Annual reviews

A staff member welcoming visitors to the Museum.

The Natural History Museum is the UK's favourite for the second year running.

In the year to April 2023, we welcomed 5,157,405 visitors to the Museum at South Kensington (almost double the previous year) and 134,208 visitors to the Museum at Tring.

Museum staff made great strides towards our strategic goals. Our researchers have made valuable contributions to scientific research and teams have secured funding to safeguard our collections far into the future.

Highlights include:

  • More than a million visitors welcomed home the nation’s favourite dinosaur at our free exhibition, Dippy Returns.
  • Generation Hope, a free week-long programme of talks and workshops, co-created with and for young people, unpacked the science and human impact of the planetary emergency and how to take action
  • Over 150,000 people visited Wildlife Photographer of the Year at South Kensington, with another 726,630 reached by the touring programme. 
  • Our Broken Planet reached over a million visitors, with 76% agreeing their visit made them more likely to take action for the planet.
  • We described over 350 new species, including frogs, beetles and wasps.
  • We digitised over 361,000 specimens, making a total of 5.5 million specimens now available digitally via the Data Portal.
  • 6.5 million+ people read our online magazine, Discover, with 68% of readers outside the UK, helping people globally connect with the science of nature.