Den Gamle By, the Danish open-air museum in Aarhus, has won the European Museum of the Year Award 2026 after a ceremony held in Bilbao on Saturday 13 June, confirming the growing international attention on Nordic museums that combine heritage, participation and contemporary social issues. The prize recognises institutions that renew the museum experience and make culture relevant to wider public life, rather than presenting history as a static display.
Why Den Gamle By won Europe’s top museum prize
The award was presented by the European Museum Forum, which has run the European Museum of the Year Award under the auspices of the Council of Europe since 1977. The scheme focuses on innovation, public quality and the social role of museums, with particular attention to institutions that have recently been created, renewed or substantially redeveloped.
Den Gamle By’s recognition is therefore not only a prize for its historical collection. It reflects the way the museum has developed into a civic space where visitors can move through different versions of Danish urban life, from early modern market-town streets to the welfare-state decades and the early 21st century. According to the museum, the nomination process included attention to its new main entrance, its 2014 street and its work with communities such as the Skjoldhøjparken housing area, where residents have been involved in interpreting their own local history.
Julie Rokkjær Birch, the museum’s director, described the award as “a huge recognition from the rest of Europe”. She said the prize also showed that Den Gamle By’s use of nostalgia, traditions and emotions to open up history for visitors can resonate beyond Denmark, where international audiences can see themselves in stories of Danish cultural history.
Aarhus open-air museum turns city history into everyday life
Founded as an urban open-air museum rather than a rural heritage village, Den Gamle By is built around streets, homes, shops and workshops that recreate changing forms of town life. VisitAarhus describes the museum as a journey through four main time periods: 2014, 1974, 1927 and 1864, while the museum’s older quarter reaches back to the period from 1600 to 1900.
The result is a form of history that is deliberately concrete. Visitors encounter half-timbered buildings, cobbled streets, horse-drawn carriages, historical shops, a 1920s urban environment and a 1970s neighbourhood shaped by welfare, feminism, migration and new ways of living. The 2014 section brings the story closer to the present with contemporary façades and homes, including everyday social experiences that are rarely treated as museum material.
This explains why the museum has often been described as a place about ordinary people rather than only about rulers, monuments or exceptional events. Its strength lies in making social change visible through daily routines: shopping, repairing, cooking, working, moving house, forming families and adapting to new technologies.
Community participation made the Danish museum stand out
The 2026 jury placed particular emphasis on community participation. Volunteers and local participants are not presented as a secondary layer around the collection, but as part of the museum’s way of producing knowledge. Their memories, skills and personal experience help shape the narratives that visitors encounter inside the reconstructed city.
Sustainability also played an important role in the assessment. The museum has developed activities connected with heirloom plant varieties, gardening, clothing repair and building repair. In this sense, the museum links heritage to practical forms of continuity: not only preserving objects, but also preserving techniques, habits and ecological knowledge that can still be useful today.
This approach fits a wider shift in European museums. Institutions are increasingly expected to address questions of belonging, democracy, climate, social memory and inclusion. Den Gamle By’s model is significant because it does so through accessible urban history rather than through abstract policy language.
What the prize means for Aarhus and Nordic culture
For Aarhus, Denmark’s second-largest city, the award strengthens a cultural profile that has long extended beyond Copenhagen. The museum already functions as one of the city’s major attractions, and the European recognition is likely to increase international attention on Aarhus as a destination for cultural tourism.
Adult tickets are currently listed between 145 and 205 DKK, approximately €19–€27, while visitors under 18 can enter free of charge. The free admission policy for young people also supports the museum’s broader civic role, particularly for families, schools and younger audiences.
The recognition also adds to the recent visibility of Nordic museums within the European Museum of the Year framework. Finland’s Sámi Museum Siida won the main award in 2024, while other Nordic institutions have appeared among winners and commendations in previous years. Den Gamle By’s success suggests that the Nordic museum model is increasingly valued when it combines strong public access, social relevance and a careful treatment of everyday history.
The next European Museum of the Year ceremony is scheduled for 2027 in Bern, Switzerland. For Den Gamle By, the 2026 award is both a cultural achievement and a challenge: to keep showing how a museum about the past can help people understand the social questions of the present.
