Most museums (country)

According to a 2021 report published by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), there are an estimated 104,000 museums around the world. The majority of these – 33,082 – are located within the USA, which works out at just under one-third of the global total.

The next two highest museum counts by country in the list are Germany (on 6,741) and Japan (on 5,738).

Per capita, however, the US ranks more midtable. Based on number of museums per million population, first place would theoretically go to a microstate like the Pacific island nation of Niue, which despite only having one museum, statistically works out as having a ratio of c. 625 museums per citizen owing to its tiny sub-2,000 population. Looking beyond microstates (those with fewer than 100,000 people), which tend to skew per capita data, the title goes to Sweden; its 1,600 museums and population of 10.6 million people (as of 2025) give a ratio of 151 museums for every million citizens. By comparison, the USA has around 100 museums per every million Americans.

Among the USA's museums are a number of record-breaking examples in their own right, dedicated to items as varied as espionage, aerospace and neon lights to pin badges and ventriloquism. One of the country's most venerable institutions is the American Museum of Natural History (part of the wider, multi-site Smithsonian Institution) in New York City. It boasts the largest collection items of any museum in the world: 33,430,000 specimens and artefacts. The bulk of these are housed in its Invertebrates collection, which alone boasts around 23 million specimens, including 7.5 million gall wasps!