Topeka, Kansas, January 7, 2026 – The Kansas Children’s Discovery Center had record attendance in 2025, the organization announced today. The nonprofit children’s museum had 129,987 visitors in 2025, a nine percent increase over 2024. Attendance surpassed the previous record of 120,002 visitors, set in 2023, by 9,985 individuals.

A major driver of the attendance increase was the Building Discovery expansion project, the largest expansion in the museum’s history and a major development in Topeka’s tourism, and education sectors. The expansion opened November 7, 2025, and more than 23,000 of the year’s visitors came in the final two months of the year. The expansion doubled the size of the museum from 15,000 to over 30,000 square feet, adding three large gallery spaces, three learning lab classrooms, a maker space, an accessibility suite, a cafe serving on-site meals, an exhibit construction workshop, and other spaces designed to better serve growing numbers of families.

The museum hosted two nationally-traveling exhibitions in 2025 to attract visitors from across the region: Thomas & Friends: Explore the Rails and Very Eric Carle: A Very Hungry, Quiet, Lonely, Clumsy, Busy Exhibit, which is open until January 25, 2026. For the first time, the museum exceeded 50,000 out-of-town visitors, with 39 percent of visitors traveling to the museum from outside Shawnee County.

As the organization grows, commitment to museum access remains strong. More than 1 in 3 museum visitors receive free or reduced admission, including 8,383 field trip participants, 900 attendees of Sensory Friendly events, and 3,911 individuals who attended monthly free nights. Participation in the Museums for All program, which provides discounted admission to families receiving WIC or EBT, increased significantly, growing from 4,275 admissions in 2024 to 7,295 in 2025, an increase of more than 70% in just one year. This growth reflects both the rising need among families and the Discovery Center’s deliberate commitment to access.

The nonprofit children’s museum opened in 2011, and in the past fifteen years has grown significantly, gaining prominence as a regional tourist attraction and community anchor for families. The museum has hosted 20 major exhibitions, reached thousands of children through community outreach events, and welcomed over 1 million visitors from all 50 states and 23 countries since its opening. President/CEO Dené Mosier has led the museum since 2015.