The Americas
Canada
5 June 2026 – 3 January 2027
Royal BC Museum, Victoria
An immersive, sensory exhibition of roughly 250 objects from the Age of the Pyramids through the Greco-Roman period, structured around mummification, the underworld, the grave, and the afterlife, exploring ancient Egyptian beliefs about death as a continued journey.
Opened 7 May 2026 – closes September 2027 (exact date unspecified)
Bata Shoe Museum, Toronto
Curator: Barbara Birley and Elizabeth Greene
The first North American showing of over 100 Roman-era artifacts from Vindolanda, a fort near Hadrian’s Wall, including remarkably preserved leather shoes nearly 2,000 years old that reveal the presence of women and children alongside soldiers at the empire’s edge.
Mexico
Opened 8 July 2026 (closing date not yet announced)
Museo del Templo Mayor, Mexico City
Over 100 archaeological and ethnographic pieces exploring the ritual, political, and recreational significance of the Mesoamerican ballgame, including a recently discovered offering of 32 sets of human cervical vertebrae from the Teotlachco.
Peru
On view as of July 2026 (closing date not yet announced)
Museo de Arte de Lima (MALI), Lima
Curator: Ricardo Kusunoki, Cecilia Pardo, and Julio Rucabado
Pieces drawn from the Inca Museum of Cusco and the Pedro de Osma Museum of Lima, among other collections.
United States
17 October 2026 – 10 January 2027
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh
Curator: Denise Doxey
Objects excavated from Kushite tombs and pyramids by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston over a century ago, presenting nearly 3,000 years of the Nubian Kingdom of Kush’s history and its deep, sometimes rival, sometimes ruling, connections to pharaonic Egypt.
Opened 21 August 2025
Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East, Cambridge, MA
A refreshed permanent gallery exploring why ancient Egypt still captivates, pairing objects like the mummy case of Padimut and a reproduction of Tutankhamun’s throne with 3D scans and an augmented-reality experience for the Dream Stela of King Thutmose IV.
26 September 2026 – 18 January 2027
National Museum of Asian Art, Washington, DC
The first U.S. showing of 26 masterpieces from the Louvre’s Islamic art collection, spanning the 7th to 19th centuries from Spain to India, including the Baptistery of Saint Louis, a Mamluk-era copper-alloy basin inlaid with gold and silver.
Various locations
United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, and China
A 45-minute virtual-reality expedition, developed with Harvard Egyptologist Peter Der Manuelian, that transports visitors inside the Great Pyramid of Giza to explore chambers and corridors normally closed to the public.
Opened 24 May 2025 – until Spring 2026
The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD
The first contemporary art ever installed in the Walters’ Ancient Egyptian galleries: two large-scale mixed-media collages by Egyptian- and Honduran-American artist Jackie Milad, displayed alongside the ancient royal sculptures that inspired them.
Opened 17 May 2025
San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, TX
Carved stone reliefs from the palaces of Assyrian kings (9th–7th century BCE), depicting royal hunts, military campaigns, and rituals that projected the divinely sanctioned power of the ruler across the empire.
13 January 2023 – 31 December 2026
Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa, FL
A survey of the museum’s antiquities collection organized around five themes — daily life, amusement, death and dying, religion, and power and trade — spanning Greek, Roman, and Etruscan objects from figurines to funerary sarcophagi.
24 January 2024 – 25 January 2027
The Getty Villa, Los Angeles
On long-term loan from the British Museum, stone portrait statues, reliefs, and sarcophagi from Egypt’s 26th (Saite) Dynasty, ca. 664–526 BCE — a lesser-known but artistically vibrant period of revival following the pyramid-building eras.
15 June 2024 – 9 November 2026
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC
Explores humanity’s long relationship with the color red across the collection, from ancient red-figure pottery to later works, examining the rare, often costly dyes and pigments developed to achieve it and what their use reveals about status and technology.
2 May 2026 – 20 September 2026
Legion of Honor, San Francisco
The first major U.S. exhibition on the Etruscans in two decades, presenting nearly 200 objects — bronze and terracotta sculpture, gold jewelry, and the longest surviving piece of Etruscan writing — from the civilization that shaped Italy for centuries before Rome’s rise.
31 October 2026 – 14 March 2027
San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio
The exhibition’s second U.S. venue, bringing nearly 200 Etruscan objects — bronze and terracotta sculpture, gold jewelry, and recently excavated bronzes shown publicly for the first time — to Texas following its San Francisco debut.
