Just over six months after it was announced, the Louvre has indefinitely postponed the competition launched in June 2025 to design an expansion of France’s most well-known art museum. The news was reported in Le Figaro Friday.
The project, called Louvre—Nouvelle Renaissance, was announced by French President Emmanuel Macron in January of last year and aims to ease overcrowding at the museum, which welcomes some 9 million visitors a year. It was expected to be completed by 2031.
The initial plan was to create a new entrance, update aging infrastructure, and—perhaps most controversially—build a new 33,000-square-foot exhibition space for the Mona Lisa. The plan was estimated to cost $778 million.
The Art Newspaper reported in January that the museum’s 2026 budget set aside $116 million for preliminary studies tied to the overhaul and $17.5 million for technical maintenance, including only $2.1 million for safety of the museum’s work.
Last month, 350 Louvre staff members from three different unions staged a walkout in opposition to the redevelopment plan, stating that the museum should prioritize long-delayed technical upgrades and building upkeep, rather than moving the Mona Lisa to a standalone gallery.
Five firms, selected by a 21-person international jury, had already been shortlisted: Amanda Levete Architects, architecturestudio, Dubuisson Architecture, Sou Fujimoto, and STUDIOS Architecture. The news comes less than a week before the jury was scheduled to vote on a winning proposal. The letter announcing the sudden change in plans was signed by Marc Guillaume, president of the jury and prefect of Paris. A new date was not announced.
Gaspard Joly, a partner at architeecturestudio, told Le Figaro that he thinks there wasn’t enough time for the Louvre to complete the necessary architectural and technical analyses for all five proposals.
The postponement caps a rough stretch for the French museum. In January 2025, a memo from Louvre director Laurence des Cars to the French cultural minister leaked, detailing extensive structural damage, water leaks, and overcrowding. Then, in October, thieves stole $102 million in crown jewels in a headline-grabbing heist, followed by pre-Christmas walkout.
