The Arqus cities of Graz, Guimarães and Vilnius, finalists for the title of European Green Capital 2025!

Graz, Guimarães and Vilnius are finalists for the title of European Green Capital 2025 for cities above 100.000 inhabitants.

The European Commission’s Green Capital Award recognises and rewards local efforts to improve the environment, and thereby the economy and the quality of life in cities. The Award is given each year to a city, which is leading the way in environmentally friendly urban living.

The Arqus cities have been shortlisted based on their commitment to addressing urban environmental challenges aiming to show that going green is possible, no matter where you start from.

This is excellent news for the cities and universities of Arqus that can see an increase in the attraction of more private investors and national support after these nominations, which in turn can have a very positive impact on the Alliance.

In addition, the green transition is one of the 3 major interdisciplinary challenges, together with Artificial Intelligence and European heritage, expressed as priority areas of the Alliance for joint action. Thus, our universities can provide great feedback on how their cities and local ecosystems are able to improve their environmental and climate performance.

Through the Arqus Living Lab on Climate Change and Sustainable Development, the Alliance aims to stimulate bottom-up responses to the need for strong education initiatives for the twin green and digital transition, and, especially, to ensure that the synergies between education, research, innovation and dissemination are exploited to the full, by having them generated in a single open space.

The winners will be announced in this year’s European Green Capital Tallinn (Estonia) on 5^th October 2023. The Arqus cities will present themselves to a jury panel in early October showing their overall environmental vision and governance, as well as the communication strategy for their title year in case they win.

The European Green Capital winner will receive a financial prize of EUR 600,000 to implement its strategy and engage its citizens and stakeholders to get active.

More background information can be found here.