London Museum (formerly the Museum of London) has announced the date it will reopen.
The new-look, new-venue museum in Smithfield will open its doors on 28 November 2026. The museum pulls together several historic buildings into one giant celebration of the city and its history, drawing on over 7 million objects.
Visitors will be able to explore the General market buildings of the 1880s, designed by Horace “Tower Bridge” Jones. The very different Poultry Building of the 1960s (opening in 2028) features one of London’s largest hyperbolic parabola roofs. Out on Farringdon Street, old shop-fronts will be reopened to give a village atmosphere. The highlight space, for many, though, will be the old railway catacombs beneath the venue, where the permanent galleries will be housed.
Announcing the opening, museum Director Sharon Ament said that the new museum should “Be like London. It should be London”. To that end, the museum have an eye on the modern as well as the historic, with an inaugural exhibition and event programme about London’s food scene, curated by ‘guest editors’.
The permanent collection will include highlights such as “The Lord Mayor’s Coach, Banksy’s Piranhas artwork, Charles I’s execution vest, Emmeline Pankhurst’s hunger strike medal, the Whitechapel Fatberg, and Anna Pavlova’s ‘Dying Swan’ dress.” The Cheapside Hoard will also be on display, along with archaeological treasures of the Roman period from beneath the Bloomberg building.
This will be a museum that goes way beyond its exhibits. The ‘Our Time’ space will feature a daily programme of events, pulled together by partners including ‘fabric nightclub, Morley’s chicken shop, Punchdrunk Enrichment and Hive Curates’.
And, yes… the long-promised window direct onto the Thameslink rail tracks will be there!
Paul Williams, of lead architects Stanton Williams summed up the aspiration: “It will trigger imagination, it will trigger curiosity, it will be an unforgettable experience”
Mayor of London Sir Sadiq Khan said the new museum — the largest city-museum anywhere — was “Proof that our city is the cultural capital of the world”.
The late-November opening date is auspicious. The original Museum of London opened its doors in December 1976, so this new chapter comes almost exactly 50 years.
We’ll have much, much more about the museum as the opening date approaches.
London Museum opens 28 November. Entrance to the permanent galleries will be free, as per the previous museum, which closed in 2022. It will also open late on Fridays and Saturdays to bring in a wider audience.
Images © Secchi Smith / London Museum
