Maria Balshaw has announced that she is stepping down as director of the Tate museums in spring 2026. She took over from Nicholas Serota in June 2017 after being joint director of the Whitworth and the Manchester Art Gallery. During her time at the Whitworth she oversaw a £15m refurbishment that was widely acclaimed and the institution won the Art Fund’s Museum of the Year award in 2015. She began her career as a lecturer at the University of Northampton in 1994, moving to the University of Birmingham before she joined the newly launched government Creative Partnerships programme in 2002 and became one of the first Clore Leadership fellows in 2004. Her time at the Tate has been marked by steering the institution through the pandemic, the establishment of an £50m endowment fund for Tate Modern and the refurbishment of Tate Liverpool. But during her tenure visitor figures have plummeted, with a drop of 2.2m visitors to Tate Modern and Tate Britain since the pandemic, according to visitor figures released in March 2025, and an exhibition programme that some critics have suggested focuses too much on social justice. The Tate has struggled to regain financial stability following the pandemic resulting in a proposed seven per cent staff cut and strikes over pay that started in November 2025. ‘I feel now is the right time to pass on the baton to a next Director who will take the organisation into its next decade of innovation and artistic leadership,’ she said. Roland Rudd, chair of the Tate, described Balshaw as ‘a trailblazer at Tate. She has never wavered from her core belief – that more people deserve to experience the full richness of art, and more artists deserve to be part of that story.’ Balshaw will end her directorship by co-curating a Tracey Emin exhibition, which opens in February 2026.