The U.K.’s Labour government is considering charging international visitors entrance fees at national museums, potentially overturning a 25-year-old “free-for-all” policy.

In a bid to “support the long-term financial resilience of these organizations,” culture secretary Lisa Nandy said that ministers “will work with the museum sector to explore the potential opportunities” of charging entrance fees to international visitors. This comes in response to an earlier independent review of Arts Council England conducted by former Labour MP Margaret Hodge, who recommended a levy on foreign visitors. An update is expected before the end of this year.

The debate over entrance fees at U.K. national museums has been ongoing. In 2024, Mark Jones, the former interim director of the British Museum, proposed a £20 ($26) entrance fee for overseas visitors, referencing ticket prices of the Louvre in France and the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

But the proposal has not been welcomed by many industry professionals. While museums in the U.K. have been facing a dire public funding situation and exploring new income avenues to sustain their operation, museum directors including Tristram Hunt of the Victoria and Albert Museum, and other officials oppose the idea, claiming that not only will it betray the fundamental principle of the free-entry policy, it may deter visitors from going to museums at all, and raises questions about how the rule could be enforced.

Currently, national collections housed in national museums in the U.K. are free for all visitors, a landmark policy introduced by the former Labour government in 2001 in a bid to broaden access and boost visitor numbers. Visitors will have to pay to enter most special temporary exhibitions. Between 2023 and 2024, 43 percent of visitors at British museums and galleries came from overseas.

Alison Cole, director of the U.K.-based think tank Cultural Policy Unit, said that the country should be celebrating the 25th anniversary of the “overwhelming success” of the landmark policy “opening up culture for all… rather than gradually eroding it.”

“We see [national museums] as pillars of education and inspiration. We don’t just see them as visitor attractions,” Cole said in a phone call. “There should be an overall policy looking at free museums, hotel levy funding; government and local authorities should work together to support a transparent structure that isn’t subject to volatility.”

Cole, who co-authored two reports on the topic last year, argued that allocating proceeds from a hotel levy applied to overnight visitors to help fund civic infrastructure across the country, including all museums and galleries, is a “really good” alternative—an approach also favored by Hunt. A report in January forecasts that such a tourist tax, which has been rolled out in some parts of the U.K., could raise more than £350 million ($468 million) per year in London alone, and £1.2 billion annually across the country according to Cultural Policy Unit’s report. And Art Fund research also indicated that 72 percent of the public supported a tourist tax to subsidize national museum entrance fees.

If foreign visitors are forced to choose among different attractions due to budget constraints, Cole noted, especially in an expensive city like London, museums could suffer.

Another issue is how institutions would enforce the rule. Currently, it is not a legal requirement to carry an ID in the U.K., and around half of the poorest segment of the population do not regularly carry identification. Hodge’s original report was predicated on charging overseas visitors “once ID cards are the norm,” though in January the Labour government rolled back its controversial plans for digital ID.