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As dream jobs go, travelling to museums and galleries across the country to hand-pick the best the nation has to offer is definitely up there. And that’s exactly what the judges do at Art Fund Museum of the Year. Each year, after whittling a long list of applications down to just five national finalists, the judges heading off across the country to seek out the institutions going above and beyond when it comes to the UK art scene.
Now, the Art Fund has announced its shortlist for the Museum Of The Year award 2026. This year’s edition of the prize will recognise impressive projects hosted by museums between autumn 2024 and winter 2025. As well as looking at overall achievements, the judges will be keeping their eyes peeled for unexpected, innovative and forward-thinking practices, celebrating institutions which are ‘pushing the boundaries of what a museum is or can achieve’, the Art Fund said.
Excitingly for us Londoners, two of the five shortlisted institutions are in the capital.
The National Gallery
The first Big Smoke finalist is the National Gallery. Founded by Parliament in 1824, the institution had its 200th birthday in 2024, and projects celebrating the occasion have played an important part in its application for this year’s prize. The gallery celebrated its bicentenary by entirely rehanging its collection. It also widened its focus beyond the capital with the launch of its travelling art studio programme, Art Road Trip, a collaboration with 24 local arts organisations to create community-led arts projects across 18 places in the UK.
And the National Gallery isn’t resting on its laurels. The institution recently revealed designs for a brand-new wing, which you can read all about here.
V&A East Storehouse
The second London finalist in this year’s comp is a newbie on the scene. Having opened in May 2025, V&A East Storehouse definitely doesn’t have the same historical significance as the National Gallery, but it’s managed to make a serious impression in just a matter of months, already welcoming more than half a million people. Stacked with more than 250,000 objects and 350,000 books from the V&A’s archives, it offers a peek behind the scenes to show how a working museum goes about cataloguing and caring for artefacts, making it the first public venue of its kind.
This isn’t the V&A’s first Art Fund rodeo. The Young V&A won the grand prize in 2024, while the original Victoria and Albert Museum took all the glory in 2016.
The two London institutions will fight it out against other finalists The Box in Plymouth, Cambridge’s The Fitzwilliam Museum and Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery to be crowned the reigning champ. You can read all about those non-London finalists on Time Out here.
There’s a lot to play for, too, because the winning museum will win a whopping £120,000. The rest of the finalists are guaranteed £20,000 in prize money – £5,000 more than they’ve been given in previous years. Quids in.
Past winners of Art Fund Museum of the Year
The very first Museum of the Year prize was awarded to London’s William Morris Gallery. Here’s a roundup of all the winners since then.
- 2025 – Beamish - The Living Museum of the North, Durham
- 2024 – Young V&A, London
- 2023 – The Burrell Collection, Glasgow
- 2022 – Horniman Museum and Gardens, London
- 2021 – Firstsite, Colchester
- 2020 - Aberdeen Art Gallery; Gairloch Museum; Science Museum; South London Gallery; and Towner Eastbourne.
- 2019 - St Fagans National Museum of History, Cardiff
- 2018 - Tate St Ives
- 2017 - The Hepworth, Wakefield
- 2016 - Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), London
- 2015 - Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester
- 2014 - Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield
- 2013 - William Morris Gallery, London
Did you see that this free London art festival is massively expanding this summer – it’ll take over a whole borough.
Plus: Time Out’s review of London’s spectacular new V&A East Museum.
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