National WWI Museum and Memorial announces Local Discount for Summer 2025

05/12/2025
Modern photograph of a girl leaning into a life-size museum exhibit depicting a WWI soldier charging into a trench

From June 1 - Sept. 1, 2025, local residents in the area surrounding Kansas City can save on admission and discover everything that's changed in the Museum and Memorial since the start of the Gallery Refresh project.

A special $10 combo ticket is available for residents of Johnson, Wyandotte and Leavenworth counties in Kansas and Jackson, Clay and Platte counties in Missouri. Residents must present proof of residency with valid ID: one ticket per ID with the exception of children and youth. This offer is available in-person at the Ticketing Counter only.

These combo tickets access everything that the Museum has to offer, including the recently-refreshed Main Gallery, special exhibition areas, the Tower (reopening in July) and Bergman Family Gallery. Recommended visit duration is 1.5-3 hours.

“We've transformed how we tell the story of WWI while preserving the Memorial that Kansas Citians cherish,” said Dr. Matthew Naylor, President and CEO.

Since 2022, the Museum and Memorial has been carrying out a multi-year upgrade plan, the most expansive changes to the buildings and grounds since opening in 2006. These changes not only involve upgrades in technology to tell new and interesting narratives from WWI, they create a richer and more immersive visitor experience.

Refreshed areas include these and much more:

“Encounters” – guests come face-to-face with 16 individuals and their real stories crafted from diaries, letters and photos.
Film still of a white man in uniform standing in a CGI rendering of a bombed cathedral
Film still of a white woman in WWI-era hair and dress gesturing angrily on the stand in a CGI rendering of a courtroom

 

“Casualties” – a replica of a bombed-out church serving as a field hospital.
Several young guests look at a museum exhibit depicting a bombed-out cathedral. Nurse and soldier mannequins are visible inside the exhibit
A nurse mannequin leads a line of three soldier mannequins blinded by mustard gas towards the field hospital exhibit

 

“Into the Trenches” – guests can now step inside the displays and immerse themselves in the different trench settings.
Museum exhibit replicating a British WWI trench with sandbags and wooden walkways. A soldier mannequin peers through a trench periscope while another soldier mannequin readies to throw a grenade.

 

Interactive Tables – four interactive touch tables covering four wartime innovations: aircraft, communications, maritime and uniforms.
Two Black girls and a white boy crowd around a large touchscreen table, interacting with the graphics

 

Computer rendering of a scene in the sky, looking down from above on a variety of WWI-era aircraft

 

“Battlescape” – a newly-produced immersive film projected onto the inner surface of a recreated battle crater.
Museum guests stand inside a replica of a devastating bomb crater bathed in blue light as films are projected on the sides of the crater

 

“Epilogue: A World Transformed” – a narrative environmental film surrounding guests with large-scale imagery and sound to provoke an understanding of the consequences of WWI.
A lone guest sits on a curving bench in a room with a film of a poppy field projected on three walls around them

 

Ready to come visit? →