Tate museums have experienced a significant drop in attendance, with Tate Modern seeing 25% fewer visitors in 2024 compared to 2019, Tate Britain down 32%, and Tate St Ives down 37%. While domestic visitor numbers have recovered to 95% of pre-Covid levels, international visitors are at only 61%, particularly among European 16-to-24-year-olds, whose numbers fell from 609,000 in 2019-20 to 357,000 in 2023-24. The Art Newspaper's research, combining government data and Tate's internal studies, shows that external socioeconomic factors—including a one-tenth drop in EU visitors to the UK overall—are the primary driver, not curatorial programming as some critics have claimed.
This matters because Tate's financial health depends on footfall for revenue from paid exhibitions, shops, and catering, and the group reported a deficit budget for 2024-25. The findings challenge the narrative that programming is to blame, instead highlighting how post-pandemic shifts in international travel and demographics are reshaping museum attendance. Despite the dip, Tate Modern remains the world's most visited modern and contemporary art museum and ranked fifth among all art museums globally, underscoring that the issue is broader than institutional appeal.