London’s Huge £437m Museum Opens This Year
London Museum will open its new £437 million Smithfield home on 28 November 2026, moving into the former General Market after years of redevelopment. The project will turn one of the city’s historic market buildings into a major museum site, with galleries covering 10,000 years of London’s history and more of its collection on show.
What to Know Before Visiting
- Museum: London Museum
- Location: Smithfield, London EC1A 9PS
- Opening date: 28 November 2026
- First phase: Victorian General Market
- Later phase: Poultry Market, due in 2028
- Entry: free
- Collection: more than seven million objects
- Nearby transport: Farringdon and Thameslink stations
The first phase will include three main areas. Real Time will introduce visitors to live data and present-day London, while Our Time will sit beneath the former market’s domed roof with events, installations, a restaurant and a bookshop. Past Time, the main permanent gallery, will take visitors underground through the city’s history and collections.
Objects due to appear range across London’s public, political and pop-cultural past. The museum has highlighted pieces linked to Banksy, Charles I, Tom Daley and Paul Simonon of The Clash. A restored Shoreditch coffee stall will also return as Syd’s Coffee Stall, while a six-metre window will let visitors watch Thameslink trains pass beside the underground gallery.
The Smithfield location makes the museum easy to combine with Farringdon, St Paul’s, Barbican, Hatton Garden and Clerkenwell. Visitors will also be close to historic market streets, pubs, food spots and Elizabeth line connections. Once the Poultry Market opens in 2028, the site will gain temporary exhibition spaces, a learning centre and collection stores.
The opening marks one of London’s biggest museum moves in years and brings a long-empty Smithfield market building back into public use. It also gives the city a major free attraction outside the usual museum clusters. For visitors, the new site adds a fresh cultural stop to central London, with history, transport links and the market district tied into one visit.
