The Louvre in Paris is easily one of the world’s best-known museums, and by a margin of over 2 million visitors a year, it’s the most visited, with just over 9 million visitors in 2025.
But not all the other museums in the top twenty are as well-known, though some are. From The Art Newspaper, the top of the crop are
| 2025 Visitors | Museum | City | % change on 2024 | % change on 2019 |
| 9,046,000 | Musée du Louvre | Paris | 4% | -6% |
| 6,933,822 | Vatican Museums | Vatican City | 2% | 1% |
| 6,507,483 | National Museum of Korea Seoul | Seoul | 72% | 94% |
| 6,440,120 | British Museum | London | -1% | 3% |
| 5,984,091 | Metropolitan Museum of Art † | New York | 4% | 22% |
| 5,087,276 | State Russian Museum | St Petersburg | 41% | 112% |
| 5,048,893 | Museo Nacional de Antropología | Mexico City | 36% | 64% |
| 4,593,216 | Shanghai Museum East † | Shanghai | 8% | Opened 2024 |
| 4,514,266 | Tate Modern | London | -2% | -26% |
| 4,147,544 | National Gallery | London | 29% | -31% |
| 3,846,375 | State Hermitage Museum | St Petersburg | 8% | -22% |
| 3,785,134 | Musée d’Orsay | Paris | 1% | 4% |
| 3,513,402 | Museo Nacional del Prado | Madrid | 2% | 10% |
| 3,477,951 | Wawel Royal Castle | Krakow | 12% | No data |
| 3,332,300 | Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) | London | -5% | -15% |
| 3,075,976 | State Tretyakov Gallery | Moscow | 22% | 8% |
| 2,895,010 | Somerset House | London | -6% | 2% |
| 2,847,587 | National Gallery of Art | Washington | -28% | -30% |
| 2,763,720 | Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) | New York | 4% | 39% |
Some of the museums have shown astonishing growth over the past five years, with the 8th-place Shanghai Museum East drawing over 4.5 million in only its second year. A few museums drew significantly fewer visitors last year than in 2019, but only one, Washington, DC’s National Gallery of Art, had a significant drop last year, down 28%.
The entire list, down to #100, the Cleveland Museum of Art, is on the Art Newspaper website
Image: Shanghai Museum East
