The museum has seven types of exhibition pavilions, which serve as the core of the museum:
- The main UN SDG Pavilion (SP) will be developed in conjunction with the United Nations, UNDP/UN Environment and supported by countries, regions and charitable foundations around the world.
- The hosting country’s National Pavilion (NP) will showcase the hosting country’s overall SDG efforts, policies, visions and successes.
- A smaller but equally important parallel pavilion - the Hosting-city Pavilion (HP) is dedicated to the hosting city of that country, giving the host city incentive to tell its own stories.
- The Corporate Pavilions (CP) will explore industry sectors related to sponsoring companies. Companies will include both domestic and international firms. Up to 10 CPs can be featured in the museum. Each CP is a section of the overall complex, not a separate building.
- The Best-practice Pavilions (BP) will be sponsored by regions (communities, cities, states, provinces, or countries) that demonstrate their efforts toward the goal of keeping a global temperature rise of this century well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and various other efforts in solving their other sustainability issues, so that other places around the world can learn from these best-practice stories while making their own sustainability transition efforts. Up to 10 BPs are planned for the museum. Each BP is a section of the overall complex, not a separate building.
- The Foundation Pavilions (FP) allows global charitable foundations or NGO’s – such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, etc. – to present their efforts to solve sustainability issues, encouraging them to use the museum as a platform to reach out to a broader base of such efforts.
- The Travel/temporary exhibition Pavilion (TP) is designed to allow maximal flexibility to host various successful and informative traveling exhibitions from around the world such as the Water Exhibits, Earth Echoes, Climate Change Exhibition, etc.