Patna’s Bihar Museum Placed Ninth Globally and First in Asia in 2026 World Museum Rankings

Key facts

• Bihar Museum in Patna has secured the ninth position in Worth a Journey’s World’s 100 Best Museums 2026 list, ranking first in Asia and ahead of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art (10th) and the Louvre in Paris (31st).
• The 2026 list was published by Worth a Journey, a Germany-based travel guide edited in Munich, whose rankings combine algorithmic data analysis with in-person verification visits.
• Bihar Museum is reportedly the only Indian institution featured among the 100 museums on the 2026 list.
• Mexico City’s Museo Nacional de Antropología topped the 2026 list, followed by Madrid’s Museo del Prado and Denmark’s Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, with Saint Petersburg’s State Hermitage Museum and Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum completing the top five.
• Spread across more than 13 acres in Patna, the museum was designed by Japanese architect and Pritzker Architecture Prize laureate Fumihiko Maki in collaboration with Mumbai-based Opolis Architects, and was inaugurated in 2015.
• The museum’s collections include historical artefacts, sculptures, coins, manuscripts and archaeological material spanning ancient civilisations to the 18th century, along with a Children’s Gallery and a Diaspora Gallery.
• Bihar Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary welcomed the achievement, while museum director general Anjani Kumar Singh said the ranking reflected the ambition to create a world-class institution.
• A proposed underground connection of around 1.5 kilometres between Bihar Museum and the older Patna Museum is intended to help visitors explore both collections.