[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-1238669797.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tThe United Kingdom\u2019s Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has accepted several recommendations from a report last year aimed at increasing access to the arts in the country. One of these would require international visitors to pay an entry fee to visit the UK\u2019s national museums, according to a report in the Financial Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n \n\tThe initial report, reviewing the Arts Council England, was published last December and led by Baroness Margaret Hodge, a former member of Parliament. It was then sent for review by the UK government, which has accepted several of the recommendations in the report.<\/p>\n \n\tPer the FT<\/em> article, the implementation of charging international visitors to enter national museums is \u201cconditional on the government first rolling out a universal ID scheme, which would make it easier to differentiate domestic and international visitors.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe entry fees for international visitors, as well as \u201cincentivising philanthropy [and] cultural tax reliefs,\u201d are meant to fund the other recommendations, which include a new fund aimed at supporting aspiring artists, access to arts education to every child, and funding arts programs across the country, so \u201cpeople will be able to experience artistic excellence where they live, realise their creative ambitions and build skills for a career in our high-growth creative industries,\u201d according to a release by the UK government announcing its acceptance of the recommendations. \u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cFor far too long, the benefits of culture have not been equally distributed,\u201d UK culture secretary Lisa Nandy said in a statement. \u201cWe must seize the opportunity we have to build a culture sector that works for the whole country and provides the tonic we need in the face of division.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe policy change would affect museums like Tate, the V&A, the British Museum, and the National Gallery, all of which provide access to their collections for free. (Some of these already charge ticket prices for special exhibitions, especially high-profile ones like Tate Modern\u2019s current retrospective, which is \u00a320 for non-members.)<\/p>\n \n\tSeveral high-profile UK museum leaders have come out against it, with V&A director Tristram Hunt telling the FT<\/em> this week that his museum was not \u201cinstitutionally attracted to\u201d\u00a0charging international visitors, and outgoing Tate director Maria Balshaw telling the paper last week that a tourist tax to England should be imposed instead of charging entry to the UK\u2019s museums.<\/p>\n \n\tA UK governmental report for 2023\u201324 states that international visitors to 15 museums sponsored by the DCMS made up 17.5 million between April 2023 and March 2024, or about 43 percent. The FT <\/em>report suggested that admission could range between \u00a315 and \u00a320, which, if international figures hold steady, would generate between \u00a3262 million and \u00a3350 million, though visitor figures would likely drop once an entry fee is impose. \u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tAccording to the Art Newspaper<\/em>\u2019s annual museum visitor report for 2024, the British Museum was the world\u2019s third-most visited museum, receiving just under 6.5 million people, with Tate Modern coming in at fifth with 4.6 million visitors.<\/p>\n \n\tWhile the British Museum beat the record-number of 6.2 million visitors it received in 2019, several UK museums are still recovering from the pandemic and have yet to meet pre-Covid figures. In teasing its 2025 survey, the Art Newspaper<\/em> reported that the National Gallery saw 4.2 million in 2025, an increase from the 3.2 million of 2024, but still nowhere close to the 6 million it got in 2019.<\/p>\n \n\tIn a statement, UK arts minister Ian Murray said, \u201cWe will stand alongside the Arts Council as they implement these reforms to revolutionise the way we fund the arts in this country and the way we work with creatives and the public to provide the access to culture that our country needs, wants and deserves.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/uk-museums-admission-fees-international-visitors-1234779033\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-1238669797.jpg?w=1024″] The United Kingdom\u2019s Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has accepted several recommendations from a report last year aimed at increasing access to the arts in the country. One of these would require international visitors to pay an entry fee to visit the UK\u2019s national museums, according to a report in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1849332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1849332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1849332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1849332\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1849332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1849332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1849332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}