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It seems like news of new museum robberies just keeps coming, particularly in the months following the brazen Louvre heist one year ago. In an attempt to shed light on the phenomenon, Europol published a study in August, Changing Tactics, Changing Targets: The Evolving Nature of Museum Heists, which examines key trends within these more recent crimes, as reported earlier by The Art Newspaper.
What does Europol tell us? For one, the old notion that museum thefts are generally non-violent, or use stealthy tactics such as replacing precious jewels or artworks with convincing fakes, is no longer the case. “Offenders are adopting more direct and confrontational approaches,” as well as “a growing use of force” to break into museums and display cases using tools like sledgehammers, axes, crowbars, and sometimes explosives, states the report. On some occasions, museum workers have been intimidated with weapons, but also directly assaulted. According to the report, Louvre staff and visitors were threatened by the men who broke into the museum during its opening hours on October 19, 2025, and successfully fled with over $102 million worth of the country’s crown jewels.
The kinds of things getting stolen are also changing. In the last few years, thieves have increasingly been going for precious stones and metals such as gold, which can be melted down, cut, or taken apart from their casings and sold without a trace. Plus, these materials attract attention due to a “perception that museum security measures are less robust than those in jewelry stores.”
Chinese cultural artifacts have also become hot targets. These include examples such as 12th- and 13th-century porcelain jars and vases from the Ming Dynasty, plus colored enamels on bronze vases from both the Ming and Qing Dynasties. The report affirms these Chinese cultural goods are in high demand and “are likely to be easily sold on the art market.”
As for the perpetrators, they tend to have a history of involvement with other types of crime, and increasingly, coordinate with accomplices on an “ad hoc basis,” or without prior connection. In other words, these are not necessarily organized networks built around a core group or leader. As a result, investigators have theorized that criminals may be randomly recruiting “low-level” accomplices or perpetrators to break into museums.
As for the frequency of museum heists, the report does not mention whether they have gone up. Jean-Yves Goriou, head of the EU Organized Crime Unit in Europol’s European Serious and Organized Crime Centre (ESOCC), did confirm in an interview with TAN that, “We have observed a clear and steep increase in the number of museum robbery cases since around 2022/2023.”
However, that view was contrasted with that of another expert, Robert Read, the head of art and private clients at Hiscox Insurance. “In the sense of volume of crimes [against museums], there’s not been a change,” he said. Meanwhile, Julian Radcliffe, the director of the Art Loss Register, observes that “A lot of these trends [in the Europol report] are not new, but they’re arguably occurring on a more pronounced or regular scale.” It sure feels that way.