The Louvre maintained its position as the world's most-visited museum in 2025, drawing approximately 9 million visitors according to the Art Newspaper's annual ranking. The Vatican Museums and the National Museum of Korea in Seoul followed closely, rounding out a top ten list that includes major institutions in London, New York, and Shanghai. Overall, about 200 million people visited the top 100 museums globally, a figure still below the pre-pandemic 2019 peak of 230 million.
While established Western museums largely held steady or saw slow recoveries, the most dramatic growth occurred in Asia and the Middle East. The National Museum of Korea's attendance surged over 70% to 6.5 million, and Shanghai Museum East drew 4.6 million, driven by a blockbuster Egyptian exhibition. New institutions like Egypt's Grand Egyptian Museum, which opened in late 2025, immediately demonstrated massive drawing power. This shift highlights a rebalancing of cultural tourism and museum influence towards new hubs, even as factors like geopolitical conflict, as seen in Israel's attendance declines, and institutional philosophies on crowding, like the Prado's satisfaction with controlled growth, shape the global landscape.