If your Paris itinerary still has “Centre Pompidou” on it, take it off. The building at Beaubourg — the one with the exoskeleton, the coloured pipes climbing the outside, the glass caterpillar of an escalator running up the front — closed completely on 22 September 2025 and will not reopen until 2030. This is not a wing-by-wing refurbishment you can work around. The whole place is dark for five years. I am writing this so you do not do what people are still doing: walk across the piazza, watch the street performers, and then discover at the door that there is no museum to enter.

The Pompidou — formally the Centre national d’art et de culture Georges-Pompidou, opened in 1977 — has needed this for years. Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers’s radical inside-out design, with all the building’s guts hung on the exterior to free the interior floors, was never built to last half a century without serious intervention. The headline reason for the closure is asbestos: the structure is riddled with it, and the only honest way to remove it is to empty the building entirely. The renovation budget is around 262 million euros, and beyond the asbestos it covers a full modernisation of technical systems, fire safety, accessibility, and energy performance. The famous exterior — the pipes, the colours, the escalator tube — is being preserved; this is a gutting and rebuild of the inside, not a redesign of the face.

What actually closed, and when

The shutdown was staged rather than sudden. The modern and contemporary art collection — the Musée national d’art moderne, the largest holding of modern art in Europe — came off the walls first, closing in March 2025. The shop and bookshop wound down over the summer. The Bibliothèque publique d’information (BPI), the huge free public reading library that was always one of the building’s most-used and least-touristed spaces, moved out, and the galleries and the full building shut on 22 September 2025. The major construction work began ramping up in 2026. From here until 2030, Beaubourg is a building site behind hoardings.

Where the collection went

Here is the part that matters if you are in Paris now and want to see the art anyway. The Pompidou did not just put its collection into storage; it dispersed it through a programme it calls “Constellation,” loaning and showing works across France and internationally for the duration of the closure. Two anchors are worth knowing:

  • The Grand Palais, Paris. The reopened Grand Palais on the Champs-Élysées side of the city has hosted major showings drawn from the Pompidou’s holdings during the closure. If you want a concentrated dose of modern masters in central Paris while Beaubourg is shut, this is the first place to check what is currently on.
  • The Centre Pompidou-Metz. The Pompidou’s sister institution in Metz, a striking Shigeru Ban-designed building about ninety minutes from Paris by TGV, has taken on a larger role as a showcase for the collection during these years. It is a genuine day trip from the Gare de l’Est and worth it for the building alone.

Beyond those, works have travelled to partner museums in France and abroad, so a Pompidou-owned Kandinsky or Matisse you remember from Beaubourg may well be hanging somewhere else entirely right now. The practical move is to check the Centre Pompidou’s own website for the current Constellation programme before you build a Paris art day around it, because the showings rotate and shift between venues.

The library, separately

If you came specifically for the BPI — the free public library that generations of Parisians and students used — it did not vanish. It reopened in August 2025 in the Lumière building in the 12th arrondissement, near Gare de Lyon, as a temporary home for the duration. The reading rooms, the collections, the free-to-all access continue there until the BPI returns to a renovated Beaubourg in 2030.

What is coming

Two things are being built that will outlast the closure. The most relevant near-term one is the Centre Pompidou Francilien – Fabrique de l’art in Massy, in the Essonne south of Paris, a new conservation and storage and creation facility due to open in spring 2027. It is primarily a working facility — restoration, storage, study — rather than a blockbuster gallery, but it signals where part of the institution’s centre of gravity is moving. And the headline, of course, is the 2030 reopening of Beaubourg itself, with the renovation led by the architects Moreau Kusunoki together with Frida Escobedo.

For now

So: the Centre Pompidou is shut, fully, until 2030. The piazza is still there, the buskers are still there, the view of the building from the Stravinsky Fountain with its Niki de Saint Phalle sculptures around the corner is still there — and those are free and worth a wander if you are in the Marais nearby. But the museum is closed. To see the collection in this window, look to the Grand Palais and Centre Pompidou-Metz and check the live Constellation listings before you go. Treat the next few years as the period when Paris’s most famous modern-art museum is, temporarily, everywhere except where you expect it.

Verification

Reported and fact-checked against primary sources (verified 2026-04-10):

Frequently asked questions

Is the Centre Pompidou open right now?
No. The Centre Pompidou closed fully on 22 September 2025 for a major renovation and is scheduled to reopen in 2030. The building is closed to the public; do not plan a visit to Beaubourg in this period.
Why did it close?
For a five-year renovation budgeted at around 262 million euros, primarily to remove asbestos throughout the structure, modernise technical systems, improve accessibility, and upgrade energy efficiency, while keeping the famous exterior intact.
Where can I see the collection while it is closed?
Across France and abroad through the 'Constellation' programme. Major showings have been hosted at the Grand Palais in Paris and at the Centre Pompidou-Metz, with works loaned to partner institutions internationally.
Did the public library close too?
Yes. The Bibliothèque publique d'information (BPI) moved out and reopened in the Lumière building in the 12th arrondissement in August 2025, so the library function continues at a temporary site.
When does it reopen?
The planned reopening is in 2030. A separate conservation and creation facility, the Centre Pompidou Francilien in Massy, is due to open in spring 2027.