Maria Balshaw, the director of the Tate, will leave her post in spring 2026, the institution has announced.
Balshaw joined the Tate in 2017 after a successful stint as the director of Manchester Art Gallery and the Whitworth Art Gallery. She replaced Nicholas Serota, who had held the Tate post for nearly three decades.
Balshaw said in a statement: “It has been an absolute privilege to serve as director of Tate over this last decade and to work with such talented colleagues and artists. With a growing and increasingly diverse audience, and with a brilliant forward plan in place, I feel now is the right time to pass on the baton to a next director who will take the organisation into its next decade of innovation and artistic leadership.”
Blockbuster years
During her tenure, Balshaw oversaw an eclectic programme, encompassing blockbuster shows such as The EY Exhibition: Van Gogh and Britain (2019), Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind (2024) and Sargent and Fashion (2024). Next year, for her final Tate project, Balshaw will co-curate the largest-ever survey of the artist Tracey Emin (Tracey Emin: A Second Life, 27 February-31 August).
A statement from the Tate celebrated Balshaw’s work in diversifying its collection and bringing greater gender balance and geographical breadth to new acquisitions. It also said that under her leadership, membership has reached 150,000, which it describes as the largest arts membership in the world.
Roland Rudd, the chair of the Tate, said in a statement: “Maria has been a trailblazer at Tate. She has never wavered from her core belief—that more people deserve to experience the full richness of art, and more artists deserve to be part of that story.
“As the home of British art and of international modern and contemporary art, Tate today reflects the audiences we serve and the artists who make up our nation. We engage a wider public than ever before through our own galleries, our digital channels, and our projects in other venues across the UK and the world.”
Deficit and cuts
Balshaw’s departure comes against a complex backdrop at the Tate, which runs the Tate Britain and Tate Modern museums as well as sites in Liverpool and St Ives. Earlier this year The Art Newspaper reported that the organisation was poised to cut 7% of its workforce as part of an institution-wide push to cut costs. Approximately 40 roles were cut via recruitment freezes, targeted restructures and voluntary exits.
The annual report and accounts for the 2023/24 financial year, published in December 2024, stated that for 2024/25 the museum group would be running a deficit budget.
Meanwhile, more than 150 Tate workers walked out in November 2025 in a dispute over pay and terms and conditions. The Public and Commercial Services Union told The Art Newspaper that its members at the Tate report in-work poverty and mental and physical health issues linked to their work.
A Tate spokesperson said at the time: “Tate has made careful savings this year in order to invest in staff pay and still achieve a balanced budget… It is only by creating and maintaining a sustainable financial model that we can continue to invest in our staff in the long term.”
Attendance drops
This year has been turbulent for the Tate in other ways too. In July the organisation addressed the decline in footfall over recent years. There has been a marked drop in overseas visitors to the Tate’s museums, especially among people from Europe aged 16 to 24.
While the Tate’s own research has shown that attendance by domestic audiences is now close to 95% of pre-Covid levels, The Art Newspaper’s annual visitor figures report for 2024 showed that overall attendance was significantly lower than in 2019, a year of record highs. Tate Modern had 25% fewer visitors than before the Covid-19 pandemic, while visitors to Tate Britain were down by 32% and to Tate St Ives by 37%.
Long-term future
After two decades of broadening the artistic canon, Tate Modern’s most overt collecting and programming priority today is in the field of Indigenous practices. This year, for its 25th anniversary, Tate Modern launched the first major exhibition of the Indigenous Australian artist Emily Kam Kngwarray. A Tate source told The Art Newspaper that Balshaw “supported directors to create the programmes implemented”.
In a radical move, the Tate also launched an endowment fund in June 2025 to help secure its long-term future, inspired in part by a model pioneered by US museums. At least £50m has been raised for the endowment known as the Tate Future Fund. “It’s an inspired idea and should put the Tate on a better financial footing,” a UK museum director who preferred to remain anonymous told The Art Newspaper.
All eyes are now on who will be the Tate’s next director. Any candidates will have to navigate not just the challenges of funding and visitor figures, but competition likely to be posed by the National Gallery’s plans for a new wing, which were announced earlier this year.
