The first videos from YouTube entered the museum’s collection

Victoria and Albert Museum Revives the Origins of YouTube
London, 2026

In the new exhibition “Design 1900‑Present” in South Kensington, the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) showcases a reconstructed early YouTube page—a platform that emerged more than twenty years ago.

> “The V&A acquired a reconstructed original page and the first video uploaded by co‑founder Jawad Karim,” said a museum spokesperson.

What can be seen
1. Reconstructed YouTube page

- Design reflects the state as of December 8, 2006, the earliest documented timestamp on the web.

- The restoration took 18 months, with the digital preservation team working alongside YouTube staff and London design studio Oio.

2. First video – “Me at the zoo”

- Uploaded April 23, 2005.

- Length 19 seconds, featuring 25‑year‑old Jawad Karim talking about elephants in San Diego.

- As of today the video has been viewed over 382 million times and has accumulated more than 18 million likes.

How it looks
- The exhibit is located in South Kensington, but the restoration process will be shown separately in the Stratford area.

- Visitors can not only watch the first video but also “immerse” themselves in the interface of YouTube from that era, experiencing the atmosphere of Web 2.0’s birth.

Why it matters
> “By restoring an early view page, we’re not just showing a video; we invite the public to return to the past, to the beginning of a global cultural phenomenon,” commented the exhibit’s director, YouTube CEO Neil Mohan.

> “This snapshot of YouTube in the early days of Web 2.0 marks an important moment in internet and digital design history,” added museum employee Corinna Gardner.

Thus, the V&A exhibition turns memories of YouTube’s first days into a living cultural event, allowing viewers to see how online communication has evolved over the past two decades.