The British Museum holds its second Ball on Saturday 17 October 2026, with Es Devlin as artistic director and Igor Tulchinsky as honorary chair, in aid of the Masterplan.
The British Museum was founded in 1753 on the collection of Sir Hans Sloane and and it has never charged admission to the permanent collection in the two hundred and seventy years since. Its Ball is a very recent thing by that standard: the first was held in October 2025, and the money goes to the Masterplan, the largest redevelopment of the Bloomsbury building since it was put up. That first evening brought nearly 900 guests through the Great Court and raised more than £2.5 million in a night.
Seven in ten of those guests had never been to a museum event before, which was the point of holding one. A national collection that charges nothing at the door has to find its capital somewhere, and an institution of this age has to keep recruiting the people who will pay for its next century. The Masterplan is the largest rebuilding of the site since the nineteenth century.
The second Ball is on Saturday 17 October 2026, with the artist and designer Es Devlin as artistic director and red as its theme, and Igor Tulchinsky as honorary chair. Tickets and tables are sold through the museum’s own site rather than through an agency. The date falls on the Saturday of Frieze week, when the international art audience is already in London.