What it is
The Cities Forum is the European Commission’s main conference on the urban side of EU Cohesion Policy: how regional funds are spent on sustainable urban development, and which EU initiatives support cities. It is held every two years and co-organised by the Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy (DG REGIO) and the European Urban Initiative (EUI), whose entrusted entity is the Region Hauts-de-France. The six editions so far were hosted by cities in Belgium, the Netherlands, Portugal, Italy and Poland.
The next edition: Bilbao, 2027
On 15 April 2026 the EUI announced Bilbao as host of the seventh edition, chosen from 27 applications. According to the call for host cities, the forum will take place between mid-April and mid-June 2027, last one and a half to two days and welcome around 800 people on site. The EUI organises and pays for the event, with a contribution from the host city. The exact dates, registration and speakers had not been announced when we checked.
What came out of Kraków 2025
The sixth edition ran from 17 to 19 June 2025 in Kraków. The EUI’s summary counts 765 participants on site and 532 city representatives from 36 countries; 70% of participants represented cities. There were 119 speakers across 29 sessions, on housing affordability, climate action, digital innovation, access to funding and stakeholder engagement. Thirteen site visits showed local projects. The sessions were designed to collect input from the audience for the EU’s policy agenda for cities, and the networking was moved afterwards to Portico, the EU’s urban knowledge-sharing platform.
Who goes and how to take part
This is a working event for people who handle EU urban funding: city officials, urban practitioners, cohesion policy managers at regional and national level, and partners of the Urban Agenda for the EU, who are among the groups the 2027 call targets. The 2025 event page describes it as open to policymakers, practitioners, city officials and advocates for sustainable urban living. We did not find a fee published for past editions.
Why it matters for cities
For a city using, or hoping to use, Cohesion Policy money for regeneration, housing or climate projects, this is where the Commission tests its urban policy with the people who apply it. For a parallel strand on climate neutrality, see the Cities Mission Conference.
Going, or following from home
Watch the EUI website for the 2027 dates and registration. In 2025 some sessions were streamed, with event materials published afterwards on Portico.