For the first time in seven years, ticket prices for entry to the Louvre museum will be raised in January 2024. Current ticket prices to the Paris institution stand at €17 ($18.30) for general admission, with free tickets available for Louvre members (annual Amis du Louvre membership costs €80, or $86), residents of the European Economic Area aged between 18 and 25, certain professionals including teachers working in France and artists affiliated with the Maison des Artistes or International Association of Art, jobseekers, and disabled visitors. Come January, the general admission ticket will be raised by 29 percent, reaching €22 ($23.70). This coincides with Paris hosting the 33rd modern Olympic Games between July 26 and August 11, 2024 and France’s first ever summer Paralympics from August 28 to September 8, 2024.
Other prices are also being raised in the French capital in 2024, including tickets for the metro which are set to nearly double during the Games. In reference to the metro hikes, the president of the regional council of Île-de-France Valerie Pecresse said that “if it’s not the visitors who pay, it’s going to be the tax payer.” Hotel prices for the 2024 summer season in Paris are already three-and-a-half times the usual rates.
Hikes at other museums
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum has also increased general admission from $25 to $30—a hefty 20 per cent price hike.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art started the trend in July 2022, with its first ticket increase—also from $25 to $30—in 11 years.
Adult tickets to the Guggenheim, meanwhile, have been $25 since 2015. With the increase, first reported by the New York Times, students and seniors will now pay $19.
The rising cost of admission at these cultural institutions—as well as the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which has charged $30 since June, and the Art Institute of Chicago, which raised out-of-state admission to an eye-watering $32 in May—comes as museums are continuing to recover from pandemic-induced closures and the resulting fall in visitor numbers and revenue.
