Shock National Gallery redundancies as £8m deficit revealed
- maxwell museums
- 11 minutes ago
- 3 min read
The National Gallery is making redundancies, as a surprise £8m deficit has been revealed.
A “voluntary exit scheme” has begun and is available to all staff, including in the gallery’s separate commercial arm. Compulsory redundancies may follow if further savings are still needed in order to plug the projected £8.2 million deficit for 2026/27.
The news was revealed by the Art Newspaper, who say the gallery faces a £2m deficit in the current financial year which ends in March. Current projections suggest that will grow a further £6.2m in the following year, totalling £8.2m by 2027.
A gallery spokesperson told this website in a statement that they “face increasing competition for people’s time and share of wallet.” They added that due to “rises in operational costs and commercial pressures, we have now reached a point where we must make difficult and painful decisions.”
It's expected that alongside staff losses, there will also be cutbacks to the exhibition programme. This could include fewer free exhibitions or not as many ticketed shows.
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Recently, the gallery announced it had received two landmark pledges of £150m each for its planned major new wing. The gifts — which come from Crankstart, the charitable foundation of Sir Michael Moritz KBE, and the Julia Rausing Trust — are reported to be the two largest ever publicly reported single cash donations to a museum or gallery anywhere in the world.
The new wing — dubbed Project Domani — will house an expanded collection, as the gallery has decided it will start to collect modern paintings made after 1900. Bosses have confirmed that this project has its funding fully ring-fenced and so will continue as planned despite the new cost-cutting. But this new deficit will raise questions about how they will afford to pay for the wing’s day-to-day running costs once complete.
The National Gallery’s visitor numbers have also been one of the slowest in London to recover from the pandemic. It welcomed six million visitors a year before the pandemic, but in the 12 months ending in September 2025, the figure was 3.8 million.
But news of a financial black hole still comes as a surprise, especially as it follows soon after the gallery’s major Van Gogh exhibition, which attracted a record 335,000 visitors. Later in 2026 it will host another blockbuster exhibition as every surviving Van Eyck portrait is united for the first time.
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“We know this is hard, but we all must understand that things have changed in the world” the spokesperson said.
Here's the full statement from the National Gallery;
"The National Gallery has enjoyed great success during the past two years. We looked to the past with the celebrations for NG200 and are now looking to the future with Project Domani.
We have been successful in developing and vastly expanding our free offer, which is now hugely popular both in person and online. We have also attracted huge investment in a landmark future project. However, in the present global landscape and with the cost-of-living crisis, like many other institutions, we face increasing competition for people’s time and share of wallet.
The Gallery is not alone, museums and galleries across the UK are all under the same financial pressures.
Alongside our exceptional projects, NG200 and Project Domani - which both have ring-fenced budgets - we have been working hard for a long time trying to mitigate the financial pressures we are facing in our day-to-day, business as usual. However, due to many widely reported circumstances which are beyond our control, such as rises in operational costs and commercial pressures, we have now reached a point where we must make difficult and painful decisions.
Due to this combination of factors, unless the Gallery takes decisive remedial action now, we will be facing an £8.2 million deficit in 2026/7.
That is why we have launched a Voluntary Exit scheme for all National Gallery and National Gallery Global staff and will also be stopping several of our activities where, for a number of reasons beyond our control, we can no longer justify their costs.
The National Gallery cannot remain operationally secure without a strategic reset. To achieve sustainability, we must balance our artistic and educational mission with a new operating structure. Following the completion of the Voluntary Exit scheme, we will be consulting with staff on plans for going forward.
We know this is hard, but we all must understand that things have changed in the world, and we must respond to them. We need to make tough decisions now to futureproof the Gallery for the years ahead.”