The V&A East Storehouse, the National Gallery and an accessible castle in Norwich are among the contenders for this year’s Art Fund museum of the year award, the most prestigious UK prize in the sector.

The annual prize offers the winner £120,000, with £20,000 going to each of the other finalists, who the Art Fund’s director, Jenny Waldman, said had all “innovated in different ways”.

This year’s list is dominated by some of the biggest names in the cultural sector that have undergone big refurbishments or invested in significant new outposts, such as the V&A’s East Storehouse, which will be seen by many as a frontrunner.

Based in the Olympic Park in Stratford, east London, the space aims to reimagine what a storeroom can be, with partitions removed so visitors can see “and breathe the same air” as the objects. Waldman said the V&A Storehouse, which opened in spring 2025 at a cost of £65m, had broken the boundaries of what a store could be.

Also on the shortlist is the Box – a £46m museum and gallery that is described as the largest cultural centre in south-west England. It was described as a “clumsy” addition to the city’s Edwardian museum in 2020 by the Guardian’s architecture and design critic, Olly Wainwright, who said it looked “as if an out-of-town storage shed got blown here in a gale”.

However, the Box has showed signs of success. A recent economic impact report said it had helped bring in £244m to the local economy, and holds more than 2m items. “It’s engaged in the national conversation, but is also very focused on the local community,” said Waldman, who also praised its current Beryl Cook exhibition.

She picked out the Fitzwilliam Museum’s invitation to artists – including Glenn Ligon – to “interrogate the museum and create work in conversation with the collection”, as an effort to look inward. Praised by the Guardian as “a model for what artists can do in such a setting”, the Cambridge museum’s All Over the Place exhibition saw Ligon insert his own works into a collection, which he revisited, reassessed and repositioned.

Waldman said the National Gallery went the “extra mile in every direction” during its bicentenary year in 2025, which included a widely celebrated rehang, the reopening of the Sainbury Wing and a project led by Jeremy Deller that ventured to Derry, Dundee, Llandudno and Plymouth.

Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery will be seen as an outside bet but has undergone a refurbishment that, its leadership says, makes it the most accessible castle in the country. “If you’re a wheelchair user and you want to go up to the ramparts of Norwich Castle, you can,” added Waldman. “It’s opening up the past for a new generation.”

Last year’s winner was the “joyous and immersive” Beamish, the Living Museum of the North, an open-air museum in County Durham where immersive exhibitions bring the 1940s and 50s to life.

The winning museum will be announced on 25 June at a ceremony at the Cutty Sark in London.