Heritage

Key figures

Immovable heritage
The RCE has been collecting data on the state of Dutch movable, immovable, intangible and digital heritage for years. Facts and figures on built and archaeological monuments, museums and collections and historical landscapes are presented in the Heritage monitorBy the end of 2025, the Netherlands will have 61.635 built national monuments, including mills, castles, churches and landscaped green areas, such as parks and country estate gardens. By far the largest part However, it consists of houses and housing complexes (31.504), followed by farms, mills, and businesses (9.889). The Netherlands also has 1.465 national archaeological monuments, one of which is located off the coast in the North Sea. There are no recent, complete figures available for provincial and municipal monuments.

Museums and movable heritage
The 621 Dutch museums received 31,9 million visitors in 2024, of which more than a quarter came from abroad. More than half of all museums are located in North and South Holland and Gelderland. Total revenue amounted to 1,39 billion euros, half of which came from own income and private contributions. More than 47.500 people work in the museum sector, two-thirds of whom are interns or volunteers. Slightly more than half of the museums are small museums, with total revenues of up to 400.000 euros per year. Slightly more than one hundred museums are large museums, with revenues of more than 3,2 million euros on an annual basis. Almost two out of three museums are history museums, while one in five is an art museum (CBS 2025a, CBS 2025b).

Challenges and Threats: Protecting Heritage

Much heritage is vulnerable, and to preserve it, it is necessary to continue managing, practicing, and protecting it. The government has been doing this since 1875 and celebrated 150 years of monument conservation in 2025 (Loeff 2025). How to preserve and manage heritage has been regulated since 2016 in the Heritage ActSince January 1, 2024, the handling of heritage in the physical living environment in the new environmental code regulated. This concerns matters such as the environmental permit for national monuments, the appointment of a spatial environmental quality committee, or taking cultural heritage into account in environmental plans. Municipalities have until 2030 to adopt environmental plans. In contrast, the Archives Act still from 1995. Create a 2021 bill The law to better align with modern, digital information management has still not been adopted.

At the same time, heritage remains vulnerable. In this area, various challenges and threats can be identified. How do we protect physical heritage against decay and damage or destruction? How do we make heritage climate-resilient and protect it against extreme weather, such as drought and floods, or, in the Caribbean, tropical storms? In his second Status of the execution which the RCE published in 2025, the service drew attention to this. First, it pointed out the need for better protection of heritage during crises:In the Netherlands, the broader debate on heritage protection, safety, and societal resilience still requires significant steps. A concrete and coordinated strategy to effectively protect heritage in crisis situations is lacking. In addition, there are challenges regarding the preservation of major monuments, spatial planning tasks and digital infrastructure, and municipalities struggling with capacity shortages in heritage management and policy implementation (RCE 2025). In all cases, the question revolves around how to ensure that heritage is not lost.

Resilient heritage
In December 2024, then-Minister Bruins indicated that heritage had to be included in the national crisis plans regarding what to do in the event of wildfires, high water, and terrorism or war. The resilience of the sector must be increased in the context of the increased threat of war in Europe. Therefore, a new Safe Heritage Taskforce was established at the end of 2024 (Bruins 2024). This task force is a collaborative partnership of the Ministries of Defence and Education, Culture and Science, other government agencies and heritage organizations and “aims to raise awareness of risks and threats in the heritage field and to help the heritage sector on its way to better protecting the heritages it manages against hybrid threatsFour working groups have been established to examine risk analysis, network formation, practical requirements, and cybersecurity. Meanwhile, a list of sources with information about Safe Heritage published by the RCE. The Museum Association also has a for museums list of precautions to be taken drawn up and also in 2026 a resilience roadmap expats must register with the local municipality and obtain a selection framework prioritization drafted. In May 2025, the Dutch UNESCO Commission, Blue Shield Netherlands, and Cultural Emergency Response organized the very first Resilient Heritage Action Day. Dozens of organizations and more than 1.000 participants collaborated on raising awareness, cooperation, and taking concrete actions to protect heritage against physical and digital threats (van Eck 2025).

