The National Museum of the Philippines (Filipino: Pambansang Museo ng Pilipinas) is an umbrella government organization that oversees a number of national museums in the Philippines including ethnographic, anthropological, archaeological, and visual arts collections.

Its first museum-library opened at the Casa de la Moneda along Cabildo Street on October 24, 1891.

It later moved to a building along Gunao Street in Quiapo before it became defunct sometime around the onset of the American occupation of the Philippines in 1900.

[5] The American-supervised Philippine Commission established the Insular Museum of Ethnology, Natural History, and Commerce under the Department of Public Instruction on October 29, 1901 through Act No.

[6] The Japanese occupation of the Philippines during World War II brought the Natural History Museum Division and the National Library's Fine Arts Division back under a single organization, but the museum lost a large part of its collection during the Liberation of Manila of 1945 when the Old Legislative Building and the Bureau of Science Building was destroyed.

The organization which resulted from the divisions' merger was named as the National Museum and was placed under the Office of the Executive Secretary.

The museum's role in cultural growth was recognized as contributing to government's desire for national development.

[8] In 2013, President Noynoy Aquino launched the construction of the National Museum of Natural History, which opened in 2018.

[12] In 2025, the museum extended its opening hours to include all seven days of the week, having been previously closed on Mondays.

Both bills were formally introduced in early 2017, but neither prospered in the legislation process due to lack of support from lawmakers.

[19] In 2023, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC agreed to return the remains of 64 Filipinos that it acquired without consent during the American occupation for anthropological research, including to support racist beliefs about white supremacy, and stored at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, to the National Museum following discussions with the latter and the Philippine Embassy.

[20] In February 2024, the museum received a donation of four early 19th-century panels depicting various saints from the pulpit of Boljoon Church in Cebu from Union Bank of the Philippines CEO Edwin Bautista.

The news of the donation led to demands from the Archdiocese of Cebu as well as officials and residents of the province for the panels to be repatriated, citing the fact that they had gone missing from the church during the 1980s due to either theft or an illegal sale by the parish priest.

[23] On April 1, the Cebu Provincial Board passed a motion to file charges against the National Museum and others who took custody over the panels.

[24] On May 8, the museum's board of trustees ruled in favor of returning the panels to Boljoon Church,[25] which it later scheduled for March 2025.