There are New Year’s Eve parties, and then there is dancing underneath a 25-metre blue whale. The Natural History Museum is bringing back its annual New Year’s Eve party for a tenth year, and this time guests will count down to midnight in the shadow of some of the oldest objects on Earth.
The museum’s Hintze Hall party takes place on 31 December, running from 8pm until 1.30am. It is an adults-only event, open to guests aged 18 and over, and tickets start at £117 for museum members and £130 for non-members.
The star of the night, as ever, is Hope. The 25-metre blue whale skeleton hangs above Hintze Hall, and partygoers will mingle beneath it as the evening unfolds. Around the hall, guests can sing to rocks older than the solar system and dance near a 13,000-year-old American mastodon, a reminder that this is a New Year’s Eve venue quite unlike any other in London.
Music across the museum
Music will spread through the museum’s galleries rather than staying in one room. Old Dirty Brasstards, a 10-piece brass band, will play a mix of party hits and indie classics, while the Earth Hall hosts a multi-channel silent disco where guests can dance among Sophie the Stegosaurus and fragments of the Moon.
The musical offering ranges from club classics to chart-toppers, so there is something for every taste as the night builds towards midnight. For those who want a quieter moment, ZooLab will run ethical animal handling sessions through the evening.
It is a formula that has clearly worked. A tenth annual party is no small milestone for a museum event, and the museum has kept the core of the night — the hall, the whale, the countdown — while refreshing what surrounds it. Londoners looking for a big night out this winter have no shortage of options, from the summer festival dates already announced for 2027 to the capital’s museum exhibitions, but few combine a party and a natural history collection quite like this one.
A first for the countdown
This year brings a first for the party. Guests will be able to count down to midnight alongside a long-necked plesiosaur in the museum’s latest exhibition, Jurassic Oceans: Monsters of the Deep. It is a fitting companion for a midnight moment: a creature from an ancient ocean, greeting a new year.
Visitors on the night will also be able to view 400,000-year-old hand-crafted objects in the previously hidden Nature and Us gallery, a space that has only recently opened to the public. The gallery adds a quieter, more reflective counterpoint to the dancing elsewhere in the building.
Elsewhere, the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition will be open throughout the night. Featuring images selected from a record-breaking 65,000 entries, it is one of the museum’s most popular annual shows, and it gives partygoers something remarkable to wander through between sets. Like the blockbuster exhibitions drawing crowds elsewhere in London, it is a reminder of how much the capital’s museums pack into a single evening.
Tickets and VIP
VIP ticket holders will be greeted with a free drink on arrival and will have access to a private dance floor, a perk for those who want their own space within the larger party.
Standard tickets start at £117 for members and £130 for non-members. With the event running from 8pm to 1.30am, guests get a full evening in the museum, from the first drink beneath the whale to the final countdown beside the plesiosaur.
For anyone still deciding how to see in the new year, the museum’s offer is a distinctive one: a party in a cathedral of natural history, under a whale, among dinosaurs and ancient oceans, ending with a countdown 400,000 years in the making.
