Pay in museums

Read the 2025-26 update on our research and recommendations to address low sector pay

In November 2022 we published our Salary Research and Recommendations and have encouraged employers, staff and funders to use the findings in this report as an advocacy tool to highlight the serious issues around low pay in the museum sector, negotiate better salaries and demonstrate the urgent case for reform.

Our commitment to fair pay continued with an updated report in 2024 and we are delighted to now share with the sector a refreshed report for 2025-26. This inflationary review will enable museums, managers and individuals to have the most up to date information to support advocacy and change in the sector.

The report outlines our expectations of the sector and how we can support everyone to address the realities of low pay, as well as updated recommendations in light of the new Code of Ethics. Areas of focus include the Real Living Wage, inclusive practice, lived experience, wellbeing, apprenticeships and freelancing.

In the coming year we will conduct deeper research into pay and conditions to ensure our guidance stays up to date. We will produce a fuller report with benchmarked pay recommendations.

Salary benchmarks: 2025-26 update summary

Salary benchmarks (£)	Assistant	Officer/co-ordinator	Supervisor/Team leader	Manager/Head of dept
Attendants/Front-of-house/Security	23,716	27,614	32,802	47,636
Museum technician/Building management	27,658	30,685	39,678	50,538
Fundraising/Marketing	27,659	33,132	43,406	54,977
Learning/Programming/Outreach	26,932	30,376	36,715	51,141
Conservators	31,441	37,404	45,935	61,351
Curators/Collections management	26,682	32,838	39,106	59,157

Salary benchmarks	Manager/Director	Director/Group director
Directors/Group directors	78,417	96,397

New National Living Wage

Our salary research is mirror research, which means it is evidence-based on the pay realities in the organisations that submitted their data in 2022.

We have updated this data in line with CPIH inflation, the Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers’ housing costs, in 2023, 2024, and 2025.

What our most recent update doesn’t show are salary expectations with the new £12.71 National Living Wage as of 1 April 2026.

We continue to recommend that organisations pay at the upper quartile of our salary benchmarks, which meets both the National Living Wage and the Real Living Wage.

We have previously published a number of reports and guidelines on salary levels in the sector, beginning with the Pay in Museums report in 2004, followed by salary guidelines in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2017.

We welcome comments, particularly from those who have used the document as an advocacy tool or as a practical guide for setting salaries.

Please email with any queries: cpd@museumsassociation.org

“Our research into workforce wellbeing highlighted that poor pay was one of the most significant factors affecting wellbeing, as well as the financial precarity of temporary or zero-hour contracts. In addition to this impact on wellbeing, these levels of pay have an impact on attracting and retaining staff from more diverse backgrounds, who may not have access to other financial support. This refreshed guidance should be used to affect change within organisations and the sector as a whole.”

Tamsin Russell, workforce development lead, Museums Association

Image: Participants in the Multaka Project at Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford. Photograph by Ian Wallman