Number of museums worldwide by region 2021

According to UNESCO, the current estimated total number of museums worldwide is around 104 thousand. However, such institutions are not evenly distributed globally, with Western Europe and North America recording around 61 percent of museums as of March 2021. Overall, the United States alone accounted for nearly one-third of all organizations, topping the list of the leading countries worldwide ranked by the number of museums.

Number of museums worldwide as of March 2021, by UNESCO regional classification

Characteristic	Number of museums
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Release date

April 2021

More information

Region

Worldwide

Survey time period

2021

Supplementary notes

¹ Please find here the list of countries included in this category (page 59).
² Non-member countries as of 2021.

The source specifies that the estimated number of museums is based on: “the Report on the implementation of the 2015 UNESCO Recommendation on Museums and Collections (figures collected by the OCLC (Online Computer Library Center), based on the Museums of the World directory published by Saur, and figures from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) in Washington, D.C., for American museums). These statistics have been amended from those provided by the 56 Member States for the monitoring of the Recommendation (in 2019), by data provided in the first UNESCO survey of museums and COVID, conducted in April 2020 by 45 UNESCO field offices, and by the present survey of Member States in March 2021”.

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