A New York museum ticket costs $30. In London, all eight leading museums are free
The full adult price of general admission at each city’s leading museums in October 2026, in dollars
- New York6 museumsThe Met and four more
- London8 museumsBritish Museum and seven more
- Paris7 museumsFree: Petit Palais and Musée d’Art Moderne de ParisLouvre, visitors from outside Europe
- Los Angeles7 museumsFree: Getty Center and three moreLACMA
- Berlin7 museumsAlte Nationalgalerie and Hamburger Bahnhof
The numbers
| City | Museum | Adult ticket, $ |
|---|---|---|
| New York | The Met | $30 |
| New York | MoMA | $30 |
| New York | Whitney Museum | $30 |
| New York | Guggenheim Museum | $30 |
| New York | Frick Collection | $30 |
| New York | New Museum | $28 |
| London | British Museum | $0 |
| London | National Gallery | $0 |
| London | Tate Modern | $0 |
| London | Tate Britain | $0 |
| London | V&A | $0 |
| London | National Portrait Gallery | $0 |
| London | Royal Academy of Arts | $0 |
| London | Serpentine | $0 |
| Paris | Louvre, visitors from outside Europe | $36 |
| Paris | Louvre, residents of Europe | $25 |
| Paris | Musée d’Orsay | $16 |
| Paris | Musée de l’Orangerie | $12 |
| Paris | Fondation Louis Vuitton | $20 |
| Paris | Bourse de Commerce | $17 |
| Paris | Petit Palais | $0 |
| Paris | Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris | $0 |
| Los Angeles | Getty Center | $0 |
| Los Angeles | LACMA | $30 |
| Los Angeles | The Broad | $0 |
| Los Angeles | Hammer Museum | $0 |
| Los Angeles | MOCA | $0 |
| Los Angeles | Lucas Museum | $25 |
| Los Angeles | Norton Simon Museum | $20 |
| Berlin | Neues Museum | $16 |
| Berlin | Alte Nationalgalerie | $18 |
| Berlin | Neue Nationalgalerie | $16 |
| Berlin | Hamburger Bahnhof | $18 |
| Berlin | Gemäldegalerie | $16 |
| Berlin | Altes Museum | $16 |
| Berlin | Berlinische Galerie | $13 |
The price at the museum’s own desk; some charge more online. Residents, students and the young often pay less or nothing. London’s museums charge for their exhibitions alone. The Centre Pompidou and the Pergamonmuseum are closed for works. Sources: the museums’ own ticket pages, read on October 3, 2026 (London’s on October 5); the European Central Bank’s reference rate of October 2 (1 euro = $1.1225).
From the report
Five art cities, compared in charts
New York, London, Paris, Los Angeles and Berlin, measured against each other: how many galleries and how far apart, which night they open, what a museum ticket costs and how many people buy one, the fairs, the auction rooms, and the galleries and artists the cities share.
More from this report23
- Five art cities in numbers, October 2026
- The leading galleries of Los Angeles opened there a generation after New York’s
- Seventeen galleries have a space in both New York and Los Angeles, more than link any other two cities
- No gallery is in all five cities. Seven are in four, and 25 more in two or three
- The four largest galleries keep 14 spaces in New York, and five each in Los Angeles, London and Paris
- Half of London’s galleries stand within 1.2 km of one point. In Los Angeles it takes 7.6 km
- In Manhattan the next gallery is 20 metres away. In Los Angeles, 256
- Chelsea has 71 galleries and Tribeca 64. Outside New York, London’s Mayfair has the most, 52
- New York opens its shows on Thursday, Berlin on Friday, Los Angeles on Saturday
- On one Thursday in September, 85 gallery shows opened in Manhattan
- In New York, 95% of the gallery shows on view opened in September
- A gallery show runs about six weeks. Berlin gives it seven
- Four in five London and New York gallery shows are solo shows. In Berlin, two in three
- Paris’s galleries are showing 23 of the world’s top-selling modern artists this autumn, London’s 20. New York’s are showing 13
- Fifteen artists are in gallery shows in both New York and Paris this autumn
- The Louvre drew 9.0 million visitors in 2025, half as many again as the Met
- Paris and London have seven each of the world’s 100 most visited art museums. Berlin has none
- The museums of Los Angeles and London are still short of their 2019 crowds. Most of Paris’s are ahead
- London’s British Museum was founded in 1753, more than a century before the Met
- New York, Paris and London each hold more than a dozen art fairs a year. Berlin holds three
- Paris’s three largest fairs, all held under one roof, the Grand Palais, each drew more than 70,000 visitors
- The United States sells three times as much art at auction as the United Kingdom, and five times as much as France
- Of the 100 highest auction prices of 2025, 68 were paid in New York, 15 in London and six in Paris. Los Angeles and Berlin had none