The award of £100,000 is Britain's biggest single art prize, and the largest single museum arts prize in the world.

[1] The prize and is presented to a museum or gallery, large or small, anywhere in the UK, whose entry, in the opinion of the judges, best demonstrates a track record of imagination, innovation and excellence through work mainly undertaken during the previous calendar year.

[2][3] The Museum of the Year was awarded by the British charity National Heritage from 1973 to 2000.

Since 2011 the Clore Award for Museum Learning, worth £10,000 and sponsored by the Clore Duffield Foundation, has been awarded for "quality museum and gallery learning with children and young people (from early years up to the age of 25) in any setting, in or out of school or college".

[8] For its first two years this award had a separate shortlist but in 2013 it was awarded to an institution on the Museum of the Year shortlist, which had expanded from four to ten finalists.