Lucas Museum of Narrative Art Gets Fall 2026 Opening Date

After years of development, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art will finally open in 2026 and now we finally have an actual opening date - September 22, 2026.

What's Happening:

• The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, founded by George Lucas and Mellody Hobson, has announced it will officially open to the public on September 22, 2026.
• Located in Los Angeles’s Exposition Park, the museum is architected by Ma Yansong of MAD, with gardens designed by Mia Lehrer of Studio-MLA. The museum "seeks to explore how stories connect people and capture the human experience."
• The Lucas Museum’s permanent collection holds more than 40,000 works, while the building’s thirty-five galleries occupy 100,000 square feet.
• The museum will house the Lucas Archives, containing models, props, concept art, and costumes from Lucas’s filmmaking career, including several notable full scale Star Wars vehicles. This includes Luke Skywalker’s Landspeeder from Star Wars: A New Hope, a 1:1 replica of General Grievous' Wheel Bike from Revenge of the Sith, a full-scale version of Anakin Skywalker’s N-1 Starfighter from The Phantom Menace and speeder bikes from Return of the Jedi. There will also be concept art on display that was created for both the original and prequel Star Wars trilogies.
• The museum’s collection features works by artists such as Norman Rockwell, Kadir Nelson, Jessie Willcox Smith, N. C. Wyeth, Beatrix Potter, Judith F. Baca, Frida Kahlo, and Maxfield Parrish; comic art legends such as Winsor McCay, Jack Kirby, Frank Frazetta, Alison Bechdel, Chris Ware, and Robert Crumb; and photographers Gordon Parks, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Dorothea Lange.
• On the larger pop culture side, there will be plenty standouts among the artwork throughout the museum, including the first ever drawing of Flash Gordon, early Charles M. Schulz Peanuts sketches, original sketches of Iron Man’s Marvel Comics cover debut, and original Black Panther art from 1968.
• The museum's cinematic artifacts will include movie posters, while documentaries featuring artists and filmmakers will be shown.
• The September date is a bit surprising, only because the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art had been on a big promotional tour in recent months across several high profile conventions, making me suspect the original intent was for an opening earlier in the year to capitlize on these appearances.

• George Lucas made his first ever San Diego Comic-Con appearance in July to promote the museum at a big Hall H panel, alongside Guillermo del Toro, with subsequent panels including filmmakers like Robert Rodriguez at LA Comic Con and Martin Scorsese at New York Comic Con, among other notable participants. Given the museum won't be open until September now, could the museum make a second panel appearance at San Diego Comic-Con next summer for another round of promotion?

What They're Saying:

• George Lucas: “Stories are mythology, and when illustrated, they help humans understand the mysteries of life. The museum was built on the belief that illustrated storytelling is a universal language."
• Mellody Hobson: “This is a museum of the people’s art—the images are illustrations of beliefs we live with every day. For that reason, this art belongs to everyone. Our hope is that as people move through the galleries, they will see themselves, and their humanity, reflected back.”