The Centre Pompidou is closed. It shut its doors to the public on 22 September 2025 for a full renovation and will not reopen until 2030. If you were planning to visit Beaubourg on this trip, you cannot — and no one can sell you a ticket for it. This guide explains what is still accessible on site, where the Pompidou collection is being shown across Paris in the meantime, and which museums make the best substitute.
Is the Centre Pompidou open in 2026? No.
The building has been closed since 22 September 2025. Construction work began in April 2026 and the announced reopening is 2030 — no month has been published. This is not a partial closure or a wing under scaffolding: the museum, the galleries, the famous escalator tube and the rooftop terrace are all shut.
- Museum and exhibition galleries — closed
- Rooftop and panoramic terrace — closed. A new public terrace on Level 7 is part of the 2030 project, but it does not exist yet
- Atelier Brancusi — closed to visitors since September 2023. The Renzo Piano pavilion now houses a different space (see below), so the reconstructed studio itself cannot be seen
- The Piazza, the sloping square in front of the building — still open to the public
- Ircam, on Place Stravinsky — still operating, with its own programme
One warning worth taking seriously: third-party sites still sell “skip-the-line Centre Pompidou tickets.” There is nothing to skip the line for. If you see one offered, it is either an error or a scam.
What is still open on site: Maison Pompidou
The Centre opened a small free space on the Piazza in February 2026, in the former Atelier Brancusi building. It is the only piece of the Pompidou you can still walk into in the neighbourhood.
- Address: 50 rue Rambuteau, 75003 Paris (on the Piazza)
- Price: free
- Hours: daily except Tuesdays, 11:00–19:00. Note it closes for several weeks in high summer — check before walking over in August
- What is inside: La Bataille des couleurs, an exhibition on the fight over the building’s famous colour scheme, running to 13 December 2026; a permanent display of the 2030 renovation project; monthly neighbourhood walks and talks
It takes twenty minutes to see. Treat it as a stop if you are already in the Marais, not as a destination.
Where to see the Pompidou collection during the closure
The Centre calls its off-site programme Constellation. The honest summary for a visitor: the collection has been dispersed, not relocated. There is no single venue in Paris where you can see it as a whole. Instead, works travel to partner institutions for temporary exhibitions.
In Paris, autumn 2026 into 2027:
- Grand Palais — Cezanne et nous, with the Musée d’Orsay, 23 September 2026 to 17 January 2027, around 180 works. The major show of the season
- Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris — Prix Marcel Duchamp 2026, 2 October 2026 to 7 February 2027
- Panthéon — Vies minuscules, 24 September 2026 to 31 January 2027
- BnF Richelieu — Louise Bourgeois. Extrême tension, 20 October 2026 to 21 February 2027
Elsewhere in France: the Centre Pompidou-Metz continues its own programme, and works are on show at the LaM in Villeneuve-d’Ascq, the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, the Fondation Vasarely in Aix-en-Provence and elsewhere.
Coming in 2027: a permanent satellite, the Fabrique de l’art, opens at Massy in the southern suburbs. At 30,000 m² it will hold roughly 140,000 works from the collection reserves, with public access. Preview weekends are planned for October and November 2026, with full opening in spring 2027.
The best alternatives in Paris for modern and contemporary art
If you came to Paris for twentieth-century art, these are the museums to redirect your day to. Prices are 2026 adult rates.
Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris — the closest substitute, and free
The City of Paris’s own twentieth-century collection, and the nearest thing to a like-for-like replacement: Matisse’s La Danse, Dufy’s vast La Fée Électricité, Delaunay, Modigliani, Braque. Around 500 works, and the permanent collection is free all year. It also hosts the Prix Marcel Duchamp this autumn.
11 avenue du Président Wilson, 75116. Tuesday to Sunday 10:00–18:00, closed Mondays. Permanent collection free; temporary exhibitions charged separately.
Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection
Contemporary art inside Tadao Ando’s concrete cylinder, dropped into a nineteenth-century rotunda. The building alone justifies the ticket, and it is a ten-minute walk from the Pompidou site.
2 rue de Viarmes, 75001. €15 full, €10 reduced. Daily 11:00–19:00, Friday to 21:00, closed Tuesdays. Free on the first Saturday of the month, 17:00–21:00. Closes briefly between hangings — check before travelling.
Fondation Louis Vuitton
Frank Gehry’s glass sailboat in the Bois de Boulogne, with the biggest contemporary blockbusters in the city. Gustave Fayet runs from 9 October 2026 to 8 March 2027.
8 avenue du Mahatma Gandhi, 75116. €18 full, €10 under 26, €5 under 18. Closed Tuesdays.
Palais de Tokyo
No permanent collection — the largest non-collecting contemporary art centre in Europe, showing emerging artists in raw industrial spaces. It is directly across the forecourt from the Musée d’Art Moderne, so the two pair naturally into one afternoon.
13 avenue du Président Wilson, 75116. €12 full, €9 reduced. Open to midnight on Thursdays, closed Tuesdays.
Musée Picasso
Around 5,000 works, the largest public Picasso holding in the world, in a seventeenth-century mansion in the Marais — a five-minute walk from the Pompidou.
5 rue de Thorigny, 75003. €16. Tuesday to Sunday 09:30–18:00, closed Mondays. Free on the first Sunday of each month.
Fondation Cartier
Reopened in October 2025 in a new Jean Nouvel building facing the Palais-Royal, with a much larger exhibition space than its old Boulevard Raspail home.
2 place du Palais-Royal, 75001. €15 full, €10 reduced. Closed Mondays.
Why is the Centre Pompidou closed for five years?
The driver is asbestos. Removing it means replacing the entire façade — the coloured pipework and glazed tube that make the building famous. Alongside that: corrosion treatment on the main structure, fire safety, step-free accessibility, and a complete overhaul of the energy and fluid networks.
The redesign is led by Moreau Kusunoki with Frida Escobedo Studio. Their brief is to keep Piano and Rogers’s original logic while opening up spaces the public never had access to, including a new panoramic terrace on Level 7 and a redesigned Piazza. At least 54% of construction waste is to be re-used.
Practical questions
Is the library still open? Yes, but it has moved. The Bpi is now at 40 avenue des Terroirs de France, 75012 (Métro Cour Saint-Émilion), free, open Monday to Friday 12:00–22:00 and weekends from 11:00, closed Tuesdays.
Is the Pompidou still on the Paris Museum Pass? It is still listed on the pass website, with no closure notice. Ignore it — the building is shut, so the listing is worthless. Do not let it influence whether you buy the pass.
Can I still see the building from outside? Yes. The Piazza remains open, and the façade is visible from Rue Beaubourg and Rue Saint-Martin, though scaffolding increasingly covers it. The Stravinsky Fountain, with its Niki de Saint Phalle sculptures, is right beside it and unaffected.
Should I plan a trip around the 2030 reopening? Not yet. No date has been published, and the project has a long history in a city where cultural deadlines move.
Last updated August 2026. Prices and exhibition dates change — check the venue’s own site before travelling.
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