Three of the world's leading museums of modern and contemporary art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and M+ in Hong Kong, have signed a landmark agreement to work as a single cultural alliance, planning joint exhibitions, sharing long-term loans and cooperating on research and conservation while remaining independent institutions.

The deal was announced as M+ celebrates its fifth anniversary. Since opening in 2021 the Hong Kong museum has drawn more than 12.5 million visits and welcomed over 2.5 million visitors a year for the past three years, staging shows devoted to Yayoi Kusama, I.M. Pei and Lee Bul. Together the three museums attract about 10 million visitors a year.

M+ director Suhanya Raffel said the alliance joins three leading collecting institutions around shared commitments to artistic innovation, research and public engagement, and that M+ would bring perspectives from Hong Kong and its region to the partnership. Centre Pompidou president Laurent Le Bon said no single institution could encompass the entire scope of global creativity, while Raffel said the museums hoped to build a more cooperative and sustainable future for the sector.

The anniversary programme includes the exhibition Myths and Monsters: The Art of Fantasy in Asia, on view until 4 April 2027, and the M+ Restored Festival from 1 November to 27 December, screening nine restored Hong Kong New Wave films. Next year the museum will mount Hong Kong: Here and Beyond 2027, a survey of the city's avant-garde from the 1970s to the present, alongside a new presentation of its M+ Sigg Collection and a major Do Ho Suh exhibition.

The museum is also launching the M+ Academy in November to support emerging museum professionals, and will host a public conversation on sustainability in cultural work, the 2026 Culture for the Planet Summit, on 6 November. Board chairman Paulo Pong said the anniversary was a chance to thank the team and the visitors who had made M+ part of Hong Kong life, adding that the vision behind the museum had resonated far more strongly than its founders had dared to hope.