Culture Next 2025-2028

ongoing

Culture Next is the ECoC candidate cities network, current or former, awarded or not. A project in the lost bid of Cluj-Napoca for ECoC 2021, Culture Next was co-founded in 2017 by 10 candidate cities and worked informally until 2022, when the network reached 21 members. During 2022 and 2024, with the support of a Creative Europe grant for networks, Culture Next strengthened its programme and officialised its formal membership model, opening up to 35 ECoC candidate cities. Culture Next 2025-2028 is a natural continuation of the previous project. It aims to (1) increase the representation capacity for the cultural and creative sectors by expanding the network to 50 member cities, (2) offer more support for European cities to implement ECoC bid book legacy projects and culture-led sustainable development programmes, (3) strengthen the cultural connection and collaboration between EU and non-EU cities, countries and platforms and (4) increase the capacity of the cultural and creative sectors to contribute to cultural policies. The main target groups of the project are the ECoC candidate cities, their local ecosystems and the decision influencers in cultural policies. The project follows the priorities of the EU policy network and of the Creative Europe call, addressing the five areas of the mandatory WPs (artists and cultural professionals, culture for the people, for the planet, for co-creative partnerships, for digital transformation) through a series of networking, training, policy and advocacy actions meant to connect ECoC candidacy and legacy programmes to these topics. Through this project, Culture Next network continues its work to support ECoC candidate cities to bid better and to implement their programmes better, no matter if they were awarded with the title or not. 1300 artists and cultural professionals from 50 cities and 35 countries are involved in 8 conferences, 8 missions, 90 mobilities, 5 thematic working groups and other activities of the project.