• Prado moves to cut overcrowding, capping tour groups at 20 people and restricting hours.
• New “thematic routes” aim to spread visitors beyond crowded galleries.
• The museum welcomed a record 3.5 million visitors in 2025, straining its capacities.

While museums around the world work tirelessly to boost visitor numbers, the Prado Museum in Madrid is on a mission to reduce footfall. This week, it announced new measures against overcrowding, which it says is pushing world-class museums to their limit.

The newly announced measures include slashing the size of visitor groups from 30 to 20. Access for groups will also be limited to the museum’s off-peak hours between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m.

The Prado estimates that about 1,609 of its daily visitors come as part of a group booking. As well as hoping to reduce these numbers, the museum is also promoting its recently introduced “thematic routes,” which it hopes will encourage museum-goers to venture into less popular galleries. These include “The Female Perspective (I,II, and III)” and “A Botanical Stroll,” which reveals more than 40 botanical species across 26 paintings.

The rules regarding group visits, which do not apply to school groups, are coming into immediate effect. Additionally, the previous 15 person limit in place for temporary exhibitions will remain, although the museum has hinted that this may too be reduced.

“Reducing the maximum number is not only beneficial in general, it is first and foremost an advantage for group members themselves, who will now be offered an experience that brings them closer to the works,” the Prado’s deputy director Marina Chinchilla said in a statement.

A woman looks at paintings of Italian artist Tiziano at the Prado museum. Photo: CHRISTOPHE SIMON/AFP via Getty Images.

These latest measures at the Prado are proof that the museum is putting into practice a new strategy announced at the start of the year. After welcoming a record-breaking 3.5 million visitors last year, the museum’s director Miguel Falomir said he does not want to see “a single visitor more” in future years. This would put an end to a trend of long-term growth, with the Prado seeing an increase of over 816,000 visitors in the past decade.

At a press conference in January, Falomir explained that he is wary of meeting the same fate as other world-class museums. “A museum’s success can collapse it, like the Louvre, with some rooms becoming oversaturated,” he explained. “The important thing is not to collapse.”

The Louvre welcomed a whopping 9 million visitors in 2015, up from 8.7 million the previous year, maintaining its position as the world’s most visited museum. However, the beleaguered Paris institution has been plagued with infrastructural weaknesses that are exacerbated by these huge crowds, according to one letter to the French government by the museum’s former director Laurence des Cars. Leaked to the press in January 2025, the letter claimed that  “visitors have no space to take a break” from the “physical ordeal” of visiting the museum.