Cultural heritage has been included in the National Climate Adaptation Implementation Programme of the central government (see also the theme page) Sustainability). This includes actions to better protect cultural heritage against climate change in the future. In addition, the program describes how knowledge of the past and heritage can be used in climate adaptation measures. The Museum Association is also one of the partners in the new program. Sustainable Cultural Sector, which has published a Roadmap for the Sustainability of Culture for the cultural and creative sector. The emphasis herein lies on CO² reduction.

De Heritage Deal supported projects until the end of 2025 that integrated the preservation and use of heritage with climate adaptation, energy transition, sustainable economy, nature and agriculture, the housing challenge, and mobility. An evaluation of the 51 projects initiated over seven years showed that they contributed at the local level to strengthening cultural heritage within spatial transition challenges. More broadly, an increase is visible in the extent to which heritage is involved in spatial transition challenges, but it is still far from being a matter of course everywhere. In the future, awareness, funding, capacity, good examples, and administrative attention will remain important (Meurs et al. 2025).

That this remains a challenge is also evident from the joint response from FIM, Kunsten '92, and FRK on the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment's first draft National Spatial Planning Policy Document in thirty years. According to the three parties, there is too limited attention paid to heritage in this document. Regional and local heritage and cultural landscapes are not included, or included insufficiently. The impact on current UNESCO World Heritage sites such as the Wadden Sea, the Dutch Water Line, and the Beemster must also be better mapped out. This latter point was also raised by various Members of Parliament in the summer of 2025. At the same time, heritage can also help address these challenges by focusing more on restoration rather than demolition and new construction. This is cheaper and emits significantly less CO₂.² from (FIM et al. 2025, House of Representatives 2025, Feddes 2025).

Even stronger criticism came from the court in early 2026. According to the judges, the Dutch State must do more to combat the impact of climate change on Bonaire. This also threatens the island's cultural heritage: due to rising sea levels, for example, the iconic slave houses in the south of the island are in danger of being swallowed by the sea. The court has now given the State 18 months to set new climate targets (van Ammelrooy, van de Water 2026, Boon 2025).

Old and new heritage to be protected
The state of national monuments, archaeological monuments, and physical heritage in the Netherlands and the Caribbean sometimes gives cause for concern. Heritage is deteriorating, is not registered as a monument, or has been damaged or irreparably altered through repurposing (Toebosch 2024, Gräper 2024b, Koren 2024). A major challenge is how to arrange the restoration and preservation of this heritage structurally, financially, and organizationally. The heritage sector itself, the RCE, and municipalities and provinces all identify urgent problems regarding capacity shortages at municipalities, pressure on implementation capacities within the sector, inadequate ad hoc funding, and insufficient attention to heritage within spatial planning objectives to design the living environment (RCE 2025, FIM et al. 2024, IPO, VNG 2024).

In response to this, then-Minister Bruins allocated additional funds in 2025 to improve heritage care at the municipal and provincial levels, for the Inspectorate of Government Information and Heritage, for the restoration of major monuments, specifically church buildings, and for maritime archaeological heritage. One of the goals is to reduce restoration backlogs at national monuments to the previously established target of below 10 percent, whereas it currently stands at 12,4 percent. However, the vast majority of this funding is a one-off rather than structural and certainly does not resolve all backlogs and problems (Bruins 2024, Bruins 2025a, Bruins 2025b).
 
At the same time, our national immovable heritage is also increasing in size. In 2025, for the first time in more than twenty years, the government designated dozens of buildings as national monuments. These include 15 buildings from the Post-65 period after 1965 and 45 gift homes that the Netherlands received from various countries following the North Sea Flood of 1953.. It will not stop there: the central government is also considering protecting military heritage, both from before 1945 and from the Cold War period. Thus, what constitutes heritage and what needs to be protected continues to evolve (Hannema 2025, Raad voor Cultuur 2025a).

