A Norwich fortress will compete with the Nationwide Gallery in London for the 2026 version of the Artwork Fund Museum of the Yr, probably the most prestigious UK prize within the sector. Norwich Fort Museum & Artwork Gallery in East England and the 202-year-old establishment situated in Trafalgar Sq. have been shortlisted together with The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, The Field in Plymouth and the V&A East Storehouse in London. The profitable museum, to be introduced 25 June at a ceremony at Cutty Sark in London, will obtain £120,000, whereas the 4 different finalists will obtain £20,000 every.
“Norwich Fort Museum & Artwork Gallery includes a medieval Fort Preserve, and a museum. Following a significant £27.5m redevelopment, the Preserve reopened in August 2025 and is now probably the most accessible fortress within the UK,” says an Artwork Fund assertion. As a part of the Royal Palace Reborn undertaking, the museum has additionally created a brand new Gallery of Medieval Life, developed in partnership with the British Museum. The brand new areas are “full of the forms of furnishings, textiles and painted ornament that would have greeted Henry I when he stayed in Norwich in 1121,” says the museum’s guidebook.
The Nationwide Gallery will get the nod for its wide-ranging bicentenary initiatives which included an £85m undertaking to improve its Sainsbury Wing entrance, an formidable public artwork piece in Trafalgar Sq. devised by the artist Jeremy Deller and a “once-in-a-lifetime” rehang referred to as C C Land: The Marvel of Artwork. The gallery’s newest capital undertaking includes constructing a £350m extension on the positioning of St. Vincent’s Home to accommodate trendy and modern artwork.
One other London powerhouse museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, launched the V&A East Storehouse in Stratford final Could, profitable plaudits for providing a brand new museum expertise based mostly on breaking down “bodily obstacles and eradicating glass circumstances so guests can get nearer than ever earlier than to nationwide collections”. The venue has since drawn over 500,000 guests; its sister establishment, the V&A East Museum, launched 18 April.
In the meantime the Fitzwilliam is “reimagining the position of a historic college museum: not as a impartial guardian of objects, however as an energetic participant in social dialogue, data trade and collective accountability,” says Artwork Fund, which emphasises the revolutionary programming on the Cambridge museum based in 1816. Highlights in 2024-25 included All Over the Place, the US artist Glenn Ligon’s first main solo exhibition within the UK, and Rise Up, which introduced collectively historic objects and modern artwork to discover the lives of abolitionists.
The Field in Plymouth marked its fifth birthday in September final 12 months and has drawn a couple of million guests (a 2025 report printed by the gallery says that it has since boosted the town’s economic system by £244m). “Striving to be ‘nationally identified and regionally liked’, The Field preserves the town’s cultural collections of greater than two million artworks, objects, specimens, and archival supplies,” says Artwork Fund. A Beryl Cook exhibition held on the venue final 12 months was critically acclaimed.
The Artwork Fund Museum of the Yr judges are Tony Butler, the manager director of Derby Museums; the artist Yinka Ilori MBE; the writer Alice Loxton and the broadcaster June Sarpong. Beamish, The Dwelling Museum of the North, an open-air museum in County Durham that brings nineteenth and twentieth century historical past to life by means of “immersive reveals”, received last year’s Art Fund Museum of the Year prize.
The eligibility standards for the prize state that potential galleries “should be based mostly within the UK and be both a public museum, gallery, historic home, library or archive which has areas for the general public to go to and expertise the visible arts or different object-based collections”.
