The application process for EMYA2025 is now closed! The closing date was Monday, 15 April 2024.

Please stay tuned for the future announcements on our next edition: EMYA2026. In the meantime you can get familiar with the guidelines and check the information provided within the following sections: Guidelines, FAQs, Competition entry, To be a candidate, Exchange of resources.

Our National Correspondents are also ready to help you if you require further guidance.

All European museums which are not for profit and have opened or been substantially renewed since January 2020 are eligible to apply. Museums/exhibitions opened for more than 4 years at the time of the application, are not eligible.

Temporary or ‘semi-permanent’ exhibitions can apply but please note that museums/exhibitions need to be open/completed in time for the judging visit (summer – early autumn 2024) and have to remain accessible until at least the end of June 2025.

No individual museum can be submitted for the award within four years of a previous application i.e. in 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 or 2024. (This does not include different branches of a multi-venue museum service)

All candidates are considered by the EMYA Jury, which is an independent international expert body appointed by the EMF Board of Trustees. Judges are not remunerated by EMF for their participation in the judging process.

Museums applying to enter the competition will be judged in the following way:

• A careful assessment of the application form and supporting material. We reserve the right to decline applications if we believe that the criteria for entry have not been met.

• The EMYA Jury will agree on a long list of candidates from the remaining applications.

• A visit by an EMYA Judge will take place to all long-listed museums during summer/autumn.

• Arrangement of the Judge’s visit will be agreed with the museum once the long list has been approved by the Jury.

• After the initial visit, another EMYA Judge may visit a candidate museum anonymously for the second time at the discretion of the Jury.

• The EMYA Jury meets in November to consider all Judges' reports and make decisions on the Nominated museums and on the winners.

• All Nominated museums are informed about their nomination and are invited to present during the EMYA Annual Conference and Award Ceremony.

• Winners are announced on the last day of the Conference in a formal Ceremony and Gala celebration.

• The winner of the Council of Europe Museum Prize may be announced earlier, at the discretion of the Council.

A maximum of 20 digital images, in JPEG format. These images should be no less than 300 dpi and be at least 1000×1000 pixels in size. The image files must be of a suitable quality for reproduction and projection. For each image, please specify the following: a unique file name, a title, one line description, a photographer and a copyright holder. The images should include at least one exterior view of the museum and general views of the galleries and activities. We do not require images of individual items.

Please note that these images will be used by the EMF in a number of ways, including publication of a selection in the annual candidates’ brochure. The images must be of a good quality, free of copyright and available for use in the Annual EMYA publications and on the EMF website.

Any other digital material that you may wish to send to us separately. This could include electronic versions of the museum’s leaflets, brochures or catalogues and a small selection of relevant press cuttings.

If you intend to submit other supporting material via a file-sharing website you should send EMF a notification of the upload (to emf@europeanforum.museum) and also ensure that the files will be available for download for at least one month from the date you upload the files. We would appreciate the upload of complete folders rather than multiple uploads of individual files. A content list of all accompanying material must be sent to us.

Please note: All paper and electronic material will be retained in the EMF Archive after the judging has taken place. The archive is held at the Museu de Portimão in Portugal.

Media policy

• Awards winners are obliged to promote EMF via their institutional website indicating the place and year the award was won.

• All nominees have permission to use the EMYA logo on their website by following the copyright rules set out by EMF.

• All nominees of the EMYA will be published on the EMF website.

• All publicity generated by the awards should be forwarded to EMF via email or the below address.

Please carefully read the EMF/EMYA Privacy Statement and Media Guidelines before submitting your application.

Loans policy for award winners of European Museum of the Year Award, Silletto Prize and Portimao Museum Prize

• The winners of the European Museum of the Year Award, Silletto Prize and Portimão Museum Prize will receive a trophy to be displayed in their museum for one year.

• Awardees are obliged to provide facilities (environmental, security, insurance, packing and couriered transport for the hand-over etc.) to maintain the award in appropriate conditions and cover the related expenses.

• The awardee should indemnify the award trophy (EMYA Award, Silletto Prize, Portimão Museum Prize) against all insurable risks from the moment it is handed over until its return to EMF at the subsequent EMF Annual Assembly and EMYA Ceremony.

• The EMYA winner is expected to personally courier the trophy and give a brief presentation about the impact of the award during the subsequent EMF Annual Conference and EMYA Ceremony.

