UK City of Culture 2029 and UK Town of Culture Competitions

I am pleased to launch the UK city of culture 2029 competition as well as our plans for the town of culture.

Delivered across the UK and in collaboration with the devolved Governments, the UK city of culture competition has become a model for cultural place making. The UK city of culture programme helps to drive the Government’s plan for change by creating opportunities for everyone across the UK to experience great culture that they feel a connection to in their local place, boosting civic pride and community cohesion, and helping to kick-start economic growth through cultural investment. It complements other UK Government place-based initiatives, notably the pride in place strategy, which sets out a plan to create safer, healthier neighbourhoods where communities can thrive. The pride in place programme represents one of the largest investments in deprived neighbourhoods for a generation—up to £5 billion over 10 years to support up to 250 places.

The impacts of UK city of culture for places and people are clear. Bradford, the 2025 titleholder, is delivering real impact across communities, including engaging with over 1 million people in the first six months of its programme. We know that the UK city of culture programme overall—not including Bradford 2025—has stimulated additional investment of over £1 billion, and that more than 70% of attendees to UK city of culture events feel a greater sense of pride.

I am committed to the future of this programme, and places across the UK are now invited to submit expressions of interest to become the next UK city of culture and to deliver a year of transformational cultural programming in 2029. The multi-phase competition will run over the next year, and we aim to announce the winner towards the end of 2026.

In acknowledgement of the programme’s impact, we have announced £10 million prize money for the winning place. This is in addition to £125,000 funding for each of the shortlisted runners up so that they can take forward some elements of their bid, and £60,000 in bid development funds for each of the longlisted places to support them in preparing their full bids. This funding package will help bidding places get the most benefit out of engaging with the competition.

The competition criteria has been refreshed to focus even more on creating transformational opportunities and richer lives for people and communities, delivering local impact where it is most needed and empowering communities to shape their bid.

The UK city of culture competition is open to large towns, cities, regions and groupings of places that have a clear focus and cohesive identity, and that feel that they can achieve the ambitions of the competition. I hope that as many places as possible from across the UK will consider bidding.

Alongside this, I am delighted to launch our plans for the UK town of culture competition in recognition of the fact that all parts of the UK have made a significant contribution to our cultural life and continue to do so, helping to shape and define our national story. This new competition will see multiple towns competing to win the title and the winning town delivering a cultural programme in 2028. We expect UK town of culture to deliver similar impacts as UK city of culture, with the competition helping to remind us of the unique, proud and outstanding contribution made by communities across the UK, shining a spotlight on multiple towns and enabling them to tell their unique story.

Applications for this competition will open shortly and run as a multi-phase process. After an initial expression of interest phase, a shortlist of towns will be selected to develop full bids and we will provide £60,000 in bid development funds for each of these shortlisted towns. A winner will then be selected at the beginning of 2027, and I am pleased to announce that we will provide £3.5 million in prize money to support the winning town to deliver its cultural programme.

I look forward to celebrating the cultural contribution made by our diverse towns and cities.

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