King Charles welcomed French President Emmanuel Macron to London for a three-day visit intended to revive cultural links after Brexit. “This probably took more years than the Brexit negotiations,” joked Macron as he confirmed that the Bayeux Tapestry would cross the Channel, reported the Financial Times.
The 69-meter embroidery was set to anchor an exhibition at the British Museum from September 2026 to July 2027—its first appearance on British soil in nearly 1,000 years. “The Bayeux Tapestry is one of the most iconic pieces of art ever produced in the U.K. and I am delighted that we will be able to welcome it here in 2026,” said Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy, according to Sky News.
The cloth’s 58 scenes trace the events that led to the Norman conquest, ending with the Battle of Hastings, and its borders feature animals and fables from Aesop and Phaedrus. Commissioned by Bishop Odo of Bayeux, half-brother of William the Conqueror, the piece was thought to have been stitched by English embroiderers in a southeast English monastic workshop late in the 11th century. Its survival was “little short of miraculous,” said curator Sylvette Lemagnen, wrote Página/12.
Under a reciprocal arrangement, museums in Normandy will borrow items from the Sutton Hoo collection and the Lewis Chessmen—including a seventh-century ceremonial helmet and 12th-century walrus-tusk chess pieces—beginning in autumn 2026, noted Medievalists.net.
“There is no other object in British history so familiar, so studied in schools, so reproduced in art, as the Bayeux Tapestry. In almost a thousand years, it has never returned to these shores,” said British Museum chair George Osborne, who predicted the display would be “the blockbuster show of our generation,” according to ABC News Australia.
The Bayeux Museum planned to close at the end of August for renovations and reopen in 2027. The tapestry was due to be folded into a chest and transported by truck and train through the Channel Tunnel, with French officials ensuring conservation and security, reported Die Zeit and El Diario Montas.
Technical evaluation for the loan began in 2018 after Macron proposed the idea to then-prime minister Theresa May. Former ambassador Lord Peter Ricketts served as envoy for the agreement, wrote Medievalists.net.
Sharing the institution’s strategy, British Museum director Nicholas Cullinan said the exchange would allow the museum to circulate its own holdings widely and present “world treasures never before seen here,” according to the BBC via El Diario Montas.
Britain had tried and failed to borrow the tapestry in 1931, 1953, and 1966; a 2018 offer for a 2022 display was canceled because of the pandemic, recalled The Independent and Medievalists.net.
The embroidery has spent 42 years at the Centre Guillaume-le-Conquérant in Bayeux and has left the town only twice in nearly a millennium, each time for a brief stay at the Louvre—first in 1803 at Napoleon’s request and again during World War II when it was hidden from German forces, wrote Ouest-France.
The 2027 exhibition will coincide with a bilateral cultural season that includes events marking the 1,000th anniversary of William the Conqueror’s birth and the Tour de France Grand Départ from the U.K. “Through this exchange, the medieval past becomes a bridge—not a battleground—between nations,” observed Medievalists.net, which called the loan “one of the most museum events of the decade.”
Written with the help of a news-analysis system.