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1. Details

Release date: 17 July 2025

Next release: 2025/26

Geographic Coverage: United Kingdom

Responsible statistician: Thomas Evans

This release presents the annual performance indicator data collected by DCMS-sponsored museums and galleries for the financial year 2023/24 at the national level for England. Data for individual museums and galleries are available in the accompanying tables.

The 15 DCMS sponsored museums and galleries are:

• British Museum
• Museum of the Home
• Horniman Museum
• Imperial War Museums
• National Gallery
• National Museums Liverpool
• National Portrait Gallery
• Natural History Museum
• Royal Armouries
• Royal Museums Greenwich
• Science Museum Group
• Sir John Soane鈥檚 Museum
• Tate Gallery Group
• Victoria and Albert Museum^{[footnote 1]}
• The Wallace Collection

The performance indicators used in this publication of DCMS sponsored Museums and Galleries Performance Indicators Statistics 2023/24 are:

Access

• Number of visits to the museum/gallery
• Number of unique website visitors

Audience profile

• Number of visits by children under 16
• Number of overseas visits

Learning and outreach

• Number of facilitated and self-directed visits to the museum/gallery by visitors under 18 in formal education
• Number of instances of visitors under 18 participating in on-site organised activities

Visitor satisfaction

• Percentage of visitors who would recommend a visit

Regional engagement

• Number of UK loan venues

1.1 Self-generated income

• Self-generated income - admissions
• Self-generated income - trading income
• Self-generated income - charitable giving (fundraising/contributed income)

Definitions for a selection of these indicators are available in the glossary.

Data collection methods vary between institutions and performance indicators. DCMS does not prescribe any particular collection method but provides the flexibility for museums and galleries to adopt a cost efficient data collection approach. Additional information on how the data are collected is available in the Performance Indicator Guidance.

When making year on year comparisons, users should note the following:

• 2019/20 data was affected by the closure of museums and galleries from 17 March 2020, as COVID-19 restrictions were introduced.
• 2020/21 data was affected by the continuation and evolution of the coronavirus (COVID-19) rules, which in practice meant museums were regularly closed during this period. If museums were open in this period (e.g. most were open from 4 July to 5 November 2020), they utilised social distancing rules and limited capacity.
• 2021/22 data was affected by the easing of COVID-19 rules during spring and early summer 2021 (all legal restrictions were removed from 19 July 2022), plus the re-introduction of some restrictions in December 2021 until February 2022. Some museums maintained their own rules around ticketed entry times and face coverings.

2. Headline findings

2.1 Access to DCMS sponsored museums and galleries

Between April 2023 and March 2024, there were 40.8^{[footnote 2]}听 million visits to DCMS sponsored museums and galleries^{[footnote 3]}, an increase of 17% from 34.9 million in 2022/23.

Total visitor figures were relatively stable between 2015/16 and 2018/19, peaking at 49.8 million in 2018/19, the last year wholly unaffected by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

Figure 1: Total number of visits to DCMS sponsored museums and galleries, 2002/03 to 2023/24

Key: - - - means break in time series

In 2023/24, visitor numbers to DCMS sponsored museums and galleries outside London made up 13% of the total visits. This is a decrease of 2.3 percentage points compared to 2022/23 and a decrease of 10 percentage points compared to 2018/19, when comparing museums open in both time periods.

Visitor numbers for museums outside of London have recovered at a slower rate since the COVID-19 pandemic than those within London as shown below:

• In 2023/24, there were approximately 37 million visits to DCMS sponsored museums and galleries within London. This is an increase of 25% from 2022/23 but a decrease of 0.3% from 2018/19, when comparing museums open in both time periods.
• In 2023/24, there were approximately 5.5 million visits to DCMS sponsored museums and galleries outside of London, an increase of 3% compared to 2022/23 but an /decrease of 50% when compared to 2018/19. This is when comparing museums open in both time periods.

A list of the DCMS sponsored museums and galleries located outside London can be found in the , page 23.

Number of visits by children

In 2023/24 there were approximately 8.5 million^{[footnote 4]} visits by children (under 16) to DCMS sponsored museums and galleries, accounting for 21% of all visits. This figure is an increase of 23% compared to 2022/23 and an increase of 2% compared to the figures recorded in 2018/19, when comparing museums open in both time periods.

Number of overseas visits

In 2023/24 there were an estimated 17.5 million^{[footnote 4]} visits by overseas visitors to DCMS sponsored museums and galleries. This figure is an increase of 53% compared to 2022/23 but a decrease of 23% compared to the figures recorded in 2018/19, when comparing museums open in both time periods.

In 2023/24 there were an estimated 23.3 million^{[footnote 4]} visits by domestic visitors to DCMS sponsored museums and galleries. This figure is a slight decrease of 1% compared to 2022/23 and a decrease of 8% compared to the figures recorded in 2018/19, when comparing museums open in both time periods.

The data shows that the proportion of overseas visitors has increased to 43% in 2023/24 compared to 33% in 2022/23 but this is a fall compared to the value of 47% recorded in 2018/19, when comparing museums open in both time periods.

