Paying a visit to the Louvre is as integral to the Paris tourist itinerary as ogling the Eiffel Tower and enjoying a picnic alongside the Seine, but if you’re travelling from outside the EU, visiting the gargantuan gallery will soon be more expensive.
Plans for a major 10-year redevelopment project at the Louvre, nicknamed the ‘Louvre Nouvelle Renaissance’, were recently announced by French President Emmanuel Macron. The revamp will be paid for in part by charging a higher entry fee for visitors outside of the EU, which is set to kick in from January 1, 2026. The fee is currently €22 (£18.45) and the new price is yet to be confirmed.
So, what else is going on at the Louvre? Well, there’s set to be a new visitor entrance opened by 2031, which should help the museum increase visitor numbers from 8.7 million (the number of visitors in 2024) to 12 million per year.
But that’s not all: we reported in spring last year that there could be plans to move the Mona Lisa to a brand new home, and now it’s been confirmed. The 500-year-old Da Vinci painting is currently on display in Salle des Etats, one of the museum’s largest rooms, but by 2031 Mona will have a room of her own under the Cour Carrée. The room will be accessible independently from the rest of the museum and will also have a separate entrance ticket.
The project is set to cost £675 million overall, covered by the higher entry fee and the license fee for the Louvre Abu Dhabi. Stay tuned for updates.
Did you see that these are the must-visit museums opening in 2025, according to Lonely Planet?
Plus: Here’s everything to see at Paris’s Pompidou Centre before it closes this year.
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