How to get free access to museums
Tuesday, November 4, 2025
We live near Washington D.C. and one of the nice benefits of braving the beltway and within traffic is that you get access to a ton of free museums.
All the Smithsonian museums in the area are free to enter (though some are timed entry so you just have to reserve a free pass) and we periodically take advantage of them. And they’re truly free, it isn’t a coy “suggested donation” game, you simply walk in and enjoy.
That’s not the case for many other museums. But if you’d like to get more culture in your life, there are several programs, often associated with libraries, that can get you free access.
Here’s what we know, broken down by state:
There are several areas and states that run a Culture Pass or Cultural Pass program. Others call it a Museum Pass or Museum Adventure Pass. They all work similarly, so I’ll explain the basics, using the New York City program as an example, and then share all the other states and how they may differ.
The NYC Culture Pass is a program that gives you access to 100+ cultural institutions across New York City. You need to have a library card from Brooklyn Public Library, Queens Public Library, or New York Public Library. To qualify for a library card, you have to be a resident of New York, work for a company or go to a school in New York City.
Then, you reserve a pass by date or venue, as you would anything else from the library. Then you can print or download your pass and redeem it at the venue. Passes are released at midnight on the first of every month for the following month (Oct 1st for November passes).
Here are all the organizations participating in the NYC Culture Pass.
The Arizona Act One Culture Pass gets you free access to nearly 30 museums in the area and you can get it from your public library (over 200+ participating libraries). The website shows both the participating libraries and cultural institutions.
The Columbus Metropolitan Library has passes to over a dozen local cultural institutions, from museums to zoos to gardens to the ballet. It even includes tickets to the Columbus Clippers, the minor league Triple-A affiliate of the Cleveland Guardians (two adults, four children).
The Culture Pass has to be reserved in-person at a library but you can search for availability online.
The Delaware Libraries Museum Pass lets you reserve one pass per month, up to 5 per year, and gets you access to 10 local estates, zoos, libraries, and museums.
The Georgia Public library offers experience passes that you can check out from your local library just like a book. A person or family can only check out each of the passes once every six months. The pass gets you access to 11 venues in the area, including the Alliance Theatre, Shakespeare Tavern, and the Breman Museum.
Explore More Illinois is a broad program that spans multiple Illinois library systems and gets you access to museums, cultural centers, zoos, gardens, etc. You can have three active reservations at one time.
Floridians with a Miami Dade Public library card can take advantage of the Miami Dade Public Library Museum Pass program. There are about twenty venues participating and typically you get access for a family of four. You can check out one pass at a time.
The New Orleans Public Library Culture Pass is for Orleans Parish residents with a New Orleans Public Library card and you can reserve passes online (and in person or over the phone) to visit 14 museums and cultural centers in the area. You can only reserve one pass per partner organization per month and can be made up to 30 days in advance.
The New Mexico FamilyPass program is offered through the state library and Department of Cultural Affairs and provides free admission for up to people to nearly 30 museums and historic sites in the area. Visit the library and you can check out the pass for one week and only one pass per family at a time.
The Seattle Public Library Museum Pass gets you free access to over a dozen museums, galleries, and zoos in the area and you can get it with your library card. You can reserve one pass per calendar month based on your visit date and new passes are available after noon each day.
There are several culture pass programs that primarily ran in the summer and early fall months. I’ve included them below so you can keep an eye on them for next year:
Blue Star Museums is a program that runs from Armed Forces Day through Labor Day (and thus will return on May 16th, 2026). It gives free admission to active-duty military personnel and their families to a very long list of museums, zoos, nature centers, and more.
Armed Forces Day is the third Saturday in May and Labor Day is the first Monday in September.
With Museums for All, if you are receiving food assistance (SNAP) you can get free or reduced admissions to 1500+ museums by simply showing your EBT card and your photo ID. There are hundreds of participating cultural centers.
Bank of America cardholders, this can be credit or debit, get access to their Museums on Us program. On the first weekend of each month, you get free general admission to a variety of cultural institutions in the United States.
There are 237 institutions across 39 states (it includes even Alaska, where you can visit the Anchorage Museum!) plus Washington D.C. The states not included are Alabama, Hawaii, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming. The list can change so check to confirm what you have access to and where. You can see a full list on the Museums on Us program website.
The North American Reciprocal Museum Association, or NARM Association, is a program in which you join your local museum (at the NARM level of membership) and you get reciprocal access to other museums in the NARM network. There are NARM Association museums in Bermuda, Canada, the Cayman Islands, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the United States (yes, PR is in the US but that’s how they list it).
You can see the full list of NARM museums for 2025 and it is enormous – over 1300 participants.
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