Peoria Riverfront Museum Kicks Off Achievement Passport 2026 with Grand Prize Trip for Four to Washington DC
Peoria Riverfront Museum Achievement Passport 2025 winners, the Jackson family (center), won the grand prize trip for four to New York City. From left: Sadie Helmick, Peoria Riverfront Museum assistant director of education and engagement; the Jackson family: Leonidas, Winry, Jaime Arellano, and Marquis Jackson; Everley Davis, Peoria Riverfront Museum director of community engagement and assistant curator.
PEORIA, Ill., February 9, 2026—The Peoria Riverfront Museum announced the kickoff of its 2026 Achievement Passport program featuring a grand prize trip for four to Washington, D.C., in celebration of America 250, and the winners of the 2025 program’s grand prize trip to New York City. The special event commemorating two years of the Achievement Passport program took place on February 8, 2026, during the museum’s monthly Access for All Day, a free day every second Sunday, generously supported by Art Bridges.
The top 10% of point-earners for Achievement Passport 2025 were entered into a drawing for the trip in December 2025. The museum announced on February 8 that museum members, the Jackson family of Peoria: Marquis Jackson and Jaime Arellano, their son Leonidas Jackson, and their daughter Winry Jackson, won the grand prize trip for four to New York City with VIP tours at partner museums, including the American Museum of Natural History and the Museum of Modern Art.
The Jackson family told museum officials that they became museum members because of the Achievement Passport program. After attending Access for All days, the Jacksons said they found the museum to be very beneficial to their family, as well as fun, inspirational, and educational, and they invested in becoming members, noting that museum members earn double Achievement Passport points and receive discounts.
PEORIA RIVERFRONT MUSEUM ACHIEVEMENT PASSPORT PROGRAM
The Peoria Riverfront Museum Achievement Passport is an innovative rewards program that lets museum guests earn points as they experience the museum in a new way. Accumulating points makes participants eligible for special prizes, including the grand prize trips for four to New York City (2025) and Washington DC (2026), as well as museum benefits.
Points-earning museum activities include exhibition tours, scavenger hunts, planetarium shows, Giant Screen Theater movies, special events, and craft projects. Each activity has point values assigned. As guests complete the activity, they receive a stamp in their Achievement Passport. At the end of each month, participants report their point earnings and are entered into prize drawings for their achievements.
The Achievement Passport expanded in 2026 to accommodate the popular Science Treasure Hunt and the Planet Passport programs, highlighting the sciences and emphasizing the museum’s multidisciplinary mission, combining art, science, history, and achievement. The only museum of its kind in the nation, the Peoria Riverfront Museum is a community of visionary people with a mission to build confidence, spark learning, and unleash the full talent and genius of every individual.
Peoria Riverfront Museum Achievement Passports are free and available at the museum at any time. Participants collect points each time they visit the museum. Upcoming activities and point values are shared in a weekly Achievement Passport email.
AMERICA 250
Achievement Passport 2026 participants are in for a special year as the Peoria Riverfront Museum celebrates America 250 with a slate of exhibitions headlined by The Promise of Liberty, guest-curated by Ken Burns, January 31, 2026 - January 3, 2027. The exhibition contains an extraordinary assemblage of more than 250 important objects, documents, and artworks, including Gilbert Stuart’s portrait of George Washington, on loan from Colonial Williamsburg and a rare photographic portrait of Abraham Lincoln taken in Peoria, Illinois, on loan from the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.
At the center of the exhibition are more than 100 premium rare historical documents on loan to the museum and displayed in special cases made by the Peoria Tribe, facilatitated by curator and special advisor, Seth Kaller, leading rare documents collector and expert dealer from New York, from a 1776 edition of the Declaration of Independence and the first printing of the Constitution to the Emancipation Proclamation and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 March on Washington “I Have a Dream” speech.
Learn more about the Peoria Riverfront Museum Achievement Passport on the museum’s website.
The Promise of Liberty is sponsored by the Gilmore Foundation, Ashley and Josh Bellamy, McKinnon Family Foundation, America 250 Donors, Visionary Society, Friends of History.
Access for All Day, generous support is provided by Art Bridges Foundation’s Access for All program.
Achievement Passport sponsored by Art Bridges Foundation’s Access for All program, Bon and Holly French Fund, Visionary Society.
For more information, visit the museum’s website at peoriariverfrontmuseum.org.
About Peoria Riverfront Museum
The Peoria Riverfront Museum is the only multidisciplinary institution of its kind in the nation, combining art, science, history, and achievement. The museum is dedicated to using its collections, exhibitions, giant screen theater, dome planetarium, and programming to tell the stories that build confidence, spark life-long learning, and unleash the full talent and genius of every individual. Learn more at riverfrontmuseum.org.
Contact Melody Konrad, Peoria Riverfront Museum assistant director of marketing and communications at MKonrad@peoriariverfrontmuseum.org
