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Museum Hiring Index · month in progress

November 2026

Every museum, gallery and curatorial role first advertised this month, counted from institutions’ own careers pages. Recomputed on every visit; final once the month ends.

Roles advertised
6
−98% on October 2026
State pay
50%
+1 pts on October 2026
Median advertised
€54,180
a year, annualised, 4 figures
Open today
299
on the live board

How this is counted

A role counts for the month it first appeared on an institution’s own careers page, as seen by CuratorSearch’s daily check of several hundred museums, galleries and sector job boards. Roles that went up and came down between two checks are missed; roles reposted under a new title count twice; and when a source is added or a scraper starts reading more of it, the roles it already carried count in the month CuratorSearch first saw them, not the month they were posted. “State pay” means a figure or a public-sector grade in the posting itself — “competitive” does not count.

The median is of the pay figures archived in the month, annualised into euro at indicative rates so a monthly German grade and an annual New York figure can sit in one number; it is a midpoint across countries and seniority, not a rate for any job. Every underlying figure is public in the Curatorial Pay Archive (DOI 10.5281/zenodo.22544232), free under CC BY. Cite as “CuratorSearch Museum Hiring Index, November 2026, https://curatorsearch.com/hiring-index”. The method and the first month’s figures are written up in a data note: How often do museum job postings state pay? A data note from one month of live listings, August–September 2026 (Zenodo, 2026).

The annual Pay Report, when it’s out

One email a year with the full year’s figures. Nothing else.

Put this month’s index on your own site

A card with the three numbers above, regenerated hourly and always the current month. One line on a programme page, a careers-service page or a newsletter; nothing to maintain.

Museum Hiring Index on CuratorSearch

<a href="https://curatorsearch.com/hiring-index?utm_source=badge&utm_medium=embed"><img src="https://curatorsearch.com/hiring-index.svg" alt="CuratorSearch" height="96"></a>

More variants on the embed page.

Cite this page

Samman, N. (2026). Museum Hiring Index, November 2026. CuratorSearch. https://curatorsearch.com/hiring-index (accessed 1 November 2026). DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.22544232.

CC BY 4.0 — attribution is the only condition.