The Bayeux Tapestry at the British Museum

The Bayeux Tapestry is on display at the British Museum from 10 September 2026 to 11 July 2027 — the first time it has been in Britain in roughly 950 years, and almost certainly the last for a very long time.

It is a paid, ticketed exhibition, unlike the museum's free general admission, and the slots are short. Knowing what you are looking at before you walk in makes a real difference to what you get out of it.

Tickets

Entry is by timed ticket, booked in advance. Demand has been extraordinary and early months sold out quickly, with further releases announced in stages, so check the British Museum's own exhibition page for current availability — we do not sell tickets and have no part in booking them.

What to expect inside

The tapestry is shown in a long glass case running the length of a darkened hall, with a projection and sound design along the far wall. Slots run about forty minutes. It is nearly seventy metres of cloth, so you are walking the whole time rather than standing still, and the crowd moves as one slow line.

Photography is not allowed

You cannot take photos in the exhibition. This matters for us specifically: the camera on the audioguide.london home page identifies a painting from a photo of it, and that will not work here. Open audioguide.london/bayeux-tapestry directly instead, before you go in.

audioguide.london now covers the British Museum’s permanent galleries too, in beta. This walking guide is separate, made for the Bayeux Tapestry exhibition, where photography is not allowed.

How to get more out of the forty minutes

1. Read the scenes before you arrive. Forty minutes is not long enough to read wall text and look at the cloth properly.
2. Save our free walking guide to your phone in advance, so it works with no signal.
3. Bring headphones, and start at the left-hand end — the story runs left to right.
4. Look at the borders, not just the middle. Much of the best material — the comet's ghost ships, the animals, the dead and the looters at Hastings — is above and below the main register.

It is not only the tapestry

The exhibition places the cloth among objects from British collections that set up the world either side of 1066 — charters, coins struck for rival kings, an illustrated Anglo-Saxon manuscript. It is a show about how power changed hands, not a single object in a case.

Common questions

More on the Bayeux Tapestry

• Free Bayeux Tapestry audio guide
• All 58 scenes, with every inscription
• Free audio guide for the rest of the British Museum
• Open the free walking guide