London’s Natural History Museum has claimed the crown as Britain’s most popular tourist destination, dethroning the British Museum amid accusations the Bloomsbury museum has gone “woke.”
The South Kensington institution welcomed a record-breaking 7.1 million visitors during 2025, marking a 13 per cent rise compared to the previous year.
This figure represents the highest attendance ever recorded by any museum or gallery in the UK, according to the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions.
The British Museum, which had topped the charts for the preceding two years, slipped to second position with 6.4 million visits.
Director of the Natural History Museum Dr Doug Gurr expressed delight at the achievement, stating the figures demonstrate “the enormous public appetite to engage with the wonders of the natural world”.
The British Museum’s fall from the top spot comes amid a turbulent period for the institution.
Staff members recently staged what has been described as a “mutiny” over plans for a fundraising ball themed around Union Jack and French tricolore colours.
The event, proposed by museum director Nicholas Cullinan to mark the Bayeux Tapestry loan from Normandy, drew objections from both curatorial and administrative departments.
The Natural History Museum has topped the table for the first time
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The British Museum has come under fire in recent months
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GETTY“It has been brought up to the director as well as other senior members of staff that this is in poor taste due to the current far-right flag campaigns around the country,” a museum source told The Guardian.
Professor Nick Groom, author of The Union Jack: The Story of the British Flag, urged the institution to press ahead, warning that abandoning the plans would make it “complicit in the politicisation of the union jack”.
The museum has also faced scrutiny over its efforts to send treasures abroad as part of what has been termed a decolonisation initiative.
Eighty prized artefacts have been dispatched to Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, representing the largest loan of ancient material ever sent to India.
The new figures for visitor attractions has been released
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Dr Cullinan described the scheme as a fresh template for cultural diplomacy, telling The Telegraph: “You don’t have to embarrass your own country to do something positive with another country.”
Sabyasachi Mukherjee, director general of the Mumbai museum, said the exhibition would help to “correct colonial misinterpretation” of India’s past.
“Through this exhibition there is decolonisation… An attempt is made to decolonise the narrative,” Mr Mukherjee stated.
The British Museum is now pursuing similar partnerships with institutions in China, Nigeria and Ghana.
The Natural History Museum has been praised for its recent exhibits
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Meanwhile, the Natural History Museum’s surge in popularity has been driven by acclaimed new offerings.
The Fixing Our Broken Planet exhibition, which opened in April 2025 and explores solutions to the climate crisis, has drawn more than two million visitors since its launch.
This climate-focused gallery has become the free museum’s second most frequented space, trailing only its renowned dinosaur exhibits.
Bernard Donoghue, Alva director, attributed the institution’s success partly to its renovated outdoor spaces, describing it as “an astonishingly fun, joyful day out”.
“Even in a cost of living crisis, it’s clear that the last thing that people are prepared to sacrifice are day visits and spending special time with special people in special places,” he said.
The Tate Modern came in fifth in the table
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The museum’s director has targeted opening one new gallery annually, aiming to boost capacity by 20 per cent by 2031.
Across the UK, tourist attractions collectively recorded 165.2 million visits during 2025, representing a two per cent increase from the previous year’s 161.4 million.
However, these figures remain seven per cent below the levels seen in 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic struck.
Alva’s director blamed the shortfall partly on the failure of Chinese visitor numbers to recover, with only 80 per cent of pre-pandemic levels returning.
He attributed this decline to the Conservative government’s 2020 decision to abolish tax-free shopping for overseas visitors, which he branded “an act of economic self-harm”.
The National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh was the most popular attaction in Scotland
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Mr Donoghue noted: “Italy and Spain are at 120-125 per cent of the visitors that they had from China in 2019.”
Windsor Great Park secured third place with five million visits, whilst Edinburgh’s National Museum of Scotland topped the Scottish rankings with 2.3 million.