Museums in Austria celebrate record visits - culture is booming again!

Museums in Austria celebrate record visits - culture is booming again!

In 2023, the Austrian federal museums experienced a historic visitor record! The magical limit of seven million was exceeded with a total of 7.771 million guests, which means 5.86 percent compared to the previous record year 2023, as orf.at reported. Particularly noteworthy is the KHM association, which with over 1.9 million visitors had an increase of 15.74 percent and thus referred the Austrian Belvedere gallery to second place, which attracted 1.87 million visitors.

visitor trend and location analyzes

The Austrian National Library was the bright sunbeam among the museums with an impressive growth of over 20 percent. Nevertheless, the Technical Museum and the Natural History Museum found declines, which indicates personnel or operational challenges. With a minus of 35.41 percent, the Mumok suffered the largest decline, which is largely due to renovation work. But not only the overall numbers were delighted by the operators - the proportion of younger visitors was also a record -breaking one: over 30 percent of the guests were under 19, as was published on Friday by the Federal Ministry of Art, Culture, Public Service and Sport (BMKös), such as Kurier.at highlighted.

A differentiated picture of international visitors shows: While the European guest class has increased, the number of overseas visitors remains behind the 2019 values. These developments illustrate the challenges and opportunities in front of which the Bundesmuseums are facing, especially with regard to visitor acquisition from international space.