised directly from taxpayers, meaning the cost of providing so-called "free admission" is shared by everyone in the UK, whether they visit the museums or not. The government has no wealth of its own; it cannot give citizens anything it has not first taken from them. When the state uses taxpayer funds to provide services, labeling them "free" is a misnomer, as these institutions are entirely pre-paid by the public.