The Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, and the Mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, met on April 3 to discuss the role of the city in Mondiacult 2025 -UNESCO’s World Conference on Cultural Policies and Sustainable Development, which will take place in Barcelona from September 29 to October 1, 2025- and agreed to hold an international meeting of cities and local governments during this summit organized by the Ministry of Culture and UNESCO.

The meeting will take place at the Barcelona City Council on September 29 and will be open to Ministers of Culture and other representatives of UNESCO’s 194 Member States attending the World Conference. The objective is to establish a space for international cooperation between cities and local governments that can be reflected in the global agenda for culture, which Member States will work on together at the Conference. Thus, the voice of cities and local governments will be heard at Mondiacult 2025.

The meeting will bring together cities from all regions defined by UNESCO (Western Europe and North America, Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, Arab States, African States, Asia and the Pacific), which enrich the Mondiacult 2025 program in order to address, from a municipalist perspective, the key subjects of Mondiacult 2025 (cultural rights; digital technologies in the cultural sector; culture and education; the economy of culture; culture and climate action; culture, heritage and crisis), as well as the two main areas of focus of Mondiacult 2025 promoted by the Ministry of Culture: Culture for Peace and Artificial Intelligence and Culture.