The total investment is €300,000, but the maximum contribution for each individual project is €50,000. In particular, applications can be submitted for three project categories: small scale (€3,000 to €10,000), medium scale (€10,000 to €30,000) and large scale (€30,000 to €50,000).
The deadline is 29 March 2026 (23:59 CET).
But let's take a closer look.
Skopje 2028 is guided by the motto “Culture Over Division”, reflecting the city’s historic role as a place of encounter, resilience, and solidarity. Rooted in a multiethnic, multi-layered cultural landscape shaped by heritage, migration, post-earthquake reconstruction, and contemporary urban challenges, Skopje’s ECoC vision understands culture as a long-term driver of social cohesion, democratic participation, ecological responsibility, and urban transformation.
The Open Call for Cultural and Artistic Projects is one of the core instruments through which this vision will be realized. It invites artists, cultural professionals, organizations, institutions, and European partners to actively co-create the official Skopje 2028 cultural programme for the period 2026–2028, ensuring strong European cooperation, citizen participation, and sustainable cultural legacy.
This Open Call is conceived as a grant-based cultural funding mechanism, not as a public procurement procedure. Its primary purpose is to support original, non-commercial cultural and artistic projects that align with the strategic objectives of Skopje 2028 and the broader values of the European Capital of Culture programme.
The call aims to: • Strengthen European cooperation, mobility, and co-creation, positioning Skopje as a meeting point for diverse European cultural practices. • Support citizen-centered and participatory cultural models, ensuring active involvement of local communities. • Encourage radical creativity, experimentation, and interdisciplinary approaches, including digital, hybrid, and emerging artistic practices. • Address shared European challenges, such as social fragmentation, ecological crisis, digital transformation, and questions of memory and identity. • Contribute to the long-term cultural, social, and urban transformation of Skopje beyond 2028.
Projects selected through this call will become an integral part of the official Skopje 2028 programme, implemented across the city and its ten municipalities, in both institutional and public spaces.
All proposals must align with at least one of the five thematic strands that structure the Skopje 2028 programme:
Art4Hope – Art for Hope
This strand focuses on countering apathy, social fatigue, and youth emigration by nurturing hope through collective artistic action. It encourages bold experimentation, interdisciplinary practices, and the activation of new cultural spaces. Art4Hope emphasizes resilience, optimism, and the transformative power of artistic action, summarized in the guiding principle: “It is not hope that prompts action – action prompts hope.”
Togetherness
Rooted in Skopje’s legacy of post-1963 earthquake solidarity, Togetherness addresses social cohesion, dialogue, tolerance, and the “right to the city.” Projects are expected to foster collaboration across communities, generations, and cultural backgrounds, using art as a platform for shared experience, participation, and mutual understanding.
rECOvering – Renewal
This strand responds to the city’s recent urban, ecological, and social challenges, including environmental degradation and fragmented urban development. It invites projects that explore healing, recovery, and resilience through culture, combining artistic practices with ecological awareness, critical reflection, and future-oriented imagination.
CreARTing – Creation
CreARTing bridges art, technology, science, and entrepreneurship. It supports projects that integrate ICT, digital media, AI, XR/VR, and creative innovation, aiming to reduce the digital gap, stimulate youth entrepreneurship, and position Skopje within contemporary European creative economies.
Heritage – Cultural Heritage
Heritage projects focus on the preservation, reinterpretation, and reactivation of tangible and intangible cultural heritage. Emphasis is placed on living traditions, memory, craftsmanship, and the dialogue between historical legacy and contemporary artistic expression, reinforcing Skopje’s role as a culturally layered European city.
The mayor of Skopje, Orce Gjorgjievski, announcing that today the city has launched the first competition for cultural and artistic projects for ‘Skopje - European Capital of Culture 2028’, said that "Skopje is entering a new phase in which ideas must be transformed into concrete, sustainable cultural projects of European relevance. Projects that will not only last for a year, but will leave a lasting value in the city, in the communities and in the entire cultural ecosystem."
Other info here.
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