Opens 20 December 2026 (closing date not yet announced)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Major international loans from Austria, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Serbia, Spain, Tunisia, the United Kingdom, and Vatican City explore Greek artistic exchange with the wider Mediterranean and West Asia from the 8th to early 5th century BCE, including the American debut of the Zeus of Ugento.
Europe, The United Kingdom, and Russia
Denmark
9 October 2026 – 8 October 2027
Moesgaard Museum, Aarhus
New research and hieroglyphic decipherment illuminate the Maya civilization’s temple cities and rulers, centered on the story of the Snake Dynasty of Calakmul, whose kings claimed descent from the gods and ruled the Maya’s most powerful empire.
Austria
14 March 2026 – 29 November 2026
Mamuz Museum, Mistelbach
Austria’s first major exhibition on the ancient Iberians, with over 200 objects on loan from Barcelona’s Museu d’Arqueologia de Catalunya, including the silver treasure of Tivissa and a replica of the famed Dama de Elche bust.
Belgium
26 April 2026 – 13 November 2026
Museum of Malgré-Tout, Viroinval
Curator: Dorian Vanhulle
Roughly 100 artifacts move beyond Egypt’s famous queens and goddesses to explore the roles of housewives, craftswomen, priestesses, and scribes across pharaonic society, from the Predynastic period through the Greco-Roman era.
France
4 April 2026 – 7 March 2027
Gergovia Museum, La Roche-Blanche
Combines archaeological research with experimental reconstruction to examine what Gallic people actually wore, moving past 19th-century romantic stereotypes of Gallic dress and jewelry.
11 June 2026 – 10 January 2027
Museum of Romanity, Nîmes
Curator: Claire Champetier, Manuella Lambert, Martin Szewczyk, and Nicolas de Larquier
A selection of masterpieces from the Louvre’s ancient art collection that moves past the modern, purely aesthetic view of Roman art to show objects as the Romans themselves used them — carrying function, belief, and everyday meaning, not just beauty.
Germany
22 November 2025 – 1 November 2026
Neanderthal Museum, Mettmann
Examines four major prehistoric migrations through current genetic and archaeological research — the origins of humanity in Africa, the spread of Homo erectus and Homo sapiens, Anatolian farmers meeting European hunter-gatherers 7,500 years ago, and Eurasian steppe nomads whose genetic traces persist in Europe today.
21 March 2026 – 10 January 2027
Neues Museum, Berlin
Traces the zodiac’s history and meaning from Babylonia through Egypt, Greece, and Rome (ca. 400 BCE–400 CE), using never-before-exhibited artifacts to explore how astronomy, astrology, and belief intertwined in the ancient world.
11 October 2026 – 4 April 2027
Simeonstift City Museum, Trier
Over 100 objects trace Trier’s medieval Jewish community, which flourished from at least the 11th century as a vital link between the Rhine’s SchUM cities (Speyer, Worms, Mainz) and present-day France, shown alongside the city’s preserved Jewish quarter and Judenpforte (Jewish Gate).
18 September 2026 – 29 August 2027
Archaeological State Collection, Munich
Central Europe’s first showing of this touring exhibition, with roughly 600 original objects, replicas, and immersive installations from the Salisbury and Wiltshire Museums, including a Bavarian grave find showing Stonehenge’s place in a wider Neolithic exchange network.
19 October 2017 – 22 September 2027
Neues Museum, Berlin
Gold jewelry from the Migration Period found near the Black Sea, alongside silver brooches and belts from early medieval graves across France, Italy, Spain, and Germany — on view in Berlin for the first time in 80 years, including the garnet-studded gold Crown of Kerch itself, from a noblewoman’s tomb in Crimea.
27 March 2026 – 7 February 2027
State Museum of Prehistory, Halle
Curator: Anja Stadelbacher, Josefine Biedinger, and Michael Schefzik
Centers on the 9,000-year-old Bad Dürrenberg burial, discovered in 1934 and long assumed male, now understood through new research to be a woman — one of the earliest known shamans in the archaeological record.
Greece
25 May 2026 – 31 October 2026
National Archaeological Museum of Athens, Athens
The final stop of a traveling exhibition (Kalamata → Getty Villa → Athens) on Bronze Age Messenia, featuring finds from the undisturbed tomb of the “Griffin Warrior,” the only known Mycenaean crown, and the Linear B tablet that confirmed Michael Ventris’s decipherment of the script — developed with the Getty and the University of Cincinnati’s Department of Classics.
