The Louvre will raise ticket prices for non-European Union (EU) visitors by 45% from 14 January 2026, the Paris museum\u2019s board decided yesterday.<\/p>\n
The move will increase the cost of tickets for visitors from countries including the UK, US and China from \u20ac22 to \u20ac32, which the museum hopes will boost its revenue by around \u20ac17.5m annually.<\/p>\n
Staff unions have denounced the project as an \u201cunprecedented challenge to the universal mission of the museum since its birth in 1793\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Louvre previously increased its ticket prices by 30% in 2024, ahead of the Olympic Games, but has since faced a series of hefty budget cuts, including the loss of 7% of its public subsidies. These subsidies, which in 2015 amounted to half of the Louvre’s budget in 2015, now represent only a quarter of it.<\/p>\n
In 2026 the French culture ministry is set to lose another \u20ac216m from its budget, with funds for museums and cultural heritage hit particularly hard by a loss of \u20ac58m.<\/p>\n
The Louvre is also in search of funds to finance a \u20ac1.1bn upgrade, \u20ac450m of which would be earmarked for urgently needed maintenance and the restoration of basic infrastructure.<\/p>\n
The remaining \u20ac666m would finance the grandiose project for a new entrance to the museum and a subterranean complex around the Mona Lisa. The Louvre has yet to find \u20ac300m in sponsorship for this controversial part of the works, which the state auditing body has criticised as \u201cfinancially unviable\u201d.<\/p>\n
Encouraged by the French culture minister Rachida Dati, four other French national museums and monuments, including the Ch\u00e2teau de Versailles, have also announced new pricing structures for non-EU visitors. The Ch\u00e2teau de Chambord will raise its tickets from \u20ac19 to \u20ac29, while Versailles will charge \u20ac35 during the high season to \u20ac25 in the low season.<\/p>\n
The Louvre will not apply the new tariff to citizens from Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein, which are part of the trade agreement with the EU known as the European Economic Area.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Louvre will raise ticket prices for non-European Union (EU) visitors by 45% from 14 January 2026, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":289508,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,6486,1120,96,935,86007,10345,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-289507","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-design","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-european-union","14":"tag-musee-du-louvre","15":"tag-museums-heritage","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom","18":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289507\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}