Made within a generation of the Norman Conquest it depicts, the Bayeux Tapestry leaves France for the first time in nine hundred and fifty years, showing at the British Museum to 11 July 2027.
The Bayeux Tapestry is on loan from France to the British Museum in Bloomsbury from Thursday 10 September 2026 to Sunday 11 July 2027. It is its first appearance in Britain in 950 years.
Despite its name, it is an embroidery in wool on linen, nearly 70 metres long and 50 centimetres tall. Made within a generation of the Norman Conquest, it tells its story in 58 scenes, with Latin captions and a border of animals, fables and, at Hastings, corpses.
It was probably commissioned by Bishop Odo of Bayeux, William’s half-brother, and made in England in the 1070s by English needlewomen. It is also the earliest surviving depiction of Halley’s Comet, which passes overhead in scene 32 while Harold is told what it means.
The earliest written reference is a cathedral inventory of 1476. Scholars rediscovered it in 1729, when it was hung round Bayeux Cathedral once a year.
It survived the Revolution, when it was nearly cut up for wagon covers, and the Second World War, when the SS took an interest.
The loan depends on works at the Bayeux museum that will not recur, and the embroidery then returns to France.