Italy
Opened 9 June 2026
Egyptian Museum, Turin
Curator: Pasquale Esposito and Francesco Maffei
Contemporary fashion reinterprets ancient Egyptian symbols — the sun, the uraeus serpent, the ankh, the winged scarab — through 30 student creations alongside pieces by Chanel, Jean Paul Gaultier, and other major fashion houses.
2 July 2026 – 27 September 2026
National Roman Museum, The Archaeological Park of the Colosseum, VIVE Museum, Rome
Traces over 2,000 years of Roman history through coinage across three venues and 25 thematic sections — ancient Rome at the National Roman Museum, the Middle Ages at the Colosseum, and the modern era at VIVE — pairing coins with paintings, sculpture, and illuminated manuscripts.
12 June 2026 – 18 October 2026
The Archaeological Park of the Colosseum, Rome
Curator: Alfonsina Russo, Roberta Alteri, Alessio De Cristofaro, Bülent Gönültaş, Mehtap Ateş, Deniz Doğu Yöndem, and Rüstem Aslan
Called one of the largest Troy exhibitions ever held, with 300+ artifacts including 19 Turkish museum loans; traces the Trojan War from the Trojan perspective through Aeneas’s diaspora to the founding myth of Romulus and Remus, opening with a full-scale replica of the Trojan Horse.
25 November 2025 – 8 November 2026
South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology, Bolzano
Examines how archaeology in South Tyrol was exploited for political propaganda between 1920 and 1972, and what critically re-examining past excavations and finds can reveal today.
2 April 2026 – 1 November 2026
Scuderie del Castello di Miramare, Trieste
Curator: Massimo Osanna, Christian Greco, Cäcilia Bischoff, and Michaela Hüttner
Co-organized with Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum, over 100 artifacts return to Trieste for the first time in 143 years, tracing Archduke Maximilian of Habsburg’s 19th-century Egyptological collection and its journey between Trieste, Mexico, and Vienna.
Netherlands
Opened 25 January 2025 – on view until June 2026
Dutch National Museum of Antiquities, Leiden
Explores pewter objects from the museum’s Egyptian, Classical, Near Eastern, and Dutch collections, tracing the craft and everyday use of this tin alloy across antiquity through more recent history.
11 June 2026 – 1 November 2026
Dutch National Museum of Antiquities, Leiden
A summer exhibition of twelve linked mini-exhibitions pairing ancient treasures with contemporary art in an exploration of time, culture, and imagination.
Spain
7 May 2026 – 20 September 2026
Archaeological Museum of Murcia, Murcia
One of the most ambitious exhibitions in years on ancient Mediterranean material culture in southeast Spain, drawing wine-drinking vessels and banquet objects from major Spanish institutions including the Museo Arqueológico Nacional in Madrid to examine how Iberians, Greeks, and Romans ritualized wine and the shared feast.
United Kingdom
8 October 2026 – 11 April 2027
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
Curator: Anja Ulbrich
Over 200 objects — sculpture, bronzes, gems, and terracottas — trace Aphrodite from her earliest worship on Cyprus over 3,000 years ago through her Greek iconography, Roman transformation into Venus, and continued influence through the Renaissance to today.
Opened 15 May 2026 – closes summer 2027 (exact date unspecified)
Yorkshire Museum, York
The largest hoard of Iron Age metalwork ever found in Britain — over 800 deliberately broken and burned objects, including chariot fittings and a rare iron mirror, buried near the Brigantes’ stronghold at Stanwick and showing links as far as Denmark and the Mediterranean.
31 March 2026 – 1 November 2026
Cornwall Museum and Art Gallery, Truro
Nine inherited Cornish folk tales — mermaids, giants, piskies, and witches — illustrated through artefacts including a stone head from St Piran’s chapel and inscribed stones from Tintagel, exploring how landscape and legend shaped Cornish identity.
28 March 2026 – 3 October 2026
Segedunum Roman Fort & Museum, Wallsend
Bronze military diplomas and archaeological finds, including loans from the Trimontium Trust, explore identity and service in the Roman army through the symbolism of the legionary eagle standard.
26 June 2026 – 1 November 2026
Royal Armouries Museum, Leeds
Around 250 rare Mongolian artifacts, many never before shown outside Mongolia, move beyond the conqueror stereotype to explore the empire’s innovations — the first postal system, paper money, religious tolerance — and the powerful women who helped rule it, including Genghis Khan’s daughter Alaqai Beki.