Museum heritage in turbulent times: indispensable but not invulnerable

The most important guardians of our movable heritage are the hundreds of museums in the Netherlands. On February 27, 2026, the Museum Association celebrated its centenary. In honor of this, the association received the designation Royal (Scharloo 2026). According to the most recent figures, 473 of the 621 museums in the Netherlands are members, which together received more than 96 percent of all museum visitors. They all endorse the Museum Standard, which was revised in 2025, and are registered via Museumregister Nederland. The standard now aligns with the ICOM museum definition revised in 2022 and also acknowledges the changing practices and societal role of museums. Together, these museums generated more than 1,3 billion euros in revenue and provided employment to some 44.000 people (CBS 2025b, Veldkamp et al. 2025, Museumvereniging 2025a).

The Museum Card will have more than 1,5 million cardholders by the end of 2025. a great successTheir numbers increase every year, and they made more than 9,7 million museum visits. On average, they visited a museum 6,46 times. 7 out of 10 Dutch people consider museums simply indispensable. However, indispensable does not mean invulnerable. The past year was also a turbulent one for museums, which showed above all that they can be vulnerable, both individually and collectively, to economic and financial setbacks, censorship, and theft (Museumvereniging 2025b).

Where are the visitors?
In 2024 and 2023, nearly 32 million people visited a museum, but that was still 2 million fewer than in 2019. The reason for this decline of approximately 5 percent is not clear: people over 65 are clearly visiting museums less often, and the same applies to foreign visitors. This is despite the fact that both the number of people over 65 and the number of foreign tourists are higher than in 2019. A possible explanation lies in the increased admission prices, which have kept pace with inflation and are now more than a fifth higher than five years ago. As a result, people may be opting for other day attractions instead, according to research by Hendrik Beerda Brand Consultancy. Art museums, which have always been more popular with foreign visitors, are feeling this decline most acutely: visitor numbers are still more than 12 percent below pre-corona pandemic levels. For other museums, the decline is significantly lower at 5 percent (CBS 2025b, CBS 2025c, Beerda 2025).

Financial vulnerability
Partly thanks to rising admission prices, museum revenue has increased faster than inflation since 2015. At the same time, many museums remain financially vulnerable and are directly feeling the impact of a decline in visitors. For the last two years, visitor numbers have remained at the 2015 level. Medium-sized and small museums, in particular, continue to struggle: they are dealing with fewer visitors and revenues, as well as rising costs. As many as 45 percent of museums are suffering losses averaging 65.000 euros per year. Moreover, museums remain dependent on government support and private contributions for more than sixty percent of their income (see also the page). Culture and money flows) (Veldkamp et al. 2025).
 
In addition to the financial added value of the Museum CardFor many museums, which can attract nearly a quarter more visitors, government support from the national government, the province, or the municipality is crucial. Whether or not they receive support can make the difference between a museum's continued existence. Panorama Mesdag has been a national museum since January 1, 2026, and thus receives direct funding from the national government, after struggling financially following the COVID-19 years, partly due to structurally lower visitor numbers. This makes the museum an exception: it was only the second time since 2001 that a museum became a national museum and thereby falls under the Heritage Act. The Groninger Museum is currently facing financial difficulties and is in negotiations with the province and municipality regarding financial assistance. The National Education Museum in Dordrecht was in danger of no longer receiving government support from 2027 and consequently having to close, but was saved in the spring of 2026 after the House of Representatives decided to maintain the subsidy and even increase it (van Speijk 2025, Pronk 2025, van Ruiten, Brouwer 2025, Sok 2026).

Intrusion and burglary
Attention to heritage is always strongly linked to prevailing societal and political issues and developments (van Oost 2024). Museums worldwide are under increasing pressure due to their exhibitions, but also due to their societal positioning. Pressure on museums—and even censorship, particularly in the US and some European countries—has increased sharply over the past year, both from society and from national or local politics. In most cases, this pressure on their functioning comes from the radical right or conservative quarters. Concerns regarding this intrusion, societal polarization, and the online and even physical threats stemming from it, as noted by the Museum Association, also exist within Dutch museums. It is not without reason that the Raad voor Cultuur early 2026 in his report Making (without) pressureto better protect artistic freedom by law in the Netherlands. The art thefts at the Drents Museum in Assen and the Zilvermuseum in Doesburg underscore that burglaries can still hit museums hard – with the increasing use of heavy explosives. The security of exhibitions and artworks remains a challenge, partly due to the high costs (Friedman et al. 2025, NEMO 2025, Dijksterhuis 2025, Museumvereniging 2025c, Wesselingh, Carasso 2025, Schnabel et al. 2026, Ouhajji, Pinedo 2026).

