Applications are open for the 2026 European Destination of Sustainable Cultural Tourism award.
Applications are open for the 2026 Destination of Sustainable Cultural Tourism award, one of the more recognisable European accolades in the field of the sustainable development of cultural destinations. The competition is organised by the European Cultural Tourism Network, known by the acronym ECTN, in partnership with the European Travel Commission, the organisation Europa Nostra, and the Network of European Regions for Competitive and Sustainable Tourism NECSTouR. This year’s call comes at a time when European policies are placing ever stronger emphasis on the connection between culture, heritage, community resilience, and tourism development that does not exhaust a place, but strengthens it in the long term. Applications are open until 15 May 2026, and the winners will be announced in September on the island of Skiathos in Greece, as part of the 19th International Conference for Cultural Tourism. This continues the practice of linking the competition with the annual professional gathering at which concrete experiences, management models, and projects from different European destinations are exchanged.
This is an award that has been presented since 2014 and that, over more than a decade, has grown into an important reference point for cities, regions, tourist boards, cultural institutions, and organisations that develop cultural tourism with an emphasis on sustainability. Unlike models that view tourism almost exclusively through the number of arrivals and overnight stays, this competition places greater emphasis on the quality of management, the relationship to heritage, the visitor experience, the involvement of the local population, and the destination’s resilience to economic, social, and environmental pressures. That is precisely why the eligible applicants include not only traditional tourism institutions, but also museums, interpretation centres, cultural routes, festivals, and cultural and tourism non-governmental organisations.
Emphasis on the new European strategy for culture and tourism
The theme of the competition for 2026 is: Sustainable Tourism Strategy and the Culture Compass for Europe: synergies for regenerative, smart, and resilient cultural tourism. The very title shows that this year’s edition does not stop only at the promotion of good examples, but seeks to capture the broader European framework within which cultural tourism is developing today. The Culture Compass for Europe is a new strategic guideline of the European Commission presented at the end of 2025, conceived as a document intended to steer the future cultural policy of the European Union and to connect culture more strongly with social cohesion, competitiveness, resilience, and international cooperation. In that context, this year’s award theme clearly conveys that cultural tourism is no longer a secondary or narrowly specialised niche, but an area where the development of local communities, heritage protection, digital transition, accessibility, and climate adaptation intersect.
Such an approach is particularly important at a time when European destinations are expected to simultaneously retain authenticity, improve the quality of visits, and reduce the negative consequences of excessive tourism pressure. In the official explanations of the competition, the organisers emphasise that the award will be presented to those destinations and projects that have achieved measurable results in improving the visitor experience, while respecting tradition and actively involving local communities. In other words, it is not enough to offer an attractive product or a marketing-successful story; examples are sought that can show how culture and heritage contribute to the long-term development of a place and the quality of life of the people who live there.
Who can apply and what kinds of projects are sought
National, regional, and local authorities, tourist boards and their associations, destination management organisations, museums, heritage sites, interpretation centres, cultural routes, festivals, and cultural non-governmental organisations from across Europe may apply to the competition. The organisers also specifically state that the submitted projects, initiatives, or activities should have been completed during the last three years. The aim is to avoid the submission of only broadly conceived concepts without real results in the field, and instead to bring concrete, implemented examples that have already demonstrated effects in practice to the forefront.
It is also important that applicants are not expected merely to formally satisfy administrative requirements. The very concept of the award is based on the idea that cultural tourism destinations can be laboratories for sustainable development, especially when they succeed in connecting heritage, contemporary creative content, local knowledge, digital tools, and responsible management of visitor flows. For that reason, cities and regions have an equal place among eligible applicants alongside smaller local initiatives, museum institutions, thematic routes, or festivals that have managed to build a broader developmental impact within the community.
Six categories: from resilience to a regenerative approach
Applications are submitted in one of six categories, and each of them reveals what is considered a priority in European cultural tourism today. The first category relates to resilience in sustainable cultural tourism and is connected with issues of natural heritage, the green transition, and climate action. In practice, this means that projects are valued which do not view a cultural destination separately from the environment, but through its ability to respond to climate and development challenges while preserving its heritage and landscape values.
The second category is dedicated to creative tourism and co-created cultural experiences. The emphasis is on initiatives that involve the joint creation of content, the exchange of skills, and authentic contact between guests and the local community. This is an important shift from the model in which the visitor is merely a passive observer and the destination a backdrop. In this approach, cultural tourism becomes a space of encounter, participation, and the creation of new values.
The third category is focused on digitalisation in smart tourism, especially on heritage and creative content that improve the visitor experience. This group includes various models of applying digital tools, from interpretive solutions and digital storytelling to new ways of managing information and the visitor experience. The fourth category covers transnational thematic tourism products connected with culture and heritage, including European cultural routes, networks of sites bearing the European Heritage Label, and cross-border and multi-destination initiatives involving at least two countries. This further emphasises the European dimension of the competition and the idea that cultural heritage often transcends administrative borders.
The fifth category relates to active, slow, and accessible cultural tourism, with a special emphasis on walking, cycling, and hiking connected with culture and heritage. Here the focus is on projects that promote a low-impact, people-friendly form of travel, with an inclusive approach and greater accessibility of cultural content to a wider circle of users. The sixth category is dedicated to regenerative cultural tourism and heritage-led destination regeneration. This is perhaps the most ambitious part of this year’s call because it speaks not only about reducing harm, but about projects that actively restore, strengthen, and regenerate cultural, social, and ecological systems through tourism.
