Call for Candidate Cities to host the next UCLG Culture Summit 2021

Since the founding Congress of Paris, culture has been at the heart of UCLG's policy agenda.

Since 2015, UCLG has convened three editions of the UCLG Culture Summit, which were respectively hosted by the City of Bilbao (Basque Country, Spain, March 2015), the Jeju Self-Governing Special Province (Jeju-do, Republic of Korea, May 2017), and the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires (Argentina, April 2019). Following the success of the three first Culture Summit of UCLG, and considering the growing importance of culture in the framework of sustainable cities, the Executive Bureau of UCLG has decided to convene a fourth UCLG Culture Summit in 2021.

The UCLG Culture Summit is a unique global event. It responds to the growing importance of culture in local development, a fact that is being evidenced in all continents, at least since the beginning of the 21st century. The Summit is the meeting point of cities, local governments, national governments, civil society organizations and international organizations to discuss the current position of culture in the global agendas. Participants to the Summit are very committed to the successful implementation of policies and programmes on culture and sustainability.

The Summit send very strong messages on the role of culture in development and provides a remarkable international visibility to the city / region / local government that hosts the event. The programme of the Summit, to be elaborated between the UCLG Committee on culture and the host city, will emphasise that culture is an integral part of sustainable cities, and will promote the sharing of experiences and innovations from cities across the world.

The Committee on Culture of UCLG has officially launched an open call to all UCLG city and local governments members who wish to host the next edition of the Summit.

  • Terms of Reference for the organization of the Summit are now available.
  • The deadline for submitting a candidacy to host the Summit is set on 15 October 2019.