Access to heritage: for whom is it and by whom is it, and who can participate?

Heritage is not only important for an awareness of our past, but also gives meaning to present and future society. This meaning-making is a constant process carried out by various parties and groups (Muzaini and Minca 2018). At the same time, that meaning is far from unambiguous, and heritage institutions, communities, and practitioners face challenges regarding the questions of who heritage belongs to and for, and who can and may participate in it. As historian Valika Smeulders states:

"Heritage is a selection – it is the tangible that is preserved, and the intangible that is remembered, which is passed down from generation to generation. These actions, the preservation and the remembering, primarily take place within a group context. Heritage is therefore often linked to a group perspective. But heritage is also elevated to national platforms, raising the question of which stories are selected as eloquent and exemplary for a society as a whole.” (Smeulders 2025)

Cultural practice from the Culture to Faro
One of the challenges for governments is better reaching and supporting the various heritage communities with their diverse movable and intangible heritage and their heritage practices and initiatives: research from 2023 identified just under 3.000 groups, and that was a lower limit. The Boekman Extra #47 published in December 2024 Intangible heritage policy in the Netherlands. Heritage in motion delves deeper into the heritage policy of various cabinets in this area (Goossens et al. 2025, van der Leden 2024).
 
The Dutch UNESCO Commission already advised politicians in late 2023 to develop policies that do justice to the diversity and variety of cultural expressions in the Netherlands, including theCultureThe committee called for greater appreciation, stimulation, and more effective utilization of the rich diversity of heritage practice in the Netherlands. More specifically, bicultural youth and communities lack representation in traditional cultural institutions and funds, as a result of which they are not well reached and lack recognition within the system. In 2026, the committee pointed out in a new report, Priceless. Investing in heritage communities, once again highlighting the gap between heritage communities on the one hand and governments and funds on the other. She calls for more cooperation based on trust and a fairer and more accessible funding system for heritage groups (Bedaux et al. 2026).
 
In January 2024, the Netherlands has the Treaty of Faro signed. This international treaty places people and society at the center, as well as their relationship with heritage. The most important principle is that every person has the right to be involved with heritage and to give it their own meaning. It is expected that the treaty will be ratified in 2027. In June 2025, the advised Raad voor Cultuur to safeguard the core objectives of the treaty in policy at national, provincial and municipal levels. Four out of five municipalities are already familiar with Faro and its core objectives, but fewer than four out of ten have so far incorporated one or more of these objectives into their policy objectives (Raad voor Cultuur 2025b, Goossens et al. 2025).
 
In January 2025, the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW), the Association of Netherlands Municipalities (VNG), and the Interprovincial Consultation (IPO) jointly drafted agreements on intangible heritage and heritage participation for the first time in the administrative agreements on cultural practice 2025–2028. With this, the government aims to strengthen heritage practice through better support for heritage practitioners. In this way, a strong ecosystem for cultural practice should be fostered and a connection sought between culture and socio-societal challenges (Bruins et al. 2025).

More democratic heritage and heritage projects of regional and migrant communities
In recent years, meanwhile, partly inspired by the UNESCO report and Faro, various initiatives have been launched to improve access to and participation in heritage. The Living Heritage Network, established at the end of 2024, is committed to improving collaboration between communities, volunteer organizations, and professional partners. One of the key priorities is more democratic heritage researchThe National Research Council for Heritage also calls for this in its first research agenda 2026-2030. In addition, the council aims to stimulate collaboration within the entire knowledge chain and organize heritage research in learning networks around seven core themes(NOE 2025).
 
