Two London museums rank among world's most visited

A new list of the world's 20 most popular museums includes two in London, according to Time Out London. The Themed Entertainment Association (TEA) Global Experience Index for 2025 said museums around the world drew "consistently large audiences" last year, with some UK sites seeing significant growth in visitors.

The Natural History Museum ranked seventh in the world, with 7,117,000 visits in 2025. The British Museum came 13th, with 6,440,000 visits. Together, the two London museums welcomed more than 13 million visitors. Time Out notes that many of London's major museums are free to enter.

The top three museums on the list were all in China. Beijing's Palace Museum had 19,000,000 visits, the capital's Summer Palace had 17,381,000, and the Museum of Emperor Qin Shihuang's Mausoleum Site in Xi'an, home to the Terracotta Army, had 10,970,000.

Other museums in the top 20 include the Louvre in Paris, the Palace of Versailles, the Vatican Museums, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

The TEA index said museums worldwide recorded more than 161.4 million visits last year, a 5.4 per cent increase from 2024.