The British Museum has announced ticketing details for its forthcoming blockbuster Bayeux Tapestry exhibition (10 September-11 July 2027) with the top price adult ticket costing £33.
At off-peak times, the standard adult price falls to £27. These times are regular weekdays during the school term up until 5:10pm; peak pricing is also in place for the first and last two weeks of the exhibition’s run. Students and disabled visitors will be charged £25 at all times; all slots are time limited at 40 minutes.
Meanwhile “super-off-peak” tickets priced at £25 will also be available for the last timed slot of each weekday, between 15.30 and 16.20, in school term time. Booking opens 1 July for the first tranche of tickets. There will be a maximum of 12 tickets per booking (multiple bookings from the same email address will be cancelled, says the museum website).
Members will need to book a free timed ticket for the exhibition in advance. They will be able to do so online from 12.30 on 16 June before public tickets go on sale. “Every member will be able to book two separate visits during the full run of the display at no additional cost, plus a discount for further visits (more details to be confirmed soon),” adds the museum.
The released ticket prices are generally higher than the costs to visit the British Museum’s usual temporary shows. An adult ticket for its current Hawaiʻi: a kingdom crossing oceans exhibition, without a donation, is £18, while the most expensive ticket, without donation, for its recent Samurai show was £25. The museum’s permanent collection is free to visit.
The Bayeux Tapestry, which depicts the 1066 Norman invasion and Battle of Hastings, will be displayed in the Sainsbury Exhibitions Gallery of the British Museum from September until July 2027, while its current home, the Bayeux Tapestry Museum in Normandy, undergoes renovations. The display will mark the first time the textile, which is 70m and 50cm high, has been in Britain in almost 1,000 years.
‘A medieval woodland’
Meanwhile, an installation of 37 silver birch trees (Betula pendula), inspired by the Bayeux Tapestry, has been unveiled on the museum forecourt. The work, entitled Tapestry of Trees (until 2 June) was created by the garden designer Andy Sturgeon.
“The installation will give visitors the chance to immerse themselves in Sturgeon’s artistic impression of a medieval woodland, created from trees and plants typical of those found in East Sussex, where the Battle of Hastings, the key event of the Tapestry, took place nearly 1,000 years ago,” says a museum statement.
Tapestry of trees acts as a “prelude” to the museum’s new visitor welcome pavilions and gardens which are due to open next year. In an Instagram post in March, following approval of the scheme by Camden council, the museum director Nicholas Cullinan said: “We will remove the temporary white tents and replace them with architecturally designed pavilions and new landscaping drawing inspiration from our collection and a history of horticulture.”
