It’s been a busy few years for London’s iconic Victoria & Albert museum, thanks to a whole bunch of major development projects on the go across the city.
First, there was the £13 million revamp of the museum’s childhood-focused Bethnal Green outpost, which reopened as the Young V&A to in June 2023 and was named the Art Fund Museum of the Year the following summer. Then, in spring 2025, came the groundbreaking new V&A East Storehouse, a ‘working museum’ purpose-built to house half a million objects rom the museum’s various archives while offering Londoners a peek behind the scenes to see how a museum actually operates.
And finally, just shy ofa decade after it was first announced as part of the £1.1 billion development of Stratford’s East Bank cultural quarter, the long-awaited V&A East is due to open to the public on Saturday, April 18 2026. The 7,000-square-metre museum will bring together exhibits that speak to both east London’s creative heritage and the voices that are shaping contemporary culture across the globe today.
Early visitors will be able to check out its Why We Make Galleries, a permanent display spread across two of the museum’s five floors and featuring 500 objects from the V&A’s collection, arranged into ten key themes addressing the most pressing issues in contemporary society. And its inaugural temporary exhibition The Music is Black: A British Story also sounds like a banger. Promising to explore how Black British music has shaped culture in Britain and beyond, it features exhibits including Joan Armatrading’s childhood guitar, looks worn by Little Simz and newly acquired photography by Dennis Morris and Jennie Baptiste.
