L'Aquila has been proclaimed the Italian Capital of Culture 2026. The news was announced by the Minister of Culture, Gennaro Sangiuliano, in the Spadolini Room of the Ministry, in the presence of representatives of the 10 finalist cities: Agnone (Isernia), Alba (Cuneo), Gaeta (Latina), L'Aquila, Latina, Lucera (Foggia), Maratea (Potenza), Rimini and Treviso , Union of Valdichiana Senese Municipalities (Siena).
"All the cities that participated in the competition should be Capitals of Culture, and personally I would like them all to be rewarded for their beauty. Italy has great wealth and many places that are worth a trip. I congratulate the city of L'Aquila which in 2026 will best represent our nation, and I fully welcome the idea of finding right now, for the next call, the necessary resources to reward all the finalist cities in order to make these long-term projects", said Gennaro Sangiuliano, Minister of Culture.
These are the motivations of the jury, chaired by Davide Maria Desario, at the end of the selection procedure: “The dossier proposes a model for valorising the territory and the cultural, artistic and natural heritage. It aims to recover identity, focusing on culture understood as a driving force for growth and as a founding element of a community. The project involves a significant number of entities, creating a strong bond with the surrounding territories. The planned budget is consistent with the objectives. The indicated spending strategy is destined to have an important multiplier effect. The schedule of events and initiatives extends throughout the year and covers the entire panorama of artistic and cultural expression: cinema, theatre, music, visual arts. The attention to young people who will not only be users but actors is appreciated. The project fulfills the indicators of the tender, with good integration between public and private. The centrality and involvement of the museum, library and university system was highly appreciated. The judgment is excellent".
Aquila City Multiverse
L'Aquila Multiverse City is an ambitious program of artistic experimentation for the creation of a socio-economic relaunch model. L'Aquila as a multiverse city means seeing it as a complex reality in which multiple parallel dimensions coexist and interact, a city that opens up unexplored possibilities of artistic creativity and urban regeneration, precisely thanks to the dialoguing coexistence of multiple space-time and cultural dimensions. The 5 strands Multiculturality, Multidisciplinarity, Multitemporality, Multireproducibility and Multinaturality they will explore, through a rich program of initiatives, the complexity and cultural and environmental richness that characterizes L'Aquila, Rieti and the surrounding villages.