For further information, please contact: Pedro Branco, EMF Administrator, at: emf@europeanforum.museum

Any kind, size, or type of museum can apply, everyone is welcome. Is your museum an art museum, a craft museum, an ethnographical or folk life museum, a museum of natural history, science, transport or industry, a general historical museum or an historical museum dedicated to a particular period or event? Perhaps it is a city, town or regional museum dealing with many subjects or just with one aspect, or a museum dedicated to the life and work of a single person or group of people, or with a focus on a trade or single industry, or traditional (‘folk’) arts? Your museum might be a combination of many of the above, or could also be a museum based on a unique heritage building or enterprise. It might also be an entirely unique concept in which case explain in what way it does not fit into the traditional definition of a museum.

Does a government ministry, a municipality, a charitable foundation, or a trust, a religious organisation, a co-operative run your museum or it is owned by a private individual or a business enterprise?

Is it by government or municipal annual grant, by private or charitable endowment, by a business enterprise committed to supporting your museum, by earnings, donations and occasional grants? Is there a guaranteed percentage of your annual budget? Is your museum financially sustainable?

Does a ministry or municipality appoint a director? Or does a foundation, a charitable trust, a private owner or business enterprise manage your museum? Has it a Board of Governors or Trustees who hold final authority over the museum’s activities? Who is the legal employer of the staff?

See also FAQ 1 above. What are the collections that make up your museum? Briefly list the major categories of collections held by your museum and the approximate proportions of different kinds of collection. Remember also that your building may be a major part of your collection especially in the case of industrial, scientific, craft or historical museums.

Please give the latest figures of the numbers of objects in your collection and the numbers of those that have been fully registered. If the cataloguing of your collection is a work in progress, please describe the work that has been done to date. Please state if your cataloguing is manual (i.e. in written registers), digital or both. If your catalogue/database is completely or partly available online, please state it in your response. What steps have you taken to protect your collections’ record in the event of a natural or manmade disaster?

Please state what, if any, government, foundation, municipality, business sponsorship or private philanthropic funds were provided for the creation/construction or redevelopment of your museum and in what proportions. If you have taken out a loan or if the community has raised subscriptions, please state this in your response.

Who were your partners in the development of the museum? Please list your partners, whether national government, or government agencies such as tourism organisations, municipal or regional government, business, private foundations etc.

Does your museum have a central administration? How are the members of staff distributed across the various functions of the museum: curatorship, collections management, conservation, exhibition, education and outreach, visitor services, facilities management, security? If your museum is small and does not have a range of specialist staff, please explain how you manage your different functions with the staff that you have. Please note that small museums are not disadvantaged in the competition by having limited staff resources. If you have an ingenious way of making the most of your staff please explain it here.

By environmental sustainability, we mean all initiatives related to an ecological attitude, policies or practices that the museum has been adopting or is striving to adopt in the development of the new exhibitions, in all aspects of the building and of its functioning. Museums should consider the environmental impact of other resources they consume, such as exhibition and building materials, water and paper, and reduce their waste. This also includes encouraging visitors to be aware of environmentally sustainable methods in their lives and, more specifically, how environmental considerations influences the visitors.

By social sustainability, we mean how museums engage with many communities and actively develop new audiences, by considering the concerns of local people alongside those of experts. For example, museums can increase their social sustainability by deepening and diversifying their relationship with audiences. They should reflect the diversity of society in all that they do. In particular, they need to find ways to maintain relationships with new audiences beyond the limits of a short-term audience-development project.

Please provide a maximum of twenty (20) images in in JPEG format. These images should be no less than 300 dpi and be at least 1000×1000 pixels in size. The image files must be of a suitable quality for reproduction and projection. For each image, please specify the following: a unique file name, a title, one line description, a photographer and a copyright holder.

As a priority, choose images that show those aspects of your museum that you wish to emphasise. In particular, provide images that display the nature and quality of the visitor experience of your building and exhibitions. It is most important that Judges should be able to form a clear idea of the quality and layout of your exhibitions and facilities from your selection of pictures. Choose images of events carefully to display your museum at its best. As a rough guide to what you should send, you might consider the following: 2-3 pictures of your museum in its setting in a town, city or countryside. Make sure that the architecture of your museum is clearly visible; 7-8 images of your museum’s exhibitions showing the design and layout and any important features that you wish to emphasise; 5-6 images of visitors enjoying your museum; 2-3 images of an important event in the history of your museum since its opening or re-opening after renovation.

