Over more than a century of museum and heritage practices, it has been maintained that we need to protect and preserve the past for the benefit of future generations. Emerging discussions in Heritage Studies on heritage futures have started to challenge the axiomatic nature of this rhetoric, showing that preservation is not always the best (or sole) way to address the future in museum and heritage practices. Here we draw on these emerging discussions to address museum futures and other heritage futures. We elaborate on examples of possible futures in museums and heritage practices, including aspects of security policy and mobilization of civil societies in conflict situations, museum and heritage activism for the future, climate change and ways to embrace change to accommodate for sustainable futures. From our results we see variation in how futures are anticipated in museum and heritage practices, including addressing futures as: (1) unspoken and implicit; (2) as a contemporary agenda to act from; or (3) as an unfinished process that informs contemporary practices.
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