The provincial heritage centres, organised in the OPEN foundation, published their Heritage Strategy 2029 in 2025, in which they focus on a strong infrastructure for heritage practice and place the strengthening of the value of heritage for society and the heritage practitioner at the centre (OPEN 2025). Furthermore, in 2025, the KIEN has its inventory renewed, in which safeguarding has become more central and the barrier for heritage communities to register their heritage has been lowered. Finally, the Fund for Cultural Participation has opened a new scheme in early 2026, Co-creation – Communities, intended for (intangible) heritage projects by or with communities. In this context, the Netherlands also collaborates with the Caribbean part of the Kingdom. Intangible heritage in the Caribbean Netherlands – on Bonaire, Saba, and Sint Eustatius – has become a permanent part of the cultural agenda. Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao, Saba, Sint Eustatius, and Sint Maarten are each working on compiling their own inventory of intangible heritage (Dijkgraaf 2024, Gräper 2024a).
 
At the same time, it remains a challenge to actually translate the polyphony within society and the diverse heritage communities into the heritage field. Research among regional communities and postcolonial and other migrant groups shows that attention and recognition from official bodies are appreciated, but also that many groups still experience exclusion and lack structural recognition and financial and other support for documentation and archiving (Simons, Bergwerff 2025, Elahi 2025, Bedaux et al. 2026). In the absence of formal recognition and safeguards, communities take the initiative themselves. One example is the long-standing The Black Archives, but also to initiatives by Podiumkunst.net and VibeLab surrounding the archiving of night culture, from Dutch Hip Hop Archive and Culture Capsule to collaborate with Wikimedia Netherlands to document the history of hip hop online or in The Need for Legacy around the archiving of Black theater makers.

Diversity and digital access to heritage in archives and museums
The broad social and political controversy that arose in January 2025 upon the partial digital publication of the Central Archive of Special Jurisdiction from immediately after the Second World War demonstrates how sensitive access to heritage and archives can sometimes be (Steketee 2025). In early 2026, the cabinet announced[1] that the existing Archives Act is amended to strike a better balance between protecting personal data and access to heritage. For instance, the archive must become digitally accessible and searchable as soon as possible, with context and linked to other war sources.
 
Museums and heritage institutions, in turn, also strive for greater diversity and polyphony. During the International Council of Museums (ICOM) conference in 2022, following a lengthy process, a new museum definition was adopted by the international museum community with an overwhelming majority (92 percent), in which inclusivity and diversity are core values. The Dutch translation was established in 2023 in collaboration with ICOM Belgium-Flanders, the Museum Association, and FARO – Flemish support centre for cultural heritage.
 
Figures from the Museum Association show that by 2024, 80 percent of museums were actively applying the Diversity & Inclusion Code, with larger museums leading the way. Museum boards are also almost equally divided between women and men (Veldkamp et al. 2025). In addition, 61 museums have now joined the platform. Museums Confess Color that is committed to combating institutional racism and discrimination and wants to make room for other perspectives and stories. Imagine IC focuses on living heritage and contemporary cultural practices. The core of their work as a “museum implementation of the neighborhood” is to bring people together, gather them, and let them meet. And the developed by the European heritage network Europeana DE-BIAS Tool helps heritage houses and museums to critically review their collection descriptions (read more about developments in this area on the page Diversity, equity and inclusion).

The colonial past lives on: dealing with shared colonial heritage

The legacies of the colonial past, both the more recent and the more distant past, continue to have an impact to this day. This shared history and its tangible and intangible heritage therefore remain undiminished at the center of attention.

The 'Houd je erfgoed levend' subsidy scheme, concluded in June 2024, resulted in more than 160 awarded initiatives focusing on the rich cultural traditions and intangible heritage of Indo-Dutch, Moluccan, Papuan, and Peranakan communities in the Netherlands (Colman 2024). In November 2025, then State Secretary Judith Tielen of the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport announced a new subsidy scheme that these communities can utilize until 2028 (Tielen 2025).

On July 1, 2024, it ended Dutch Slavery Memorial Year, in which more than 200 initiatives and activities were organized with the support of government subsidies via the Fund for Cultural Participation and the Mondriaan Fund. Through 2028, the government is making another 200 million euros available to continue paying attention to this shared history of slavery.. In addition, early 2025 is a Slavery Past Commemoration Committee established. The Commemoration Committee will play a central role in the national and Kingdom-wide commemoration of the history of slavery and the promotion of public awareness regarding this. From 2025 onwards, it will organize the annual National Commemoration of the History of Slavery on July 1 in Amsterdam together with NiNsee (National Institute for the History of Dutch Slavery and Heritage).
 
