British Museum Sets Second Fundraising Ball for October as Red Becomes the Theme
The British Museum will stage its second fundraising ball on 17 October, returning to Frieze Week in London with a higher ticket price and a more ambitious financial target. Tickets for the evening will cost £3,500 per person, including a donation, according to a museum spokesperson. The event is intended to support the institution’s masterplan, which is estimated to cost at least £1bn.
That masterplan is not a cosmetic refresh. It includes a full reworking of the museum’s Western range, new welcome pavilions, and an energy center designed to lower the building’s carbon footprint. In other words, the ball is being positioned as a vehicle for one of the most consequential capital projects in the museum’s recent history.
Es Devlin is the artistic director for the 2026 Ball. The British designer, whose large-scale installations include Library of Us, unveiled at Miami Beach last December, said the event will help the museum continue to offer free immediate access to more than six million people each year and to two million years of human history.
The visual identity for the evening will be red. The museum says the color was the earliest pigment known to have been used by humans in artistic expression, and it has tied the theme to three forthcoming displays: the Bayeux Tapestry, Declaring independence: USA 250, and Korea. The museum described red as a unifying thread across those presentations, from embroidered wool and the stripes of the American flag to the saturated tones of Korean art.
Hedge fund billionaire Igor Tulchinsky will serve as the evening’s honorary chair. The museum says the role recognizes his support for the forthcoming Bayeux Tapestry exhibition, for which he has reportedly given £5m in sponsorship. Tulchinsky, who emigrated to the United States from Belarus as a child, founded WorldQuant, the quantitative investment firm with $17bn in assets, according to Forbes.
The museum’s first Pink Ball, held last year, raised more than £2m and grossed £2.5m before expenses. More than 800 guests attended, including former UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, London Mayor Sadiq Khan, Grayson Perry, and Tracey Emin. The evening was interrupted by a climate protester during a speech by George Osborne, the museum’s chair of trustees, and later drew criticism from Greece’s Ministry of Culture over the use of the disputed Parthenon sculptures as a backdrop for diners.
This year’s event suggests the British Museum is continuing to use high-profile social occasions to underwrite long-term institutional change, even as those occasions remain politically charged.
BritishMuseum EsDevlin FriezeWeek MuseumFundraising BayeuxTapestry London
