Tokyo is one of the world’s great art hubs – a city that offers a nearly endless variety of amazing exhibitions, free galleries and public art. With that level of abundance, choosing the best museum in the capital is an order about as tall as the Skytree, so we’ll settle for naming the most popular.
Helping us crown the people’s champ is The Art Newspaper’s annual survey of museum visitor numbers around the world. Published on March 31 2026, the 2025 edition of the authoritative study lists the 100 most visited art museums in the world, including 6 institutions in Tokyo and one in Yokohama.
Photo: Courtesy of Tokyo National MuseumTokyo National Museum
To no one’s surprise, Tokyo’s most popular museum in 2025 was the Tokyo National Museum, which ranked 23rd in the world with a cool 2,576,118 visitors – a 6 percent increase from 2024. Devoted to Japanese arts and antiquities from prehistory to the modern era, the country’s oldest and largest museum is an essential stop for visitors to Tokyo and a gift that keeps giving for us locals.
Photo: teamLabteamLab Planets
But the National Museum can’t rest on its laurels if it’s to hold on to the No 1 spot, as teamLab Planets, No 24 on the global list, is already threatening to overtake the Ueno oldie. The digital-art depository in Toyosu welcomed 2,516,719 guests in 2025, a year that saw the museum unveil 20 new works. Among the standout pieces is ‘Catching Collecting Extinct Forest’, a dazzling, rainbow-hued world where long-gone animals roam. The museum even has an outpost of a Kyoto-based Bib Gourmand ramen joint.
Photo: Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum
The next Tokyo institution to make the top 100 was the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum (No 41). Its 1,715,830 visitors in 2025 marked a 14% drop from 2024, but with the museum celebrating its 100th anniversary this year with a packed slate of high-profile exhibitions, it should be able to count on better numbers in 2026. Shows we’re looking forward to at the TMAM over the coming months include ‘Andrew Wyeth: Boundaries or Windows’ and ‘Edo in Focus: Japanese Treasures from the British Museum’.
Photo: Kisa ToyoshimateamLab Borderless | Bubble Universe: Spherical Crystallized Light, Wobbling Light, and Environmental Light – One Stroke
Right behind the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum at 42nd in the world, teamLab Borderless attracted 1,691,075 people to Azabudai Hills in its first full year of operation. The other two Tokyo museums to make the top 100 were the National Museum of Western Art (No 43, 1,648,112 visitors – a 21% jump from 2024 thanks especially to a pair of successful Monet exhibitions) and the National Art Center, Tokyo (No 59, 1,322,716 visitors).
Down south, the Yokohama Museum of Art just squeezed into the top 100 at No 96, tallying up 815,931 visits over the course of 2025 following its grand reopening in February.
Elsewhere, the Louvre once again dominated the competition while taking home the title of world’s most visited museum. A somewhat unbelievable 9,046,000 people checked out the Parisian icon in 2025 – a figure north of 2 million bigger than that of its closest competitor, the Vatican Museums (6,933,822). The National Museum of Korea in Seoul came in third with 6,507,483 visitors, marking a whopping 72% increase from 2024 and reflecting the voracious global appetite for all things Korean.
To browse the full list of the world’s 100 most visited art museums in 2025, see The Art Newspaper’s website (you may have to register your email to read the article).
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