These are NOT rules, they are suggestions so that your museum can be readily evaluated. If, in addition to photographs, you would also like to send any video/electronic materials, please submit these via a file-sharing website you should send EMF a notification of (to emf@europeanforum.museum) and please ensure that the files will be available for download for at least one month from the date you upload the files. We would appreciate the upload of complete folders rather than multiple uploads of individual files.

There is no special entry for the Council of Europe Museum Prize. All candidates for EMYA are automatically entered for the Council of Europe Museum Prize. The EMYA Judging Panel makes recommendations to the Council of Europe, who chooses and announces the winner separately from EMYA, usually in December of the year of judging. In order to qualify for the Council of Europe Prize, a museum must demonstrate professional excellence, innovative approach and public quality, as it must to qualify for EMYA, but it also has to correspond to one or more of the following specific criteria: promote respect for human rights and democratic institutions; maintain an open and inclusive policy aimed at bridging cultures, overcoming social and political borders; introduce innovative schemes of governance and management that enhance cultural democracy; present a European perspective, which may provide a dramatic interplay between a local identity and the European identity; establish conditions to ensure access by the widest possible public; use cutting-edge information and communication technology and provide a space for new cultural creation and mediation technologies; coach visitors towards new knowledge and ideas of good and responsible citizenship; promote heritage-based creativity and the development of the heritage sector of cultural industries.

This is the award presented by the Trustees of the European Museum Forum, the parent body of EMYA. The EMYA Judging Panel makes recommendations to the Trustees, but the decision to award or not to award is entirely a matter for the Trustees who may choose from a wider list of candidates than the one proposed by the EMYA Judges. There is, thus, no method of entry, except for applying for EMYA.

The Silletto Prize for Community Participation and Engagement is sponsored by the Silletto Trust and celebrates a deep, continuous and empowering involvement between a museum and its stakeholders, that places the museum as a point of orientation and reference at the centre of its communities, whether these be local, national, global or otherwise defined. The Prize is awarded to a museum that has entered for EMYA in the year of the award. There is no special application process.

A Special Commendation of the EMYA Judging Panel is given to a museum, which, in the opinion of the Judges, has made a distinguished achievement in a certain aspect or aspects of its work. While there is no fixed number of Special Commendations, very few are given and it is a mark of exceptional quality in the work of a museum.

The public quality of a museum is not a single feature but a sum of all the elements, which serve to enhance the experience of a visitor. From architecture to the publications in the shop, from displays, exhibitions, and the interpretation of objects, to a café, the welcome provided by staff and the educational or other public events programmes.

These are some of the questions that may help you reflect on the public quality of your museum: How well does your museum relate to and serve your public? How does it tell the stories of the collection to a wide range of audiences? Is accessibility and diversity build into the exhibitions and long-term displays? Are people who are economically and educationally disadvantaged made welcome? Does it engage in a dialogue with its visitors trying to speak clearly and in terms they would understand? Is your museum easy to find and accessible? Is it easy to visit for people who include the whole range of abilities and lack of them across society? Is your museum linguistically accessible – does it use or provide texts in more than one language? Does your museum provide information designed to be open to people of many different educational backgrounds and intellectual abilities? Does your museum run programmes for different audiences and participant groups? Is it parent-and-child friendly? Does your museum engages with its community? Does it respond to community concerns? Has it outreach programmes not just to schools and university, but also to community groups of many different kinds. Has it a robust set of educational and other social policies? Does your museum play a role in raising awareness within the local community of culture of the municipality, the region? Does it stimulate/promote heritage-based activities for local people and people from other regions/countries? Does it offer a range of facilities for example adequate toilet facilities including those for mobility impairments? Is there a café? (This may not always be essential.)Please note that the above list is not a list of requirements but an indication of some ways in which your museum might demonstrate its public quality. It should not be seen as a scorecard. Your museum may demonstrate its public service in other ways not contained in this list.

If the whole museum has not been renewed, candidates should indicate the percentage of the public space (i.e. not stores or offices etc.) which has been refurbished. The re-developed space should be no less than 75 percent of the whole space available to public. Large museums undertaking a phased renewal should consider submitting a number of phases in a single application (bearing in mind the four-year rule).

