Canadian museums combine substantial in-person visitation with a large online audience, extensive volunteer capacity and varied public programming. The Government of Canada’s Survey of Heritage Institutions: 2025 reports 2023 operating and activity measures, while its 2025 infrastructure findings show where museums see the greatest pressure on buildings and facilities.
Contents
- Attendance and digital reach
- Revenue, funding and spending
- Employment and volunteers
- Collections, exhibitions and research
- Education and public programs
- Buildings and infrastructure
Attendance and digital reach
Canadian not-for-profit museums recorded 32,794,027 in-person visits in 2023. Their digital reach was substantially larger: museums recorded 167,712,255 online visits during the same year. Museums represented 54% of the 313,594,199 online visits recorded across Canadian not-for-profit heritage institutions in 2023. These figures describe visits, not necessarily unique people, so online activity and physical attendance should not be read as a count of distinct visitors.
Museums also maintained ongoing relationships with audiences. They reported 580,310 members in 2023, alongside 206,969 research requests. Memberships and research requests are separate measures from visits: a member may visit more than once, while a research request can be made without an in-person visit.
School activity was another major part of museum reach. Canadian museums reported 68,392 school groups in 2023. This measure counts groups rather than individual students, and therefore complements rather than replaces the broader in-person attendance figure.
More recent participation figures are available for the Canada Strong Pass. More than 2.3 million people visited participating Canadian museums during the summer 2025 period, and almost 500,000 people visited participating museums during the winter 2025–26 period. These figures cover participating museums and specified promotion periods, so they are not directly comparable with the national 2023 not-for-profit museum totals. Other Items of Interest - Canada.ca
Revenue, funding and spending
Canadian not-for-profit museums generated $1.357932 billion in total revenue in 2023, measured in current dollars. They reported $1.218662 billion in total expenditures and a reported profit margin of 10.3%. The revenue total included $868.976 million in unearned revenue and $488.956 million in earned revenue. These categories describe the survey’s accounting measures; they should not be treated as a simple measure of admission income or unrestricted cash.
Government funding was distributed across three levels:
| Funding source | 2023 amount |
|---|---|
| Federal government | $244.157 million |
| Provincial governments | $292.562 million |
| Local governments | $131.717 million |
The survey also recorded several earned-income streams. Admission fees generated $169.170 million in 2023, while sales of goods and services generated $118.441 million. Museums reported $22.383 million in membership-fee revenue, $32.151 million in gross income from facility rentals and $32.958 million in fundraising revenue.
Costs reflected both people and places. Canadian museums recorded $128.745 million in occupancy costs in 2023. They spent $541.729 million on compensation wages and administration. Because these figures belong to different revenue and expenditure categories, they should be read as reported components rather than added together into a new total.
The source for the 2023 financial and activity measures is the Government of Canada Survey of Heritage Institutions: 2025. The source reports current-dollar amounts, so these amounts are not inflation-adjusted.
Employment and volunteers
Canadian not-for-profit museums employed 6,025 full-time workers in 2023. They also employed 8,689 part-time workers and reported 1,239 contract workers. These categories indicate a workforce with both continuing and flexible staffing arrangements, but they are headcounts, not full-time-equivalent positions.
Volunteer participation added a large unpaid capacity. Museums reported 48,433 volunteers in 2023, and those volunteers worked 2,766,744 hours. The hours measure helps show the scale of contribution beyond the number of people involved. It does not convert the volunteer work into a wage or monetary value.
Taken together, the employment and volunteer measures describe two connected parts of museum operations. Paid staff support administration, collections, visitor services and programming, while volunteers contribute more than 2.7 million reported hours across the not-for-profit museum sector. The dataset does not provide a breakdown of hours by role, museum size, province or activity, so those comparisons are not included here.
Collections, exhibitions and research
Canadian not-for-profit museums reported 11,618 permanent exhibitions in 2023. During the year, they created 4,687 exhibitions and circulated 1,564 exhibitions. They also hosted 10,869 online exhibitions. These are different activity measures: permanent exhibitions describe an ongoing offering, while created and circulated exhibitions describe production and movement, and online exhibitions describe digital presentation.
Research support was substantial as well. Museums reported 206,969 research requests in 2023. That figure is distinct from the 32,794,027 in-person visits and the 580,310 members reported for the same year. Keeping the measures separate matters because a research request represents a different kind of engagement from a general visit or membership relationship.
The sector also generated income from relationships connected with its facilities and audience base. Membership-fee revenue reached $22.383 million, gross income from facility rentals reached $32.151 million and fundraising revenue reached $32.958 million in 2023. These amounts are reported financial categories and do not indicate how many exhibitions or research requests were associated with each revenue stream.
Education and public programs
Museum programming covered a broad range of formats in 2023. Lecture series or author events were offered by 45% of Canadian museums, while 46% offered behind-the-scenes exhibit or archive tours. Craft-making programs or workshops were offered by 40%. Cultural workshops on traditional knowledge and skills were offered by 33%, and science programs, workshops or labs by 16%.
School and youth-oriented activity included field trips at 33% of museums and day camps or overnight camps at 21%. The survey also measured how museums tailored general-public programming by age group:
| Audience group | Museums tailoring general-public programming |
|---|---|
| Children aged 12 or under | 58% |
| Youth aged 13 to 17 | 58% |
| Adults aged 18 to 59 | 69% |
| Seniors aged 60 or older | 63% |
Attendance at general-public programs reached 5,186,323 in-person visitors in 2023. Online virtual visitors to those programs numbered 679,979. These program-attendance measures sit within, but are not necessarily identical to, the wider museum visit totals because the survey distinguishes general-public program participation from overall museum visits.
Community responsiveness was also measured directly. In 2023, 51% of Canadian museums created learning experiences directed at the communities they served. This percentage describes the share reporting that activity; it does not quantify the number of learning experiences or participants.
Buildings and infrastructure
The survey’s infrastructure results are from 2025 and measure museums’ assessments of their buildings or capital infrastructure. Ratings were distributed across the full condition range: 2% rated their infrastructure very poor, 7% rated it poor and approaching end of service life, 36% rated it fair and requiring attention, 35% rated it good and adequate, and 18% rated it very good and fit for the future.
| 2025 infrastructure assessment | Share of museums |
|---|---|
| Very poor | 2% |
| Poor, approaching end of service life | 7% |
| Fair, requiring attention | 36% |
| Good and adequate | 35% |
| Very good and fit for the future | 18% |
The reported ratings show that “fair” was the largest single category at 36%, followed by “good and adequate” at 35%. The two lowest categories together represented 9%, while the two highest categories together represented 53%. These are grouped survey shares and do not measure the dollar cost of repairs or replacement.
Museums also reported planned work for the next three years in the 2025 survey. New facilities or expansions were planned by 17%; improvements to current facilities by 44%; physical-plant improvements, such as HVAC or roofing, by 35%; environmental-sustainability improvements by 29%; and visitor-experience improvements by 54%. The categories can overlap because one museum may plan several types of work.
Renovation timing added another perspective. In 2025, 28% of museums said their most recent significant renovation had occurred within the past two years, while 21% said it had occurred more than 15 years ago. These responses describe the timing of the latest significant renovation, not the complete age or condition of every building in the sector.
The infrastructure findings and the 2023 operating statistics are reported by the Government of Canada Survey of Heritage Institutions: 2025. The 2025 condition ratings and forward-looking plans are survey results and should be understood as reported assessments and intentions for the following three years.