1 October 2026 – 31 January 2027
British Museum, London
Curator: Sang-ah Kim and Yoojin Kwak Choi
The British Museum’s first major Korea exhibition in over 40 years, drawing on the collection of the late Samsung chairman Lee Kun-Hee to trace 2,300 years of Korean art and craftsmanship from 300 BCE to the present, including Goryeo celadon ceramics and Joseon porcelain.
28 February 2026 – 1 January 2027
NEON at Battersea Power Station, London
Over 180 artifacts drawn from Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities and the Grand Egyptian Museum, in the UK for the first time, centered on the coffin of Ramses II alongside treasures from the royal tombs of Tanis and a VR journey through his temples.
27 June 2026 – 16 May 2027
National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh
Over 250 objects trace the origins of organized conflict in Scotland from the Neolithic through the Roman conquest, including the newly acquired Bronze Age Carnoustie Hoard and grave goods from a young Iron Age warrior’s burial at Marshill, Alloa.
10 September 2026 – 11 July 2027
British Museum, London
The 11th-century embroidered chronicle of the Norman Conquest and the Battle of Hastings, on loan from France’s Musée de Bayeux — its first display in Britain since it was made roughly 950 years ago.
28 March 2026 – 20 September 2026
The Great North Museum: Hancock, Newcastle upon Tyne
Bronze Age, Roman, Anglo-Saxon, and Tudor finds from across Northern Britain, on loan from the British Museum, National Museum of Scotland, and Vindolanda, exploring why treasure gets buried, lost, and found, and who has the right to own the past.
Opened 11 July 2025 – closes July 2027
Yorkshire Museum, York
A reimagined permanent gallery on Viking-Age York (Jorvik), drawing on the museum’s own excavated collections to explore Scandinavian settlement, trade, and daily life in the north of England.
Digital & Online Exhibitions
Born-digital exhibitions with no physical venue, or virtual tours of physical ones — accessible from anywhere.
Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University, Palo Alto
A digital exploration of authenticity, reproduction, and value in art, from ancient objects to modern forgeries and replicas.
Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum, San Jose
A free 360-degree virtual walkthrough of the museum’s full Egyptian antiquities collection, including its mummy galleries and reconstructed tomb.
Opened 21 June 2022
Virtual tours of ancient sites and a virtual museum of Greek and Roman sculpture.
Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, Ann Arbor
Catalogue: Emberling, Geoff and Suzanne Davis (eds). Graffiti as Devotion along the Nile and Beyond. Kelsey Museum Publications 16. Ann Arbor: Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, 2021. ISBN: 978–0–9906623–9–6 (paper and freely downloadable).
Examines ancient graffiti left by pilgrims and visitors at religious sites along the Nile, including the temple at El-Kurru in Sudan, as a form of personal devotion rather than mere vandalism.
The Hellenic Museum, Melbourne
Explores ancient Greek warfare and the hoplite soldier — armor, weaponry, and tactics — alongside the mythic heroes who shaped Greek ideas of martial honor.
National Museum of Prehistory, Les Eyzies
A virtual tour of France’s national prehistory museum in the Dordogne, at the heart of a region dense with Paleolithic cave art and early human sites.
J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Villa, Pacific Palisades
A digital reconstruction of Persepolis, ceremonial capital of the Achaemenid Persian Empire, allowing visitors to explore the palace complex as it may have appeared before its destruction.
Getty Research Institute, J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Villa, Pacific Palisades
Explores the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra through historic photographs and scholarship, including documentation of monuments later damaged during the Syrian civil war.
Berlin State Museums, Berlin
360-degree virtual tours of Berlin’s state museum galleries, including its picture gallery collections.
Bade Museum of Biblical Archaeology, Berkeley
An interactive digital story map recovering the identities and contributions of the local Palestinian laborers who worked on the early 20th-century excavation of Tell en-Nasbeh, largely uncredited in the original archaeological record.
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Berlin
A virtual exhibition on Uruk, one of the world’s earliest cities in ancient Mesopotamia, drawing on the Vorderasiatisches Museum’s excavated collections.
Opened 7 October 2022
RD Milns Antiquities Museum, Queensland
Curator: Janette McWilliam
Explores ancient Greek and Roman mechanical ingenuity — water clocks, automata, and early engineering — and the technological imagination behind them.
