Dance your way into a host of museums under a silvery moon, starry sky, or dark blanket of night fog (depending on the autumn weather Vienna throws at you) in this annual evening of museum festivities.
- One ticket for dozens of locations
- Many offer something extra for the evening
- Other activities (like sightseeing tours) may participate
- Museums stay open late
- 2025 date: Oct 4
- Book a classical concert* for your trip
- See also:
What’s it all about?
(Signature banners pop up at participating institutions)
The ORF Long Night of Museums (German: ORF Lange Nacht der Museen) is when all the exhibits come alive and (sorry, obvious joke).
No, it’s one day of the year when a huge number of museums and similar institutions open late, and a single ticket gets you into as many of them as you want to visit.
This is more than just a cheap and cheerful way to see a few museums.
First, just about every museum you’ve heard of (and many you haven’t) participates, so the choice is huge.
Second, the museums tend to put on special tours or events just for the occasion. So you might run into a concert at the historical instrument collection, watch restoration work at the Furniture Museum, or join an Indonesian dance workshop at the Weltmuseum.
(The Baroque state hall of the National Library regularly participates)
Third, thousands of people (over 150,000 at the last event) create a lovely atmosphere as they mill about the streets late at night, soaking up science, art, culture, history, and anything you might find in a glass cabinet.
One year, for example, the Albertina displayed Albrecht Dürer’s famous Young Hare watercolour for the evening; it otherwise only appears every few years or so.
The queue was huge, but nobody lost their patience. And a sponsor fed us snacks while we waited. The finest art and chocolate: what more do you need?
The whole thing is a nationwide event organised by ORF, which is Austria’s state media company (similar to the UK’s BBC).
Obviously, most of the special tours and events are in German, but not all.
At the previous edition, for example, the Kunsthistorisches Museum, National Library, and Leopold Museum explicitly offered English-language guided tours as part of their contribution to the event.
2025 dates and highlights
The event has always been on the first Saturday of October. So the 2025 “night” takes place on October 4th.
Times last time out were 6pm to midnight.
ORF kindly posts a website which should have all the details of timings, locations, activities and similar as they emerge. An overview of participating museums in Vienna is normally available in English.
Our schedule one year, for example, included a talk on Viennese coffee culture at the coffee museum, the treasury at the Deutschordenshaus, a Hieronymus Bosch exhibition, a crash course in Esperanto at the Esperanto Museum, and lifting a bar of gold at the Museum of Money at the National Bank.
At another event, we enjoyed an evening tour of the Stadtpalais Liechtenstein: the Baroque town house of the Princes of Liechtenstein, which the current prince had just restored completely for around €100 million.
Ticket & visitor tips
One ticket is all you need. A standard adult ticket costs €19 with concessions available and under 12s going free.
I await full 2025 details, but the following info applied in 2024:
- Tickets were easy to get hold of. On the day itself, you could, for example:
- …purchase one from the traditional information point on Maria-Theresien-Platz (between the Naturhistorisches and Kunsthistorisches museums)
- …or buy one from any participating museum
- Your ticket was valid for the hours of the event, during which time you could also use it as a pass for the special shuttle buses that operated
- The ticket also counted as a network travel pass for public transport in Vienna from 5.30pm on the day to 12.30am the following day
- You could find other included travel experiences, such as a ride on a sightseeing bus
The night “only” lasts a few hours, so use the ORF site to plan your schedule carefully. With tens of thousands of people participating, queues can develop for the more popular locations.
My tip: use the early evening to explore some of the less well-known museums and leave the heavyweights until late, when crowds have begun to thin.
And, if you need help finding your way to places that fit your interests, here’s my museum guide.