Figure 2: Total number of overseas and domestic visits to DCMS sponsored museums and galleries, 2018/19 to 2023/24

Website Visits

In 2023/24, there were a total of 165.1 million unique website visits to DCMS sponsored museum websites, the highest recorded since the start of this data series in 2008/09. This is an increase of 9% from 152.1 million recorded in 2022/23 and 34% above the 123.2 million recorded in 2018/19, when comparing museums open in both time periods being compared.

2.2 Learning and outreach

Number of instances of visitors under 18 participating in on-site organised activities

In 2023/24 there were approximately 1.5 million^{[footnote 5]} visits to DCMS sponsored museums and galleries where visitors under the age of 18 participated in onsite organised activities. This is a decrease of 4% compared to the 2022/23 figure and is a 44% decrease compared to the figures recorded in 2018/19, when comparing museums open in both time periods.

Number of facilitated and self-directed visits to the museum/gallery by visitors under 18 in formal education

In 2023/24, there were approximately 1.7 million^{[footnote 6]} facilitated and self-directed visits by visitors under 18 and in formal education in 2022/23. This is an increase of 45% from 2022/23 but a decrease of 17% from 2018/19, when comparing museums open in both time periods.

2.3 Visitor satisfaction

In 2023/24, the mean proportion of visitors who said they would recommend a visit to each DCMS sponsored museum and gallery was 93.1%. This is similar to (0.1 percentage points lower than) the figure recorded in 2022/23 and 3.2 percentage points below the figure recorded in 2018/19, when comparing museums open in both time periods.

2.4 Regional Engagement

UK loan venues

In 2023/24, DCMS sponsored museums and galleries loaned their items to 1,017 venues in the UK. This is a decrease of 5% compared to the 1,069 loan venues in 2022/23 and a decrease of 20% compared to the 1,279 loan venues in 2018/19, when comparing museums open in both time periods.

Museums and galleries can loan items from their collections to institutions, organisations, exhibition facilities, or individual researchers. 鈥淏y lending their collections, the national museums engage new audiences, impact on a wide range of social outcomes and support the wider museum sector.鈥� [Museums Partnership Report: Sharing Collections 2019/20]

2.5 Self-generated Income

In 2023/24, the total self-generated income for DCMS sponsored museums and galleries amounted to over 拢448 million. This is an inflation adjusted increase of 51% over the figures recorded in 2022/23 and an increase of 32% from 2018/19, when comparing museums open in both time periods.

This consisted of:

• 拢317.1 million (71% of total), from fundraising/contributed income, an inflation adjusted increase of 72% over the figures recorded in 2022/23 and is a 47% increase compared to 2018/19.
• 拢67.4 million from admissions income (15% of total), an increase of 17% from the figures recorded in 2022/23 but is a 3% decrease compared to 2018/19.
• A trading net profit of 拢63.7 million (14% of total), an inflation adjusted increase of 14% over the figures recorded in 2022/23 and is a 17% increase compared to 2018/19.

Please note that parts may not sum to total due to rounding.

The total self-generated income for DCMS sponsored museums and galleries is made up of fundraising, admissions income and trading net profit.

DCMS publishes a separate report on Total income of DCMS-funded cultural organisations. The announcement for this publication will be updated with the publication date once this has been confirmed.

3. Glossary

3.1 Number of instances of visitors under 18 participating in on-site organised activities

Organised activities refer to pre-planned, mediated activities, such as talks, lectures, courses, demonstrations, guided tours etc led by museum staff, volunteers or freelancers employed by the museum. The measure is asking for the number of total instances that children participated as distinct from the number of children participating.

3.2 Facilitated and self-directed visits

A facilitated visit is a group visit to a museum/gallery that is led or heavily supported by a member of staff (including volunteers) or a person hired by the museum e.g. an artist, for at least part of the visit. A facilitated visit is one that has been planned and structured by teachers and museum/gallery staff to support the curriculum, with specific learning outcomes.

A self-directed visit is a group visit facilitated by a person who is not a member of the museum/gallery staff.

3.3 Visitor Satisfaction

The proportion of visitors who would recommend a visit is defined as those who answered 鈥楬ow likely are you to recommend a visit to your friends or family鈥� with 鈥榙efinitely will鈥� or 鈥榩robably will鈥�.

3.4 Loan venue

A loan venue is defined as any approved borrowing institution, organisation, exhibition facility, or individual researcher who has been loaned an item from one of the DCMS-sponsored museums and galleries. Loaning items from permanent collections is not practical for every museum or gallery.

For more detail on museum partnership activities see the museum partnership report.

4. Further Information

Sponsored Museums: Performance Indicators is an Official Statistic and has been produced to the standards set out in the Code of Practice for Official Statistics. Additional information is available .

The data are collected by the museums through sample surveys, with the exception of the information on physical visits and website visits, which are based on actual counts.

For enquiries on this release, please contact evidence@dcms.gov.uk.

For general enquiries contact:

Department for Culture, Media and Sport

100 Parliament Street

London

SW1A 2BQ

Email: enquiries@dcms.gov.uk.