Why this award matters beyond the professional circle
Although this is a competition that will attract the greatest attention among experts in tourism, culture, and public administration, its significance goes beyond a narrowly professional environment. In the European context, cultural tourism has long ceased to be only a matter of visits to museums or tours of monuments. It includes the way cities and regions interpret their own identity, how they present local history, how much they involve residents in the development of tourism products, and whether they are prepared to abandon short-term benefits in favour of long-term sustainability. That is precisely why awards of this kind are also seen as an instrument for shaping standards: they do not bring visibility only to the winners, but also send a message about which development models are considered desirable in Europe.
In their explanations, the organisers emphasise that the aim of the award is to increase the visibility of European cultural tourism destinations, open up space for the exchange of experience, and strengthen networking among destinations. This is particularly important for smaller communities that often possess strong heritage potential, but do not have promotional and financial power comparable to major tourism centres. In that sense, the competition can also be a tool for strengthening the international recognition of projects that are successful locally, but are still not sufficiently visible at the European level.
Croatian examples confirm that there is room for success
For Croatian applicants, an additional incentive is the fact that Croatian projects and institutions had also achieved notable results in previous years. Among the results for 2025 is, for example, the third prize for the project of the Public Institution Krka National Park, which was recognised in the category of resilience in sustainable cultural tourism. In the same year, the Tourist Board of the Municipality of Vrsar also won third prize for a project related to local heritage and the traditional sweet vrsarski amareti. In the 2024 results, an award was also recorded for the project Digital Nomads in Central Istria, while the Tourist Board of Lopar on the island of Rab won third prize in the coastal and maritime heritage category for the multimedia interpretation centre Čovik i more.
Such examples show that Croatian destinations and institutions are not observers from the sidelines, but active participants in the European debate on how to make cultural tourism more sustainable, more inclusive, and more relevant in content. They also confirm that awards are not granted only to large metropolises or heavily promoted international destinations. On the contrary, among the winners there are often projects that start from local knowledge, tradition, landscape, gastronomy, or the specific heritage of a particular area. This opens space for smaller Croatian destinations as well to enter European competition with a well-prepared project.
What an application can bring to destinations and institutions
Participation in a competition like this should not be viewed exclusively through the possibility of winning an award. The application process itself can already be useful because it requires applicants to define the goals, impacts, and sustainability of their own project precisely. This is especially important for organisations that want to show more clearly how their programmes affect the local community, heritage, the visitor experience, and destination development. In European calls and partnership frameworks, precisely that ability to present results clearly often determines whether a project will receive additional support, partnerships, or new international visibility.
In addition, finalists are given the opportunity to present within the framework of the ECTN conference, and according to the available information, up to two representatives of each finalist may participate without paying the conference registration fee, although the organisers do not cover travel and other costs of attending the award ceremony. This is an important detail because it shows that the competition is not merely a ceremonial event, but also a platform for professional exchange, networking, and positioning within the European network of cultural tourism stakeholders.
The awards ceremony on Skiathos and the broader European context
The winners will be announced during the awards ceremony to be held on 24 September 2026, as part of the 19th International Conference for Cultural Tourism from 23 to 26 September on the island of Skiathos, in the Greek region of Thessaly. The conference itself this year carries the same thematic backbone as the competition, with a focus on synergies between the Sustainable Tourism Strategy and the Culture Compass for Europe. This suggests that the discussion and presentations will be directed not only at individual successful examples, but also at the question of how to integrate cultural tourism into broader European development policies.
It is precisely this combination of concrete projects and the European strategic framework that gives additional weight to this year’s call. While the European Commission, through the Culture Compass, is trying to redefine the place of culture in European policy, ECTN and partner organisations are using this competition to seek projects that can show what those guidelines look like in practice. In other words, this is an attempt to translate political goals into measurable, visible, and locally rooted results.
For Croatian cities, municipalities, tourist boards, museums, festivals, and organisations working at the intersection of culture and tourism, the open call represents an opportunity to present their own projects in competition with European examples and to test how aligned their development models are with the new priorities of sustainability, resilience, accessibility, and regeneration. The application deadline expires on 15 May 2026, and according to the available information, applications are submitted via the AwardStage online platform. Given that projects completed in the past three years are sought and that the competition each year relies on concrete results, room for a serious candidacy exists above all for those applicants who already have implemented programmes and clear indicators of impact behind them.
Sources:- European Travel Commission – official announcement on the opening of applications, deadlines, categories, and the date of the awards ceremony (link)- Europa Nostra – overview of the competition theme, partners, eligible applicants, and descriptions of all six categories (link)- ECTN / Cultural Tourism Network – official page of the 2026 award with a description of the competition and the location of the awards ceremony (link)- AwardStage – official application platform with information on online application and the deadline for submitting the summary (link)- European Commission – the Culture Compass for Europe as the new strategic framework of EU cultural policy (link)- European Commission – explanation of the new Culture Compass and its place in the future framework of EU cultural policy (link)- ECTN – 2025 award results listing Croatian winners among the awarded projects (link)- ECTN – 2024 award results with Croatian projects among the winners (link)
Find accommodation nearby
Creation time: 4 hours ago