The Science Museum Is Breaking Up With BP — Here's Why It Matters

The Science Museum Group announced on 28 August 2026 that it is ending its decades-long partnership with the oil company BP. The relationship had drawn years of criticism from climate campaigners and educators who worried about BP's influence on how science is taught in the UK.

Sir Ian Blatchford, the director and chief executive of the Science Museum Group, said the partnership had "drawn to a close at the end of the current contract term" The Guardian. The news came through the Science Museum Group academy, a branch of the museum set up in 2018 to train teachers, museum staff, and people working in science, technology, engineering, and maths (often called STEM).

BP's involvement with the museum was extensive. Blatchford said the company's money helped train more than 11,000 teachers, museum staff, and science professionals, and that BP-supported programs brought science to life for more than 1 million young people across the country. The partnership backed several projects, including the Enterprising Science project, a collaboration between the Science Museum Group, University College London, and King's College London Science Museum Group. BP also funded a five-year research partnership focused on "science capital" — a way of understanding how a young person's background and experiences shape their relationship with science Science Museum Group. BP's own education service, called bpES, provided free learning resources for young people and was still mentioned in Science Museum Group materials as recently as 2020 Science Museum Group Blog.

Campaigners have long accused BP of having an "insidious influence" over science education in the UK through its relationship with the Science Museum. Chris Garrard, from the campaign group Culture Unstained, said the end of the partnership followed years of pressure from educators and schools. Some schools had even pledged to stop sending students on trips to the museum because of the BP connection.

Garrard called the announcement only a "partial victory," though. He pointed out that the museum still takes money from Adani Green Energy Ltd, which is part of the Adani Group. That ongoing relationship means the question of whether fossil fuel companies should sponsor cultural and educational institutions is far from settled.

This is not the first time the Science Museum Group has made such a decision. In 2024, it cut ties with the Norwegian oil company Equinor because Equinor had not reduced its carbon emissions enough to align with the Paris climate agreement — an international deal aimed at limiting global warming to 1.5°C. That earlier move set a precedent for judging sponsors against climate goals, and the BP announcement extends that approach to the museum's most prominent and longest-running corporate partner.

The wider cultural sector has been heading in the same direction. The British Museum ended its own sponsorship deal with BP in 2023 after 27 years Arts Professional. Together, these decisions mean BP has now lost its foothold in most major UK cultural institutions. For the Science Museum Group, losing BP means losing a sponsor whose programs reached over a million young people, which raises the question of how that funding gap will be filled. The museum's most recent Annual Report and Accounts, covering 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026, was published on 3 August 2026 UK Government.

The broader context here is a wider push across the cultural sector to rethink whether fossil fuel companies should sponsor museums and schools at all. That push has sped up as climate targets get stricter and the public grows less accepting of greenwashing — when a company presents itself as more environmentally friendly than it really is. The Science Museum Group's own science director, Roger Highfield, wrote a blog post about a study finding that global warming could wipe out 24% of the calories in staple crops by the end of this century Science Museum Group. That is an internal acknowledgment of what is at stake, and it sits uneasily alongside decades of oil industry funding.

What remains unresolved is the Adani question. Culture Unstained calling the BP decision a "partial victory" is a clear signal that campaigners will now turn their attention to the museum's other energy-sector sponsors. Adani Green Energy is nominally a renewable energy company, but campaigners point out that its parent group, the Adani Group, has deep ties to coal and other fossil fuels. That makes it a murkier target than BP or Equinor.

For other institutions facing similar choices, the Science Museum Group's path offers a template. Equinor was judged against the Paris climate goals. BP's departure seems to have been driven more by reputational pressure than a specific climate benchmark, which may make it harder for other institutions to know where to draw the line. The difference matters: a sponsorship policy based on measurable climate criteria can be copied and defended. One driven mainly by public pressure is easier to criticize as inconsistent.

The Science Museum Group has not announced a replacement sponsor for the academy's training programs, nor has it said how the education initiatives previously funded by BP will be paid for going forward. What the institution has done is close a chapter that campaigners and a growing number of educators found unacceptable — while leaving at least one more conspicuously open.