London Museum in Smithfield will open its doors on 28 November 2026

At its heart, London Museum has been envisioned as a social space for the city, drawing on the distinctive architecture of the market to unite the museum’s collection and London’s communities, to honour the past and present of this major global capital.

Designed by Stanton Williams and Asif Khan, alongside conservation architects Julian Harrap, the museum is located in one of the oldest parts of the capital, the City of London. The opening completes a decade-long restoration of the Victorian General Market, returning the disused historic building to public use for the first time in over three decades. The £437m project has been developed through a unique partnership between the City of London Corporation and Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, alongside support from a range of philanthropic supporters including Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Goldsmiths’ Foundation, The Linbury Trust and The National Lottery Heritage Fund.

In the General Market, the museum unfolds across three interconnected spaces. Visitors will enter via Real Time (on Heritage Fund Street) – a covered former street that acts as the museum’s main entrance – enriched by data capturing London in the moment. From there, they move into Our Time (in the Linbury Hall), a vibrant central hub for events and activities, anchored by 13 large installations – eclectic objects from London in living memory. Below ground, in the museum’s cavernous subterranean galleries, the permanent displays of Past Time offer a compelling overview of London’s history through chronological and thematic displays.

Highlights confirmed for display across the museum include the Whitechapel Fatberg, The Lord Mayor’s Coach, Banksy’s Piranhas artwork, Charles I’s execution vest, Emmeline Pankhurst’s hunger strike medal and Anna Pavlova’s ‘Dying Swan’ dress. There will be objects from the museum’s eminent archaeological archive, including Roman writing tablets from The Bloomberg Collection capturing the city’s earliest surviving voices. The tablets form part of The Bloomberg Collection, a world-renowned trove of more than 14,000 Roman artefacts, the largest archaeological deposition ever gifted to the museum. In The Goldsmiths’ Gallery, the glittering Cheapside Hoard, one of the most significant collections of Elizabethan and Jacobean jewellery, will be shown in the fullest display of the hoard ever assembled.

Sharon Ament, Director, London Museum said: “This has been a long undertaking – not without its challenges but mostly filled with immense joy and hyper-creativity – and now we are counting down the days to welcome our first visitors. At the beginning we asked ourselves how to be the best museum for London, the answer is, to be London itself, in all its grit and glitter. We’ve done it with the very best; designers, historians, curators, builders, architects, artists, poets, writers, creators to name a few, all are shapers of London. And the very best includes over one hundred thousand people who have contributed along the way. I hope our museum is a place where people can come together, feel at home, and find themselves grounded in the lives, treasures, challenges and innovations of this city’s vast history. Above all, I hope we make Londoners proud!”

Main Image: A visualisation of London Museum’s Past Time galleries © Secchi Smith.