{"id":808790,"date":"2026-10-20T16:54:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-20T16:54:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/808790\/"},"modified":"2026-10-20T16:54:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-20T16:54:09","slug":"vast-beatles-museum-hailed-as-extraordinary-by-paul-mccartney-to-open-in-liverpool-in-2028-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/808790\/","title":{"rendered":"Vast Beatles museum, hailed as \u2018extraordinary\u2019 by Paul McCartney, to open in Liverpool in 2028 | Music"},"content":{"rendered":"

Liverpool is to unveil a new 100,000 sq ft visitor attraction about the Beatles, in plans hailed as \u201cextraordinary\u201d by Paul McCartney<\/a>, and by Andy Burnham as having \u201cthe kind of ambition I want to see more of across Britain\u201d.<\/p>\n

Opening in 2028, the project is a huge upgrade for the Beatles Story, a museum which opened in Liverpool\u2019s Royal Albert Dock in 1990. Ownership will now pass to the Beatles company Apple Corps, making the Beatles Story the band\u2019s first official fan experience in their home city.<\/p>\n

It will also move across the city to the former shopping centre St John\u2019s Market, close to Liverpool\u2019s Lime Street railway station, which has lain unused since closing in 2024. The new site will allow the museum to become four times bigger than its current home.<\/p>\n

Apple Corps has also announced it will take over and renovate Liverpool\u2019s second-tallest building: St Johns Beacon, a 450ft tower that has also remained unused since 2024, when its viewing gallery closed and its radio station tenants vacated. Neighbouring the redeveloped museum, the tower will become a separate attraction themed around the Beatles\u2019 whimsical and psychedelic animated film Yellow Submarine.<\/p>\n

St Johns Beacon pictured earlier this year. Photograph: Chris Chambers\/Alamy<\/p>\n

The new iteration of the Beatles Story is being billed as a \u201cmulti-hour experience\u201d which will recreate settings from the group\u2019s history, from their childhood homes in Liverpool to the city\u2019s Cavern venue and the nightclubs where they cut their teeth in Hamburg, and on to Abbey Road, New York\u2019s Shea Stadium \u2013 where Beatlemania provoked such fevered screaming that the band couldn\u2019t hear themselves play \u2013 and the building on London\u2019s Savile Row where they played their final rooftop concert in 1969.<\/p>\n

McCartney said: \u201cI find it incredible and humbling that people are still interested in our story and it\u2019s very exciting to me that the Beatles Story and the Beacon are being transformed in such an exciting way in the heart of Liverpool city. I love Liverpool. It\u2019s part of who I am, it\u2019s part of who the Beatles are. If you\u2019d told us this was going to happen when we were hanging out and getting started, we\u2019d never have believed it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ringo Starr also celebrated the plans, saying: \u201cIt is great to be part of this \u2013 deep down I am still a scouser.<\/p>\n

\u201cLiverpool was, and still is, a music city. And now we are expanding the Beatles Story \u2026 how far out. The beat goes on.\u201d<\/p>\n

A new charity, the Apple Corps Liverpool Trust, has also been founded. It will receive a portion of every ticket sold, and use that revenue to fund initiatives for local musicians.<\/p>\n

Andy Burnham praised the Liverpool plans as having \u201cthe kind of ambition I want to see more of across Britain: backing the things our great cities do best and turning that global reputation into jobs, opportunity and growth\u201d. He hailed the charitable arm as helping \u201cthe next generation of young artists, wherever they grow up, to believe there is a route from their bedroom, rehearsal room or local venue to the very top of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

St John\u2019s shopping centre pictured in 2019, part of which will house the new Beatles Story museum. Photograph: Greg Balfour Evans\/Alamy<\/p>\n

Liverpool\u2019s mayor Steve Rotheram said: \u201cPeople already travel halfway around the globe to visit the birthplace of four lads that shook the earth. These plans take that extraordinary pull to another level \u2013 creating a world-class destination that will give millions more fans a reason to make the pilgrimage to their spiritual home and experience the city, its music and its culture for themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

The project is being helmed by Apple Corps in tandem with Liverpool city council and Liverpool City Region Combined Authority, with UK government support. Financial details of the project and its partnerships have not been disclosed.<\/p>\n

Apple Corps\u2019 chief executive Tom Greene compared the plans with Elvis Presley\u2019s Graceland in Memphis or Dolly Parton\u2019s Dollywood in Tennessee: \u201cA world-class destination for fans to visit in the centre of the city where the story started.\u201d<\/p>\n

Greene is already overseeing the development of another official Beatles attraction: a renovation of 3 Savile Row where that final rooftop concert took place. The seven-floor museum, due to open in 2027, will allow visitors to access the rooftop and will also recreate the building\u2019s in-house studio where they recorded the Let It Be album, alongside showcases of Apple Corps\u2019 archive and temporary exhibitions.<\/p>\n

The plans come amid sustained and varied efforts to carry the Beatles\u2019 legacy forward, not least with an ambitious four-film biopic project helmed by director Sam Mendes<\/a>, telling the stories of each band member. Currently in production, those films will also arrive in 2028, and sets and props will be reused for the recreated environments in the new iteration of the Beatles Story.<\/p>\n

The band\u2019s Hamburg era is being separately told in Hamburg Days, a forthcoming BBC drama scripted by Succession writer Jamie Carragher, and a reissue programme of the Beatles\u2019 catalogue continues: an expanded version of 1965\u2019s Rubber Soul reached No 2 in the UK charts earlier this month.<\/p>\n

The current iteration of The Beatles Story, in Liverpool\u2019s Albert Dock. Photograph: David A Eastley\/Alamy<\/p>\n

The Beatles are a big tourism draw in Liverpool, with a 2016 study suggesting the band added \u00a382m to the local economy each year.<\/p>\n

The current iteration of the Beatles Story has helped to drive that success, with exhibits such as George Harrison\u2019s first guitar and John Lennon\u2019s glasses. The museum has won VisitEngland awards for excellence in each of the last two years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Liverpool is to unveil a new 100,000 sq ft visitor attraction about the Beatles, in plans hailed as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":808791,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,128,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-808790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808790","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=808790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808790\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/808791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=808790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=808790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=808790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}