On Saturday 7 February 2026, the Nederlands Fotomuseum will officially open the doors of its new home in the renovated Santos warehouse, a listed building in Rotterdam's Rijnhaven district. The museum will provide a modern home for the national collection of over 6.5 million objects, one of the largest museum photography collections in the world, as well as space for exhibitions and a wide range of public activities. The location in the Santos warehouse marks a new phase for the museum and has been made possible thanks to a generous donation from the Droom en Daad Foundation.
Roderick van der Lee, Interim director: “With the opening of the Santos warehouse, the Nederlands Fotomuseum will, for the first time, have a home that fully does justice to the size, quality and ambition of our collection and programming. The building will enable us not only to display top-quality photography, but also to showcase our craftsmanship, research and conservation work to a wide audience. This is a huge step forward for the museum, for the city and for the international standing of Dutch photography.”
The monumental Santos warehouse was built between 1901 and 1902 by Rotterdam architects J.P. Stok Wzn and J.J. Kanters, and is one of the best-preserved and most beautiful examples of early 20th-century warehouse architecture in the Netherlands. The building was originally designed as a storage facility for coffee from the Brazilian port city of Santos and has been listed as a national monument since 2000. The richly decorated building combines historical architecture with contemporary interventions, such as a new atrium and a striking “crown” of perforated aluminium on the roof. This houses the offices, restaurant ZES with panoramic views over Rotterdam and 16 short-stay apartments. The renovation and extension of the Santos warehouse was designed by the architectural team RENNER HAINKE WIRTH ZIRN ARCHITEKTEN from Hamburg and WDJARCHITECTEN from Rotterdam, and carried out by Burgy Bouwbedrijf from Leiden. The building was purchased by the Nederlands Fotomuseum in 2023.
The new museum in the Santos warehouse has been fully equipped to the highest museum standards for photography. The nine-storey building features advanced climate and light control, including cold storage facilities that are essential for the long-term preservation of fragile photographic material. At the heart of the building, on the second and third floors, the museum showcases the collection and conservation work, something that was virtually hidden at the former Las Palmas location.
On the first floor, the Gallery of Honour of Dutch Photography forms the starting point of the museum visit. This permanent exhibition shows the development of photography in the Netherlands, from the invention of the medium around 1839 to the current digital age. A group of experts selected 99 iconic photographs based on their artistic and social impact, including work by Anton Corbijn, Dana Lixenberg, Violette Cornelius, Ed van der Elsken, Paul Huf, Rineke Dijkstra, and Erwin Olaf. Visitors are invited to contribute ideas for the 100th photograph. New additions to the Gallery of Honour include a timeline with videos explaining how cameras work, special cameras, and an interactive tool that allows visitors to curate their own image wall.
The collection of the Nederlands Fotomuseum comprises more than 6.5 million objects, making it one of the largest museum photography collections in the world. It consists of more than 175 archives of Dutch photographers, with millions of negatives, slides, prints and other photographic objects. The collection covers an important part of the history of photography in the Netherlands, from the earliest daguerreotypes from 1842 to contemporary digital prints, with an emphasis on 20th-century analogue and documentary photography, supplemented by recent works of art and installations. Unique items include exceptional photographs from the former Dutch colonies, such as work by Kassian Céphas and Augusta Curiel. A number of the works in the collection, such as the prints by Werner Mantz, Sanne Sannes, Ed van der Elsken, Ata Kandó, Violette Cornelius and Peter Martens, are among the best photographs ever taken in the Netherlands.
The museum is strongly committed to education and offers an extensive programme of workshops and activities for pupils and young people in the educational studios of the Santos warehouse (basement, -1). Schools can book workshops and guided tours throughout the year, including the Gallery of Honour of Dutch Photography and temporary exhibitions. Adults can also book guided tours. During school holidays, the museum organises special activities for young people. An educational pilot programme will start in the spring in the Hein Wertheimer darkroom, made possible by the Cultuurfonds and the Wertheimer Stichting. Here, children and young people will be introduced to the basic principles of photography through workshops and experiments, such as pinhole cameras and photograms. In this way, the magic of analogue photography will be shared in an accessible way and the darkroom will play an active role in the museum's educational mission.
On the second floor, a thematic photo wall showcases the richness of the collection. Special objects are displayed in changing presentations, which are renewed every three months. Thanks to high-quality, climate-controlled display cases, the museum can display extremely fragile negatives at 4 degrees Celsius, a first in the international photography museum world. The third floor focuses on the human work behind the archive, such as cataloguing, conservation, research and digitisation. Conservation tools are interspersed with personal objects, such as a biscuit tin in which the well-known Dutch filmmaker and photographer Johan van der Keuken kept labelled negative bags. A video about the arrival of Ed van der Elsken's archive, which comprises thousands of objects, also provides insight into these processes. Glass walls on both floors offer a glimpse behind the scenes of the open depots and open studios.
The Santos warehouse has two floors for temporary exhibitions: the fourth floor, which is climate-controlled and suitable for fragile vintage photography; while the fifth floor offers space for new talent. The Nederlands Fotomuseum opens with Awakening in Blue: An Ode to Cyanotype (until 7 June 2026) and Rotterdam in Focus: The City in Photographs 1843 – Now (until 24 May 2026). Awakening in Blue celebrates the timeless beauty of the blueprint and brings together work by 15 contemporary artists who explore themes such as ecology, the colonial past and the body as an archive. Rotterdam in Focus offers a visual journey through 180 years of Rotterdam history with more than 300 photographs by iconic and contemporary photographers who capture the changing city.
The ground floor of the museum will be furnished as a “living room for photography”. Visitors will find the library (with one of the largest collections of photography books in Europe), the museum shop, the reception desk and Koffiebar Santos. The coffee bar serves a special Santos house blend from sustainably grown Brazilian coffee beans, developed in collaboration with a local coffee roaster. This floor also features a short film by Dutch Photographer of the Netherlands Marwan Magroun, made especially for the reopening. An authentic Photoautomat has also been installed: an original analogue passport photo machine where visitors can take their own portrait. Four black-and-white photos are printed in five minutes (€5).
From 7 February 2026, the Nederlands Fotomuseum will be open from Tuesday to Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tickets are available via nederlandsfotomuseum.nl. Adults pay €17.50, young people aged 18 to 25 pay €10. Children under the age of 18 have free admission. The museum is easily accessible by public transport (a two-minute walk from Rijnhaven metro station) and there is parking available at the nearby Q-Park Rijnhaven. For disabled visitors, there are ramps, lifts and accessible toilets.