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Now Reading: A Thousand Trophies, a Million Visitors: Benfica’s Museum at Thirteen
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A Thousand Trophies, a Million Visitors: Benfica’s Museum at Thirteen
A Thousand Trophies, a Million Visitors: Benfica’s Museum at Thirteen
At the Estádio da Luz, hours before kickoff on a Saturday morning, the queue outside the Museu Benfica Cosme Damião already stretches past the ticket window. A grandfather in a faded red scarf guides a six-year-old through the turnstile, promising her the trophy room, where a thousand cups gleam under glass.
The museum turned thirteen on 26 July 2026, marking the date with a new exhibition and a visitor count that keeps climbing: on 14 January 2025, it welcomed its millionth guest, and in the 2023/24 season it recorded more than 160,000 entries! (its highest single-season attendance to date).
Spread across 4,000 square metres and three floors, the museum holds roughly 1,000 trophies and more than 30,000 other pieces spanning the club’s history since 1904. It is named after Cosme Damião, the Casa Pia alumnus who co-founded the club and coached it for eighteen seasons before his death in Sintra in 1947. In 2014, the museum won the Prémio Museu Português do Ano.
The anniversary exhibition, O Manto Sagrado (“The Sacred Mantle”), traces the club’s visual identity through decades of jersey design. Guided tours are available; the opening-day 10:30 session sold out.
Admission is €10 for adults, €4 for children aged three to thirteen, €20 for families. The museum opens daily at 10:00, closing at 19:00, except on match days, when the grandfather and the six-year-old have other business at the Luz.
