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MMCA Seoul Hours 2026: Open Until 9 PM Wed & Sat, Free Permanent Collection

Kim Taechoul, ReporterPublished KST
✓ Verified 2026-11-05 · against official sourcesOriginal source ↗A daily paper for first-time visitors to Korea · every morning · Korean · English · Japanese · Chinese · Vietnamese · Indonesian
Photo: Entrance of MMCA Seoul (file photo taken February 2020) · Seoul Institute, CC BY 4.0

Bottom line: The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) Seoul stays open until 9 PM on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Every other day (Mon, Tue, Thu, Fri, Sun) it closes at 6 PM, so check the day of the week before planning a late-afternoon visit.

If you didn't know: Assume it closes at 6 PM like other days, and you lose three extra hours you could have spent inside on a Wednesday or Saturday evening. The permanent collection is free, but special exhibitions charge different fees each time — arrive without checking and you'll be caught off guard at the ticket counter.

At a glance

Open 10:00-21:00 Wed and Sat, 10:00-18:00 other days · permanent collection free, special exhibition fees vary by show · closed Jan 1, Lunar New Year, and Chuseok · address 30 Samcheong-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul · phone 02-3701-9500 · last entry one hour before closing.

MMCA Seoul sits right next to Gyeongbokgung Palace at the edge of Bukchon, making it easy to pair with a palace visit in one day. Many foreign visitors assume "museums close at 6" and give up on an afternoon trip — but Wednesdays and Saturdays are the exception. That means you can spend the day at the palace or shopping in Bukchon, then head to the museum in the evening and browse until 9 PM without rushing. The permanent collection galleries are always free; special exhibitions rotate with their own ticket prices, so check the exact fee for whatever show is running on the official website before you go. Enter through the main gate at 30 Samcheong-ro, get directions to the permanent-collection galleries from the front desk, and buy a separate ticket on the spot if you want to see a special exhibition.

How we checked this

Opening hours (10:00-21:00 Wed/Sat, 10:00-18:00 other days) and closed days (Jan 1, Lunar New Year, Chuseok) were confirmed on the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism's Culture Portal listing for MMCA Seoul. Special exhibition fees vary by show and weren't confirmed as a single figure in this reporting — official materials list them exhibition by exhibition. These hours and closed days were checked on the Culture Portal (mcst.go.kr) facility-guide screen on 2026-11-05.

Journey stage: During the trip · Verified 2026-11-05

Source · how this was written — Written by the Korea Tourism Times editorial desk · Original sourcepublished by the body itself — one is enough
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