The Historical Museum presented exhibition plans for 2026

Next year, the Historical Museum will organize 19 exhibition projects, 13 of which will open in different regions of Russia.

The main exhibition project of the year and a highlight of the international cultural dialogue will be a large-scale display of the legendary terracotta army of the Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huang, one of the main archaeological wonders of the world. The exhibition will feature more than 240 exhibits. The exhibition "Terracotta Army of the first Emperor of China" will open in October 2026.

"It will be a truly large-scale cultural event. We held talks with our colleagues from the Shaanxi Provincial Cultural Heritage Promotion Center and the Qin Shi Huang Emperor Mausoleum Museum and signed a corresponding memorandum, which allows us to start working on the project. We plan to bring to Moscow unique full—size figures of warriors, weapons, ancient jewelry and household items from the Qin era (3rd century BC), revealing the history of the tomb, its significance for world culture, as well as its enormous historical, scientific and artistic value," said Alexey Levykin, General Director of the Historical Museum.

The three halls of the renovated permanent exhibition of the Historical Museum will open in September 2026. The new exhibition will allow us to build a logically completed narrative about the history of Russia in the second half of the 19th – early 20th century, highlighting a number of key events in the country's past. The exposition is planned to be made more spectacular by including new, attractive complexes of museum objects and the introduction of modern technologies, and to strengthen multimedia and information support for the exposition.

In June, an exhibition dedicated to Vera Mukhina, a female sculptor, will open as part of a joint project between the Historical Museum and ROSIZO. In addition to original easel works, sketches and projects, the exhibition will feature historical photographs, reconstructions of architectural details and fragments of monumental sculpture.

The exhibition "Breakthrough into the Future" will tell about how the Russian avant-garde made a splash in Paris at the 1925 World's Fair. Seven thematic sections of the exhibition will present the interiors and iconic exhibits of the Soviet pavilion, which marked the artistic triumph of the USSR at the World Exhibition. The exhibition will open in July at the Exhibition Complex of the Historical Museum.

The year will end with the opening of a joint exhibition project of the Historical Museum and the State Archive of the Russian Federation dedicated to the royal meal. The exhibition will present a variety of artistically decorated menus for ceremonial receptions and family dinners of the Imperial House of Romanov from the collection of the State Archive of the Russian Federation, as well as diary entries, photographs and drawings depicting imperial feasts. Items directly served on the imperial table, ceremonial and everyday sets belonging to members of the House of Romanov from the collection of the State Historical Museum will help recreate the atmosphere of the royal dinners.

The Tula branch of the Historical Museum will have a rich exhibition program in 2026. The Treasures of the Regimental Museums exhibition will open in February, showcasing unique relics of regimental museums and churches, as well as officer's collections.

In November 2026, the exhibition "From Renaissance to Art Nouveau. Masterpieces of artistic silver from the collection of the Historical Museum". The exhibition will present different periods in the development of jewelry art in the world's leading centers of artistic culture. Visitors will be able to get an idea of artistic development, changes in style and fashion, about the national peculiarities of jewelry, about the history of the existence of precious metal products and their collecting in Russia.

The Moscow Kremlin Museums and the Tsarskoye Selo Museum Reserve will present their collections at the Historical Museum branch next year. The Kremlin's White Gold exhibition, representing the Kremlin porcelain collection, will open in August.

In September, the Tsarskoye Selo Museum-Reserve will present the exhibition "The Poet and the Tsar" at the branch of the State Museum of Fine Arts. The exhibition is dedicated to Pushkin's difficult relationship with the authorities through the prism of the poet's work. The exhibition will feature sections on the poet's relationship with emperors Alexander I and Nicholas I, as well as materials about Boris Godunov, Peter I and Catherine II, to whose images Pushkin referred in his work.

Next year, a number of Russian regions will also host exhibitions from the Historical Museum: in February, the exhibition "Antique Vases" will open in Novosibirsk; medieval knight armor will be brought to Ryazan as part of the Royal Games exhibition; "Precious Orders" will be shown to residents of Ulyanovsk, masterpieces of artistic silver will be seen in Yaroslavl, residents of Rostov will be told about the traditions of the Russian wedding, Khanty-Mansiysk and Tobolsk, and the exhibition "Imperial Russia" will open in the Perm Art Gallery.