European Capital of Culture

The current European Capitals of Culture for 2025 are Nova Gorica in Slovenia with Gorizia in Italy, and Chemnitz in Germany.

An international panel of cultural experts is in charge of assessing the proposals of cities for the title according to criteria specified by the European Union.

Bids from five United Kingdom cities to be the 2023 Capital of Culture were disqualified in November 2017, because the UK was planning to leave the EU before 2023.

The European Commission's Scotland office confirmed that this would be the case on 23 November 2017, only one week before the UK was due to announce which city would be put forward.

[55] 2 A new framework makes it possible for cities in candidate countries (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Turkey, Ukraine), potential candidates for EU membership (Kosovo) or EFTA member states (Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland) to hold the title every third year as of 2021.