This commitment aligns with broader developments regarding the colonial heritage of the Netherlands and its former colonies. In recent years, increasing attention has been paid to the management of this shared heritage. For instance, a process has been initiated to create space for the return of heritage to these countries. Efforts are also being made to share this heritage and make colonial archives digitally available.
 
With support from the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, the website was launched in October 2024. onsland.nl launched. More than 70 collections and 250.000 sources from heritage institutions, archives, and museums have been brought together here regarding the shared history of the Netherlands and Indonesia. In addition, this movable and intangible heritage is displayed, researched, and questioned in museums and by communities. In 2026, millions of Dutch people still have a connection to this history and keep this heritage alive. According to researcher Jaswina Elahi, many postcolonial heritage communities view their heritage “as a living process that is constantly changing. Heritage is rooted in memory, emotion, and social relationships and is continually reshaped in dialogue with the past, present, and future.(Verschoor 2025, Elahi 2025).
 
In September 2025 brought the Colonial Collections Commission issued advice for the sixth time regarding the return of colonial heritage. After five previous recommendations in 2023, 2024, and 2025 concerning the return of valuable cultural heritage to Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and Nigeria, and to the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo nation of Texas in the United States, this was the first time the case did not concern looted art, but rather the return to Indonesia of 28.000 fossils from the so-called Dubois collection. These had been brought to the Netherlands by Dubois during the colonial era. The collection contains a world-famous skullcap of a Homo erectus, an ancestor of humankind. Then-Minister Gouke Moes decided to return these objects after the Colonial Collections Commission ruled that research showed the Dubois collection never became Dutch property and was most likely taken under duress at the time (Keulemans 2025)..
 
De Raad voor Cultuur In addition, in 2024, it advised acknowledging the historical injustice inflicted upon the former colonies, rectifying it where possible, and preventing new injustice in the future. This is more than restitution: it involves unlocking archives in mutual cooperation and making them accessible, whether digitally or otherwise. The Caribbean part of the Kingdom, in particular, must be supported in this regard to manage its own colonial archives. Various heritage institutions and museums have also critically examined their role and responsibility in managing collections of unknown or dubious provenance in recent years.. To further assist museums with such provenance research, the RCE published a guide in 2025 (Raad voor Cultuur 2024, Pennock 2025)
 
In addition, consortia and collaborations between various heritage institutions in the field of provenance and restitution have been established in recent years.. They are committed to knowledge exchange and collaborations between institutions in the Netherlands and with countries of origin. On the website Colonial collections It is possible to see what cultural heritage from former colonies is present in Dutch museums. This facilitates accessibility, research, and potential repatriation. And visitors can add information to this heritage from their perspective. In addition, Dutch museums, such as the Wereldmuseum, have decided to return objects themselves following research..

Digital strategy and sustainable storage

In the Netherlands, museums and heritage institutions have made significant strides in recent years in digitizing and making heritage collections accessible online, although the figures also show that growth is now slow. Over the last three years, both the share that was digitized and the share made accessible online grew by only one percent per year (CBS 2025b, Blaker et al. 2024). Furthermore, it remains a challenge to connect these separate initiatives, preserve this digital content sustainably, and make the material accessible to users in a user-friendly manner.

Since its foundation in 2015, the Digital Heritage Network (NDE) has been committed to this. The network is “a partnership of organisations and individuals, such as archives, libraries and museums, trade associations, software suppliers, researchers, programmers, trainers and consultants, historical societies and local heritage communities throughout the Kingdom.” At the end of 2024, the network presented the National Strategy for Digital Heritage 2025-2028, which was developed in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. The main focus remains the pursuit of digitally connected heritage. The goals for the coming four years are to work towards (1) a data space for the entire Kingdom, including the Caribbean part; (2) towards broad usability of heritage information by focusing on general web standards and data quality; (3) towards a sustainable approach from source to public application and (4) to do this based on a dynamic concept of heritage. In 2026, the NDE presented a renewed Digital Heritage Guide for heritage organizations that wish to work in accordance with the national strategy (NDE, OCW 2024).