How Should the Bayeux Tapestry End? A New Competition Invites Children to Reimagine Its Missing Final Panel

Some historians think the 230-foot-long artwork is missing its final panel, which may have once depicted William the Conqueror’s coronation. As the tapestry goes on view in London, students will be drafting endings of their own

Christian Thorsberg | Daily Correspondent

August 20, 2026 11:50 a.m.

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After centuries in France, the Bayeux Tapestry, which tells the story of the Battle of Hastings and the Norman conquest of England, is going on display in London. To celebrate its upcoming debut at the British Museum, children across the country will be learning about the artifact by reinventing its ending. 

The “Beyond the Battle” competition, a partnership between the charity English Heritage and the foundation Art Explora, is calling on children ages 7 to 11 to imagine a final scene for the artwork that looks “beyond conquest” and toward a hopeful vision of the future.

“Working as a class, they will create, design and stitch an original textile work that pictures a better tomorrow, and celebrates the actions, people and values that could make that vision a reality,” organizers say in a statement.

The project takes inspiration from one of the tapestry’s enduring mysteries: What, exactly, was supposed to appear at the end?

The nearly 230-foot-long embroidered artwork ends with the death of Harold Godwinson, the English king defeated by William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings. But some historians think that the tapestry’s original end was a roughly ten-foot-long depiction of William’s Christmas Day coronation in 1066.

Nobody knows the fate of this segment, if it ever existed in the first place. But the “Beyond the Battle” competition isn’t the first creative attempt to “complete” the tapestry.

In 2012, a group of embroiderers from Alderney, one of the Channel Islands, spent a year stitching together a depiction of this celebratory coronation, using the same techniques and design principles as the original. In 2014, the completed ten-foot-long artwork went on display at the Bayeux Tapestry Museum in Normandy, next to the nearly 1,000-year-old original.

“I think they have made a remarkably good job of getting this imagined section to look very like the rest of the tapestry: its scale and design, with an illustrated border above and below the main panel, the lettering, the postures of the figures,” Robert Bartlett, a medieval historian, told BBC News’ Ben Chapple. 

In 2016, English Heritage launched “The Kids’ Tapestry” to commemorate the 950th anniversary of the decisive Battle of Hastings. After children selected their favorite moments from history, artist Liz Pichon illustrated them on panels stretching more than 25 feet. The tapestry’s final panel, designed by 10-year-old Kate Arnold, depicted the invention of the internet. 

The upcoming competition, which will launch in late September, takes a different approach. Rather than recreating moments from history, students are being asked to imagine their own endings.

“The Bayeux Tapestry is storytelling in thread—a thousand-year-old narrative built stitch by stitch, made when people read pictures rather than words,” says Jemima Montagu, the director of Art Explora UK, per FAD magazine’s Mark Westall. “‘Beyond the Battle’ lets children discover that craft for themselves: exploring the history, learning the embroiderers’ techniques, then telling a story of their own.”

The Kids' Tapestry Drawing Competition by Liz Pichon & English Heritage

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Embroiderers began work on the Bayeux Tapestry in the 11th century. Historians aren’t certain where it was created, but they think it was likely made in or near Canterbury, England. Although legends have sometimes attributed the work to Queen Matilda, William’s wife, and her ladies-in-waiting, no evidence connects her to the tapestry. Many contemporary historians think it was commissioned by Bishop Odo of Bayeux, William’s half-brother.

For centuries, the tapestry was kept at Bayeux Cathedral, where it was listed in a 1476 inventory. According to a “well-established local tradition,” the tapestry was nearly destroyed during the French Revolution, when revolutionaries proposed ripping it into pieces to make covers for soldiers’ carts, per the Bayeux Tapestry Museum. A local lawyer named Léonard Lambert-Leforestier stepped in to save the artwork.

In 1803 and 1804, the tapestry spent a few months on display in Paris before returning to Bayeux. “I am sending back to you the tapestry embroidered by Queen Matilda, wife of William the Conqueror,” wrote Vivant Denon, a French museum official, in a letter sent with the artwork. “The First Consul was very interested to see this precious commemoration of our history, and congratulates the townspeople of Bayeux on the care they have taken to preserve it over seven and a half centuries.”

From 1842 until 2025, the tapestry was on public display in Bayeux, aside from periods when it was moved for safekeeping during wartime. A two-year museum renovation prompted its historic loan to the British Museum, where it will be displayed between September 10, 2026, and July 11, 2027. Tickets for the first few months of the exhibition sold out within a day of going on sale, the Guardian’s Helena Horton reports. 

Winners of the “Beyond the Battle” competition will receive a free trip to London to see the Bayeux Tapestry next summer. They will also have the chance to visit the site of the Battle of Hastings or another Norman landmark managed by English Heritage.

Christian Thorsberg is an environmental writer and photographer from Chicago. His work, which often centers on freshwater issues, climate change and subsistence, has appeared in Circle of Blue, Sierra magazine, Discover magazine and Alaska Sporting Journal.