Museum Night in Amsterdam

It’s known locally as Museumnacht, and this annual event that lights up the first Saturday night in November definitely is aimed mostly at locals, but if you are lucky enough to be in town at the time you’d be a fool to not participate. More than 50 museums (including all the major ones) open their doors for a special evening from 7pm to 2am, and each is the setting of a theme party of some kind, with some of the larger ones being amazingly elaborate.

2026 date: November 7 (it’s always the first Saturday of November)

The Amsterdam museums typically also plan intricate lighting design for the evening, giving each of them something of a surreal feeling compared to their normal stately appearance. The evening kicks off with a large concert, and special after parties fill up several local clubs and hot spots. Each museum sets up some kind of party atmosphere, often with DJs or even live music, and food is available at many of them. Most of the popular museums get incredibly jammed as the night goes on, so if you have a special one in mind it’s wise to go early so you can see everything there before the chaos starts.

Participating museums

There are few minor Amsterdam museums that do not participate in Museum Night, but fortunately all the major ones do. This includes the Rijksmuseum, Van Gogh Museum, Anne Frank House, Stedelijk Museum, Rembrandt House, Amsterdam Museum (formerly the Amsterdam Historical Museum), Wereldmuseum Amsterdam (the old Tropen Museum), Eye Filmmuseum (the Film Museum moved to Amsterdam Noord in 2012), The Old Church, the New Church, and probably every other museum you might have heard of except for the Cannabis Museum, the Sex Museum, and the Erotic Museum.

Tickets for Museum Night in Amsterdam

All the main museums and parties are accessible by purchasing one ticket. Public transport is no longer included, but in 2025 ticket holders got a discount code for a €7.50 GVB day pass. Tickets are sold online through the official Museumnacht Amsterdam website. The number of tickets for the night is limited and they have sold out quickly in recent years, so buy early.

• Tickets: €25 (2025 edition)

Special bonus: Since it’s obviously impossible to make it to more than a handful of the museums on the night itself, it’s nice that the organizers have arranged that each Museum Night ticket is also valid for entry to one of the participating museums at any time for the rest of the year. Since several of the top museums cost €20 or more for entry as it is, this makes these tickets impossible to resist, even if you are just in town for the weekend and you will go to one more museum the following day.

English language information

Much of the communication for the night is in Dutch, but the official site has an English version of the program. The free Amsterdam Weekly newspaper used to print an English-language guide too, but it closed in 2012.

Where to buy tickets

Tickets are sold through the official Museumnacht Amsterdam website, and the participating museums aren’t allowed to sell them, even on the night. The ticket outlets and tourist offices that used to sell them don’t anymore.

The event tends to sell out, so buying your ticket well in advance is wise.

More information

The official Museum Night site is in Dutch, but it has an English version with all the main information.

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