10 things you need to know about the new London Museum in Smithfield

London Museum will open its new home in Smithfield on 28 November 2026, four years after the collection left its main site at London Wall. The museum has taken over the Victorian General Market, a building designed by Sir Horace Jones in 1883, closed since the 1990s and left to fall into disrepair. The restoration has taken a decade and cost £437m, funded through a partnership between the City of London Corporation and the Mayor of London alongside philanthropic support, with Stanton Williams and Asif Khan leading the design and Julian Harrap working as conservation architect.

Visualisation of London Museum’s Our Time space © Secchi Smith / Asif Khan.

What opens in November is the first of two phases. The General Market will hold the permanent galleries, a restaurant, bar, café and shop. The neighbouring Poultry Market will follow in 2028 with temporary exhibition spaces, a learning centre and a collections store. More than 100,000 people have contributed to the project along the way.

The collection includes around seven million objects, the largest in the world relating to a single urban centre, and the displays will start with prehistoric London and end with the 2012 Olympics. The opening will mark the museum's 50th anniversary year. Here are ten things to know before it opens.

It will open on 28 November and entry will be free

The new permanent galleries will open on Saturday 28 November 2026 and admission will be free. Walk-ups will be welcome, but the museum strongly recommends booking a free ticket to guarantee entry, particularly in the first weeks. Free general admission tickets are currently available for dates up to 31 December 2026.

It is the Museum of London under a new name

The Museum of London closed its London Wall site in December 2022 and has since been known as London Museum, with London Museum Docklands staying open throughout.

The building has been shut for over three decades

The General Market closed in the 1990s and fell into disrepair. The restoration has drawn on more than 70 trades, including heritage coppersmiths, master stonemasons and Welsh blacksmiths working on the decorative ironwork, and has given over 40 apprentices a start since 2023. A rediscovered 800sqm system of vaults beneath the streets and a perimeter of heritage shopfronts have shaped the work, and the building is set to rank among the top 1% worldwide for sustainability, with rainwater powered toilets, geothermal energy and an industry first eco concrete mix.

There will be three connected spaces

Entry will be through Real Time, a covered former street enriched by data capturing the city in the moment. From there comes Our Time in the Linbury Hall, a social space beneath the restored dome with 13 large anchor displays around its perimeter. Below ground, at Roman street level, Past Time will hold the permanent displays, presented both chronologically and thematically for the first time.

The objects range from Roman writing tablets to a chunk of the Whitechapel Fatberg

Confirmed highlights include the Lord Mayor's Coach, Banksy's Piranhas, Emmeline Pankhurst's hunger strike medal and Anna Pavlova's Dying Swan costume. The vest believed to have been worn by Charles I at his execution will be on display for six months only. Roman writing tablets from The Bloomberg Collection will carry the city's earliest surviving voices. The Cheapside Hoard, one of the most significant collections of Elizabethan and Jacobean jewellery, will be shown in The Goldsmiths' Gallery in the fullest display ever assembled.

A visualisation of London Museum’s train window in the Past Time galleries © Secchi Smith Atelier Brückner.

You will be able to watch trains go past

A six metre viewing window in the underground galleries will look onto the Thameslink line, so trains will pass by while people in the museum watch, and passengers on board will be able to see into the galleries. The museum describes it as a world first.

London's protest history and music history will both be there

Suffragette material will be shown alongside more recent objects including a statuette of Lady Phyll, co-founder of UK Black Pride, and placards from the disabled-led group Transport for All. Cultural holdings will include the smashed Fender Precision Bass from the cover of The Clash's London Calling, on loan from Paul Simonon, and tablas belonging to British Bhangra pioneer Kuljit Bhamra.

It will stay open until 11pm on Fridays and Saturdays, with DJs

Late openings will have music from the Sound of London DJ Collective, a group of 12 emerging DJs from across London's boroughs, selected with guest judges and supported by reggae DJ, MC and club promoter Papa Face. The collective was recruited with the chicken shop Morley's and producers Hive Curates, and members will play around one paid set a month across a 12 month programme. Papa Face is also a specialist advisor on a commission about London's sound system culture, one of the 13 installations in Our Time. The DJ nights are listed from 4 December 2026 to 27 March 2027.

The first season will be about food

The museum will invite rotating guest editors to shape its programme around one of four themes, tastes, sounds, plays and wears. The inaugural season, London Tastes, will be co-curated by Ruby Tandoh and Jonathan Nunn, founder of the food publication Vittles, and is sponsored by Sainsbury's. It will include a spotlight exhibition across two display pavilions on the changing appetites of a global food city, with stories from Enfield to Park Royal and Southall to Walworth. London Tastes is listed from 28 November 2026 to 31 August 2027. Elsewhere in the programme there will be a Tuesday tea club, monthly house parties with fabric as nightclub in residence from February 2027, a monthly dinner club from January 2027, and family events co-produced with the theatre company Punchdrunk Enrichment.

The restored General Market dome © London Museum.

There is more to come in 2028

Green & Fortune will run four food and drink places with Robin Gill as food curator. Clerk's House will be an all day dining room, Bartholomew's a bar with cocktails developed with Mr Lyan Studio, and Temperance Cocoa Rooms a café in the former Lockhart's Cocoa Rooms, open around the clock from Thursday to Sunday. The Roost will be a residency space for emerging London food talent. The neighbouring Poultry Market, which will house two temporary exhibition spaces, a learning centre and a collections store, will open in 2028.

Date: Opens 28 November 2026. Location: London Museum, General Market, West Smithfield, London EC1A 9AG.

Free, booking recommended at londonmuseum.org.uk

Instagram: @wearelondonmuseum