Guggenheim Museum Bilbao: annual attendance 2010-2021

Along with the old town, pintxos, and Europe’s largest indoor market “La Ribera”, the museum Guggenheim is one of Bilbao’s main landmarks. The museum, housed in a building designed by the renowned architect Frank Gehry, was visited by nearly 531 thousand people in 2021 – an increase of 68 percent when compared to the previous year. The popularity of the museum helped it to become one of the leading tourist attractions in Spain based on the number of google reviews in 2021. After six successive years welcoming over one million visitors from all around the world, this Basque museum was severely hit by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in 2020.

Visitors at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

Since opening to the public in October 1997, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao has attracted numerous visitors with its various special exhibitions. In 2021, the museum welcomed more than half a million visitors in total. When looking at the origin of attendees at the museum in 2021, more than half of its museumgoers that year were from Spain. Outside of Spain, French museumgoers constituted the largest share of visitors in that year.

Spanish museum industry

The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is just one of the many renowned Spanish museums. With an estimated 1,732 museums in operation in the country in 2021, Spain was one of the leading countries worldwide ranked by the number of museums. The Spanish museum industry took a big hit during the global health crisis, with the number of museumgoers in the country decreasing by roughly 45 million in 2020.