The Beatles Story moves to a site four times bigger in Liverpool

From the Albert Dock to Lime Street

The Beatles Story, the museum that has told the band's history at Liverpool's Royal Albert Dock since 1990, is moving to a new 100,000 square foot home in the city centre in 2028. The new site, in the former St Johns Market inside St Johns Shopping Centre, directly opposite Lime Street station, will more than quadruple the attraction's current footprint.

For the first time, the museum will be run by Apple Corps, the company the Beatles set up in 1968 to look after their creative and business interests. Apple Corps takes over the running of the Beatles Story at the Albert Dock in 2027 and will then move it across the city. The plan was announced on 20 October 2026.

Alongside the museum, Apple Corps is taking over St Johns Beacon, the 450ft tower next to the market and Liverpool's second-tallest building, and turning it into a separate viewing attraction themed around the band's psychedelic animated film Yellow Submarine.

Ben Beaumont-Thomas, reporting the plans for The Guardian, noted that it makes the Beatles Story the band's first official fan experience in their home city. Paul McCartney called the plans extraordinary.

Ben Beaumont-Thomas reported this first for The Guardian. Checked against The Beatles Story: The Beatles: Liverpool 2028.

What the new museum will be

Apple Corps describes the new Beatles Story as a multi-hour visit that uses immersive technology, original artefacts and reconstructed sets to take visitors through the band's story. It starts in the streets of post-war Liverpool and moves through the group's formative years in Hamburg and the arrival of Beatlemania to the height of their fame around the world.

Visitors will be able to step inside recreations of some of the best-known places in the band's history. The announcement names the Cavern in Liverpool, Abbey Road, Shea Stadium in New York and Savile Row in London. The Guardian added that the recreations will run from the members' childhood homes in Liverpool to the Hamburg nightclubs where they learned their trade, and that the Shea Stadium set recalls the concert where the screaming was so loud that the band could not hear themselves play.

Some of those settings will be built from the sets and props used in Sam Mendes's four Beatles films, which Sony releases in cinemas around the world in April 2028. Apple Corps says the museum will open shortly after the films come out.

The current museum already holds some of the most famous objects in the band's story. The Guardian listed George Harrison's first guitar and John Lennon's glasses among its exhibits, and noted that the Beatles Story has won VisitEngland awards for excellence in each of the last two years.

A Yellow Submarine in the sky

St Johns Beacon, the tower that rises over the shopping centre, has stood empty since 2024, when its viewing gallery closed and its radio station tenants moved out, The Guardian reported. St Johns Market itself, a shopping centre, has also been unused since it closed that year.

Under the new plan the Beacon becomes a Yellow Submarine themed experience with a 360-degree view across Liverpool, taking in landmarks and the places where the band's history was made. Apple Corps says it will operate as a standalone attraction, but that fans will be able to book the museum and the tower together.

Money for the next generation

Part of the price of every ticket to the new Beatles Story will go to a new charity, the Apple Corps Liverpool Trust, which will give financial support and opportunities to emerging Liverpool artists and local cultural projects. Apple Corps says more details of the trust will be announced later.

The project is a partnership between Apple Corps, Liverpool City Council and the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority, with support from central government. The partners will prepare the site and the streets around it. Neither the cost of the scheme nor the financial details of the partnership have been disclosed.

What McCartney and Starr said

Both surviving Beatles gave statements for the announcement. McCartney said he found it "incredible and humbling that people are still interested in our story", and that he loved Liverpool, which was part of who he was and part of who the Beatles were. He said that if anyone had told the band this would happen when they were starting out, they would never have believed it.

He also said the plans Apple had shown him took him back to the band's journey from Liverpool to the world and back home again, and that he could not wait for people to step into the story.

Ringo Starr remembered growing up in the Dingle in Liverpool and never imagining he would be on a plane, let alone go to all the places the band's road took them. He said he had wanted to be a drummer since he first held a drum at 13, recalled Saturdays at the Bodega and the Cavern, and described starting a skiffle group while working in a factory. He said he loved that money from every ticket would go back to new Liverpool artists, and added that deep down he was still a scouser.