The Portimão Museum Prize for Welcoming, Inclusion and Belonging is sponsored by the Municipality of Portimão, Portugal and celebrates a friendly atmosphere of inclusion, where all elements of the museum, its physical environment, its human qualities, its displays and public programmes, contribute to making everyone feel they are valued and respected and belong in the museum. Portimão is committed to democratic access to culture (reflected in the Council of Europe Museum Prize being awarded to Portimão Museum in 2010) and welcomes hundreds of thousands of tourists every year. The Prize is awarded to a museum that has entered for EMYA in the year of the award. There is no special application process.

This award goes to a museum that demonstrates an exceptional commitment to reflecting and addressing issues of sustainability and environmental health in its collecting, documentation, displays and public programming as well as in the management of its own social, financial and physical resources. The award is sponsored by Meyvaert. See also FAQ 10 above.

The FeliX Art & Eco Museum is quite atypical: a museum site inspired by the avant-garde painter-farmer Felix De Boeck. We see the atypical as a unique and pioneering opportunity to evolve into an ensemble where the art museum is nurtured bottom-up into a community museum. We help give a future to heritage objects, intangible heritage, and nature experiences of the region. Located on the outskirts of Brussels, a place between the metropolitan and the rural whit a diverse linguistic mix, the museum inspires togetherness. At the intersection of all our initiatives is contributing to developing a sense of community in harmony with our environment. The EMYA nomination proves that it is possible to inspire from a local or regional project, even at an international level. For our museum team, this nomination is a recognition of our work and a reward to our many volunteers, visitors, and neighbors. And we plow on, just as the painter-farmer did... 

To be nominated for EMYA with a museum storage facility is very thrilling to the whole museum organization of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, from the director to the art handlers, conservators to educators. As the museum shows just 6-8% of the museum collection, visitors asked us regularly about the rest of it. Since we were able to build a brand new storage facility, we were able to give it a twist and make the whole museum collection accessible to the visitors. We are delighted that this new museum typology is reason for the EMYA nomination. Our desire to go beyond art history and to tell the story of art through the objects, materials and means of conservation, has been acknowledged by the jury. It is a great pleasure to share our experience within the museum world and shed a new light on means of exhibiting collections. EMYA brings the Depot on the European stage.

Years ago, when I started working at L’ETNO, the museum was one of those relatively small ethnographic museums visitors felt little interest for and knew little about. As a young generation of curators then, we decided we wanted to change things, to improve, to make the museum grow into something relevant. We looked at other museums seeking examples to follow, and we found several of the ones we liked had already been recognized by EMYA. That’s how we learn about EMYA and its contest, but the wish of being part of EMYA felt then too far to be reached. Life is full of surprises however, years have gone by and L’ETNO is now an EMYA nominee and nothing can be so exciting for us as a team. The perspective of sharing our work with colleges in an international context, of exchanging experiences and views that EMYA poses for us, is already a prize difficult to imagine all those years ago.

Joan Seguí. L’ETNO (Valencian Museum of Ethnology)

We discovered EMYA while searching many national and international museums and applied for the competition. After the EMYA jury accepted our application, we were honored for being invited to the finals in Barcelona as a result the visits and examinations in our museum that were realized by the distinguished members of the jury. It created an excitement in our organization of 350,000 people.

Together with EMYA, the idea of getting familiar with different perspectives of other museums, developing ourselves by communicating with them and being together inspires us. We are honored to be a part of EMYA which enables us to develop ourselves further by opening new horizons in the field of museology.

We were honoured to be one of the Nominees. I was really impressed by the diversity of all Nominees. It was really inspiring to see all the different narratives and different perspectives.

EMYA 2016 changed my professional life and was one of the most important meetings in my whole professional career. To have been nominated for this prestigious award was a reward in itself. But the best reward was the pleasure and honour of meeting all those incredible wonderful colleagues who do such great and important work for European people.

EMYA made it possible to meet colleagues full of passion with whom I had the most important exchanges and inspiring talks. For the first time I started to understand fully the importance of cultural heritage. It is worth standing up and fighting for our heritage. Never have I understood the European Idea so well as during those days in Spain. It will not be politics which keep Europe together it will be European culture.