Strasbourg, 02.12.2025 – The 2026 Council of Europe Museum Prize has been awarded to the Young Victoria & Albert Museum, United Kingdom. The museum was selected by the Culture Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), meeting today in Paris.
The Young V&A Museum is a branch of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the United Kingdom’s national museum of applied arts. After renovation, it was reopened in July 2023 in East London featuring three galleries tailored for different age groups: Imagine, Play and Design. Co-curated and co-created with children and young people, it promotes creativity for the next generation, empowers educators and offers a child-centered and inclusive museum practice. Its programmes connect design and play with real-world themes such as sustainability, belonging and empathy, striking a balance between playfulness, educational rigour and inclusivity. It also actively involves children with special educational needs and disabilities.
According to the committee representative for the Museum Prize, Luz Martínez Seijo (Spain, SOC): “The Young V&A Museum is a clearly outstanding museum in terms of its mission to engage visitors with the themes of human rights, equality, participation and cultural democracy. It conveys a strong message of empowerment of young generations, particularly those from deprived areas who may have limited contact with mainstream and institutional cultural offerings, with experiences that can help them embrace the future with confidence and participate fully in democratic societies.”
The Prize will be awarded at a special ceremony in Strasbourg during the April plenary session of PACE (20-24 April 2026).
The Council of Europe Museum Prize has been awarded annually since 1977 to a museum judged to have made a significant contribution to the understanding of European cultural heritage, the promotion of respect for human rights and democracy, bridging cultures, overcoming social and political borders, broadening visitors’ knowledge and understanding of contemporary societal issues and exploring ideas of democratic citizenship.
The prize forms part of the European Museum of the Year Awards (EMYA). Recent winners of the prize include Euskararen Etxea, the House of Basque Language, in Bilbao, Spain (2025); the Sybir Memorial Museum in Bialystok, Poland (2024); the Workers Museum in Copenhagen, Denmark (2023); Nano Nagle Place in Cork, Ireland (2022); and the Gulag History Museum in Moscow, Russian Federation (2021).