Graceland and Dollywood

Tom Greene, Apple Corps' chief executive, compared the plan to Graceland, Elvis Presley's home in Memphis, and Dollywood, Dolly Parton's theme park in Tennessee, and said Liverpool would now have a world-class destination in the city where the story began.

The Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, said in the announcement that it was the kind of ambition he wanted to see more of across Britain, backing what cities do best and turning a global reputation into jobs and growth. He said he wanted young artists anywhere in the country to believe there was a route from a bedroom or a local venue to the top of the world.

Steve Rotheram, the mayor of the Liverpool City Region, said people already travelled halfway around the globe to visit the birthplace of the band, and that the plan would give millions more fans a reason to make the pilgrimage. He said it felt right that the definitive Beatles experience should be in the place where it all began, and welcomed the fact that it would not just look back, with every ticket helping the next generation of Liverpool artists.

The Beatles are already one of the biggest draws for visitors to Liverpool. The Guardian cited a 2016 study that suggested the band added £82m a year to the local economy.

Savile Row first

The Beatles Story will be only the second permanent Beatles attraction ever run by Apple Corps. The first is due at 3 Savile Row in London, the building where the band played their final rooftop concert in 1969, which is set to open at the end of 2027.

Greene is overseeing that project too. The Guardian reported that the seven-floor museum will let visitors go up on to the roof and will recreate the building's in-house studio, where the band recorded the Let It Be album, alongside displays from the Apple Corps archive and temporary exhibitions.

The Mendes films

The timing of the move is tied to the biggest Beatles project in decades. Sam Mendes announced in February 2024 that he would make four films, each telling the story from the point of view of one band member, with Sony Pictures behind them and the permission of McCartney and Starr and the estates of Lennon and Harrison, as Andrew Pulver reported for The Guardian.

Paul Mescal plays McCartney, Harris Dickinson plays Lennon, Joseph Quinn plays Harrison and Barry Keoghan plays Starr. The wider cast includes Saoirse Ronan as Linda McCartney, James Norton as the band's manager Brian Epstein, Lucy Boynton as Jane Asher and Aimee Lou Wood as Pattie Boyd. In August 2026 the production was filmed recreating the Abbey Road album cover on the zebra crossing outside the London studios.

The films have already drawn comment from the band's own side. McCartney recently told Amy Poehler's podcast that he had texted Mendes after photographs from the Abbey Road shoot seemed to show Dickinson's Lennon taller than Mescal's McCartney, and that Mendes had sent back another shot to show the two were the same height, Stuart Heritage wrote for The Guardian. Boyd, Harrison's former wife, was reported in May to be unhappy that she had not been contacted by the film-makers.

A new wave of Beatlemania

The Liverpool plan arrives in a year that has been unusually busy for the band. McCartney released his 20th solo album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, in May. The BBC is making a drama series, Hamburg Days, about the band's years in Germany, and the reissue programme of the band's records continues: an expanded edition of Rubber Soul reached No 2 in the UK charts this month, The Guardian reported.

In May, Lanre Bakare reported for The Guardian on what the writer Ian Leslie, author of John and Paul: A Love Story in Songs, called a new wave of Beatlemania, which Leslie traced back to Peter Jackson's documentary Get Back. Leslie expected the Mendes films to be the biggest cultural moment of their year.

What happens next

Nothing changes for visitors straight away. The Beatles Story stays open at the Royal Albert Dock in the meantime, with Apple Corps taking over its running during 2027. The museum lists its current opening hours as 9am to 5.30pm from Sunday to Friday and 9am to 6.30pm on Saturdays, with last entry 75 minutes before closing.

The new museum and the Beacon are due to open in 2028, after the Mendes films reach cinemas in April. Apple Corps has not yet given an opening date or ticket prices for either, or further details of the Liverpool Trust.

The Beatles Story is a museum rather than a live show, and we do not list it. We cover Beatles-related concerts and the band members' own shows when they are announced.