Natural History Museum Leads UK Visits with 7.1 Million in 2025

London's Natural History Museum has overtaken the British Museum to become the United Kingdom's most visited tourist attraction in 2025, drawing a record 7.1 million visitors to its South Kensington site.

The figure marks a 13 percent increase from the 6.3 million visitors in 2024 and represents the highest annual attendance for any museum or gallery in the UK, according to data from the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions. The free-entry museum, open daily from 10 a.m. to 5:50 p.m., features exhibits spanning two million years of natural history, including the suspended skeleton of a 25-meter blue whale named Hope in its central hall. Popular new displays contributed to the surge, such as the "Fixing Our Broken Planet" exhibition on climate change, which opened in April 2025 and attracted more than two million visitors, becoming the second most visited free space after the dinosaur galleries. Another immersive experience, "Our Story with David Attenborough," narrated by the broadcaster and covering the evolution of life on Earth, also drew crowds.

Dr. Doug Gurr, director of the Natural History Museum, described the results as exceptional. "These figures reflect our...