Older accounts of the museum describe "The Hong Kong Story" at length — the opening gallery reaching back 400 million years, the fishing boat to board, the street scene with its vibrating floor, the air raid shelter. That exhibition closed on 19 October 2020. What stands in its place opened on 1 April 2026, is also called Hong Kong Story, and is a different thing altogether: ten galleries, over 2,800 exhibits and four stated themes. There is no longer a pending opening date to wait for. Admission is free, and the museum closes on Tuesdays.
What closed, what opened, and the two things in between
The permanent exhibition closed on 19 October 2020 for upgrading, and the museum reopened it in phases from 27 November 2024.
Two separate things filled the gap, and they are routinely run together as though they were one. Recreating a Classic: The Best Features of The Hong Kong Story was a genuine interim exhibition on the first floor, and it closed on 2 November 2023 when that floor shut to prepare the new galleries. The Multifaceted Hong Kong Exhibition Series, which opened on 27 November 2024, was not interim at all — it was phase one of the revamped permanent exhibition, in three parts: Yau Tsim Mong, on urban transition and community bonds, with about 200 exhibits across ten zones; Estórias Lusas, on the Hong Kong Portuguese, with more than 250 exhibits; and Sojourning in Gold Mountain, on Hong Kong and the lives of overseas Chinese in California.
Phase two, which is also the final phase, opened on 1 April 2026.
The new permanent exhibition
It is called Hong Kong Story and runs to ten galleries and over 2,800 exhibits, organised around four stated themes: Roots of Culture, East Meets West, Coalition Against Japanese Aggression, and Hong Kong as a Global Metropolis. The official description has it moving away from a single narrative and combining chronology with thematic curation. Admission is free.
Among the named galleries and what they hold: Unity in Diversity in Chinese Civilisation and Historical Origins of Hong Kong, with a national-grade prehistoric yazhang ceremonial blade from Lamma Island, artefacts from the Lei Cheng Uk Han Tomb, Sacred Hill ceramics and Ming blue-and-white shards from Penny's Bay; Historical Changes, with a statue of Lin Zexu and the 1899 Sino-British boundary stone; Modern City, with an 1860 Oriental Bank Corporation banknote; Fusion of Chinese and Western Cultures, with reconstructed 1930s street scenes including a double-decker tram and a Chinese medicine shop; Hong Kong's Joint Resistance; Social Changes, with a reconstructed 1970s resettlement unit; Life in the Metropolis, with a neon street and the Kai Tak Airport flight-information flip board; Economic Achievements; and Walking with the Motherland.
On how the history is presented, the official account gives those four themes and an emphasis on Hong Kong's role as a hub, with the final gallery covering the handover, "one country, two systems" and subsequent integration. Press reporting has noted a change of emphasis from the previous exhibition — describing, among other things, Hong Kong's early place within Chinese civilisation as shaped by Lingnan and maritime cultures and connected to the Central Plains, and British rule from 1841 as a forced occupation lasting 156 years. Both the official framing and that reporting are on the record.
Also open
Alongside the permanent galleries: a counter-terrorism education thematic exhibition from 24 October 2026; a Ta Teh Institute exhibition in the National Development and Achievements series, running to 15 February 2027; a Sui and Tang dynasties interactive zone to 30 November 2026; and a National Security Exhibition Gallery, which requires separate booking.
The museum's own history, and the building
The institution began as the City Hall Art Gallery and Museum, founded in 1962, renamed the City Museum and Art Gallery in 1969, and split in 1975 into the Museum of Art and the Museum of History. It occupied rented premises at Star House in Tsim Sha Tsui, moved to a temporary site in Kowloon Park in 1983, and moved to its present premises on Chatham Road South in 1998. Gross floor area is 17,500 m². It forms a single complex with the adjoining Hong Kong Science Museum, deliberately harmonised in appearance and colour.
It administers four branch museums: the Dr Sun Yat-sen Museum, the Lei Cheng Uk Han Tomb Museum, the Law Uk Folk Museum in Chai Wan, and the Fireboat Alexander Grantham Exhibition Gallery in Quarry Bay Park.
Opening arrangements
Monday and Wednesday to Friday, 10:00 to 18:00; Saturday, Sunday and public holidays, 10:00 to 19:00; Christmas Eve and Chinese New Year's Eve, 10:00 to 17:00. Closed on Tuesdays except public holidays, and on the first two days of Chinese New Year. Closed under typhoon signal 8 or above and during extreme conditions. Admission to the permanent exhibition is free; the museum's own page sets out no age, disability or group concessions, pointing instead to separate museum pass and group visit arrangements.
Dates to watch
Visitor numbers have climbed steeply through the reopening: 586,073 in 2023–24, 943,534 in 2024–25 and 1,102,108 in 2025–26. For comparison the Science Museum next door went the other way over the same period, from 1,351,783 to 1,066,657, having opened new artificial intelligence and living technology galleries in February 2026.
An expansion of both museums is in train: associated road works in Tsim Sha Tsui East were gazetted on 2 May 2025, with objections due by 2 July 2025. The scope and programme sit in an annex that could not be read, so the scale and timing of the expansion are not known — only that it is coming.
Of the temporary exhibitions, the Sui and Tang interactive zone closes on 30 November 2026 and the Ta Teh Institute exhibition on 15 February 2027.
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