Attendance to main art museums in Madrid 2019-2021

The most visited art museum in Madrid in 2021 was the Museo Reina Sofía, which clocked up more than 1.6 million visitors in that year. This figure represents an increase of over 30 percent when compared to the number of attendees the art museum registered in 2020. Museo Reina Sofía reported a peak of nearly 4.5 million attendees in 2019, having experienced positive growth in the annual number of visitors since 2014.

Inside the Reina Sofía Museum

The Museo Reina Sofía is renowned worldwide for its collection of 20th-century art. With notable artwork such as Pablo Picasso’s Guernica among its collection, the art museum was able to welcome more than three million visitors annually in the five years prior to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Traditionally, ticketing was a significant source of income for the Museo Reina Sofia. However, the health crisis and ensuing safety restrictions reduced ticket revenues by almost four million euros in 2020.

COVID-19 impact on museums worldwide

To ensure strict adherence to safety restrictions to prevent the spread of COVID-19, many art museums worldwide had to close their doors to the general public in 2020. The impact of the pandemic on leading art museums globally was unprecedented, with major institutions such as the Louvre in Paris experiencing a nearly seven million reduction in attendance rates in 2020. According to a May 2021 report that studied the share of revenue lost by museums worldwide during COVID-19, 12.5 percent of surveyed museums reported losing more than 90 percent of the museum’s annual earnings in 2020.