Sludge G, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
V&A East Museum
Free to walk into, ticketed for the headline show — and not the Hackney Wick Storehouse.
Reasons to check it out
- East Bank, 107 Carpenters Road, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Stratford E20 2AR — about 10 minutes' walk from Stratford station
- Open daily 10:00–18:00, and until 22:00 on Thursday and Saturday. General admission is free and needs no booking; the V&A warns there may be a queue
- The permanent 'Why We Make' galleries are free: two floors, more than 500 objects, ten themes, co-designed with the V&A East Youth Collective
- 'The Music is Black: A British Story' is ticketed separately, and the price moves with the day: £22.50 weekday, £24.50 weekend, with concessions quoted from £10. Check the total at booking
- The strike closures were 4–5 September 2026 and the building reopened on the 6th; an overtime ban and work-to-rule continue indefinitely, so check the V&A's alerts the morning you travel
Two things about this building are true at once and listings tend to carry only the first. Entry is free, permanently, with no booking. The exhibition everyone is coming for is not.
That is not a complaint. It is a floor plan. A museum that gives away its permanent collection and charges for its temporary headline show has made a structural decision about who it is for, and knowing which half you are walking into decides how much of a day you need and what you spend.
One housekeeping note before you set out. This building closed on 4 and 5 September 2026 for a staff strike and reopened on the 6th — those two days are the whole closure. What continues is quieter: PCS members began an overtime ban, work-to-rule and withdrawal of cooperation on 4 September, running indefinitely. That thins staffing and can shut individual rooms or services on the day; it does not shut the building. Read the V&A's own alert banner the morning you go rather than trusting anything written in advance, this page included.
Two V&A Easts, and this is the Stratford one
The correction worth making, because guides make this mistake constantly: V&A East Museum and V&A East Storehouse are two separate buildings with two separate addresses.
This page is the Museum — East Bank, 107 Carpenters Road, E20 2AR, in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, opened 18 April 2026.
The Storehouse is at 2 Parkes Street, E20 3AX, inside the Here East building over towards Hackney Wick, and it is a different proposition entirely — a working collection store you walk into, where you can order an individual object out of storage if you book at least two weeks ahead. Near covers the Storehouse separately, including the £5 the David Bowie Centre started charging in July 2026.
They are a walk apart, not a borough apart, and doing both in one day is reasonable. But they are not interchangeable, and a ticket, an opening time or a review attached to one tells you nothing reliable about the other.
What the free half actually holds
The Why We Make galleries are the permanent, free heart of the place: two floors, more than 500 objects, arranged across ten themes — identity, representation, wellbeing, social justice, environmental action — rather than by date or department.
They were co-designed with the V&A East Youth Collective, and the thematic arrangement is the consequence of that, not decoration on top of it. A chronological hang tells you what happened. A thematic one asks what an object is doing there, which is a harder question and a more argumentative room.
The holdings run from Alexander McQueen and Leigh Bowery's performance costumes to a William Morris-patterned Walthamstow FC shirt. That last one is the whole curatorial thesis compressed into a single object.
The Music is Black, and what it costs
The opening exhibition is The Music is Black: A British Story — 125 years of Black British music, built around more than 200 objects and over 120 tracks played to you through headsets as you move.
On the price, the published figures do not agree, and there is a reason for that: the ticket costs more at the weekend. The split is £22.50 on a weekday and £24.50 on a Saturday or Sunday, which is why one official page can say £22.50 and another can say "full price from £20" and neither is lying. The V&A's own exhibition page lists £22.50 full, £11 under-26, £11 student, £10 Art Fund, free for members; the Olympic Park's listing quotes "from £20" full and concessions "from £10".
So pick your day deliberately, and take the basket total as the only figure that is actually yours.
The closing date is contested too: the V&A page says it closes Sunday 10 January 2027, the Olympic Park says 3 January 2027.
Londonist's review flagged one real drawback — the headset audio overlapping and running a little overwhelming. Worth knowing if that is a thing you find tiring rather than immersive.
Hours, and the day this belongs to
Daily 10:00–18:00, with Thursday and Saturday running to 22:00. Unusually for this batch, the aggregators have these right; the V&A's figures and the third-party listings agree, which is not something to assume.
Stratford station is about ten minutes' walk, and the free galleries mean you can give the building forty minutes or three hours without having pre-committed money to either.
Going east to west, this is the far end of a real day: the Gilbert & George Centre in Spitalfields, the Old Truman Brewery on Brick Lane, then out here. From King's Cross it is a straightforward run across town.
Go on a Thursday or Saturday if you want the building after dark. Check the alerts before you leave either way.
Sources: V&A East Museum — Visit, V&A East — venue overview, V&A — The Music is Black: A British Story, V&A East Storehouse — Visit, PCS — V&A workers announce strike dates, Museums Association — Workers at V&A's London sites vote in favour of strike action, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park — The Music Is Black: A British Story, Visit London — Inside the V&A East Museum, Londonist — Review: V&A East Comes To Stratford
