European Heritage Awards / Europa Nostra Awards 2027: Up to 30 Awards, Five €10,000 Grand Prix and a €10,000 Public Choice Award, Closing 7 September 2026

European Heritage Awards / Europa Nostra Awards 2027: Up to 30 Awards, Five €10,000 Grand Prix and a €10,000 Public Choice Award, Closing 7 September 2026

The 2027 call for the European Heritage Awards / Europa Nostra Awards is open, and entries close on Monday 7 September 2026. This is the scheme the European Commission launched in 2002 and has run with Europa Nostra ever since, building on a Europa Nostra awards programme that dates back to 1978. Each year it recognises up to 30 outstanding heritage achievements from across Europe, and among those winners the jury and the Europa Nostra Board select up to five Grand Prix laureates, each of whom receives €10,000. A separate Public Choice Award, decided by an open online vote, carries another €10,000 and a bronze trophy.

For anyone running a conservation project, a heritage research programme, a craft-skills apprenticeship, a community heritage initiative, or anyone who wants to nominate a person or organisation that has given years to protecting Europe’s heritage, this is the most visible recognition available on the continent. It costs nothing to enter. The competition is real — the 2026 edition drew 261 eligible applications from 40 European countries, and 30 winners from 18 countries were announced on 21 April 2026 — but the entry barrier is documentation and evidence, not money or institutional status.

Key Details

What a Win Actually Delivers

The monetary prizes are real but narrow: only Grand Prix and Public Choice winners receive cash, and only entries submitted from countries participating in the Culture strand of the Creative Europe Programme are eligible for either. If you win one of the up-to-30 awards without taking a Grand Prix, you receive recognition rather than a cheque.

That recognition, however, is the substantive part of the package for most laureates. Europa Nostra and the European Commission actively promote winners as best-practice examples at conferences and in expert publications distributed across the heritage sector. Winners join a network that Europa Nostra describes as more than 500 laureates since 2002, drawn from 34 countries, and receive a year of free Europa Nostra membership that opens up that network directly. The organisation reports that many winners have found the award helped them secure funding for continuing and future work — which is the honest way to read this opportunity: it is a credibility instrument that improves your position with other funders, not a project grant.

Each winner also receives a bronze plaque intended to be installed or displayed in a visible location connected to the winning entry, plus an Award certificate. For a site open to the public, that plaque is a permanent, low-maintenance signal to visitors, donors and local authorities.

The Five Categories, and Choosing the Right One

Getting the category right matters, because each has its own selection committee and its own set of application questions.

Conservation & Adaptive Reuse covers outstanding projects aimed at conservation, regeneration and adaptation to new uses of cultural heritage, explicitly including cultural landscapes. This is the descendant of the original 1978 Conservation category.

Research covers innovative research projects that produce tangible effects for safeguarding or enhancing cultural heritage, or that improve how communities access, enjoy and understand heritage assets. The category expressly includes academic research, applied research and pilot studies, scientific publications reporting research results, and citizen science projects. Master’s theses are not eligible.

Education, Training & Skills covers projects that foster knowledge transfer, capacity-building or the strengthening of traditional and new heritage crafts. Europa Nostra breaks this into three clear sub-strands. Education means broadening public understanding — school programmes, public lectures, interpretation materials, digital learning resources, museum education, community awareness campaigns. Training means developing professional competence for people already in or entering the heritage sector — conservation workshops for museum staff, heritage management courses for site administrators, professional development for guides. Skills means practical technique — apprenticeships in traditional building methods, workshops on historical textile production, innovative digital documentation of heritage artefacts. If your project sits between two of these, decide which outcome you can evidence most strongly and write to that.

Citizens’ Engagement & Awareness-raising covers heritage-led projects that build social cohesion, inclusion and intercultural dialogue, nurture a sense of place and belonging, celebrate diversity and multiple identities, and stimulate civic ownership and responsibility.

Heritage Champions is a nomination category for influential individuals or organisations whose action shows exceptional dedication, impact and civic engagement for heritage. It replaced the older Dedicated Service category.

If you genuinely cannot decide, Europa Nostra invites you to email [email protected] with a short description of the initiative, and staff will advise. Take that offer — a misfiled entry is assessed against criteria it was never designed to meet.

Who Can Enter, and the Two-Tier Eligibility Rule

The eligibility structure is the single most misunderstood part of this scheme, so it is worth being precise.

Entries submitted from countries participating in the Culture strand of the Creative Europe Programme compete for the European Heritage Awards / Europa Nostra Awards and are eligible for the Grand Prix and the Public Choice Award. Europa Nostra lists those countries as: Albania, Armenia, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Kosovo, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Montenegro, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Republic of North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Tunisia and Ukraine. Nominated legal entities must be citizens or legal residents of at least one of these countries.

Entries submitted from Council of Europe member states that do not participate in the Culture strand compete for the Europa Nostra Awards instead. Those countries are Andorra, Azerbaijan, the Holy See, the Republic of Moldova, Monaco, San Marino, Switzerland, Turkey and the United Kingdom. Applicants from these countries go through exactly the same entry procedure and are evaluated in the same process by the same committees and jury — but they are not eligible for a Grand Prix or the Public Choice Award, and therefore not for the €10,000 prizes. UK and Swiss applicants in particular should go in understanding that distinction.

Individuals, teams of experts and organisations can all enter. Public authorities can enter too, provided they are entitled to represent the initiative or have included the owner’s, author’s or nominee’s written consent.

How to Apply

Everything goes through the online platform at european-heritage.awardsplatform.com. Europa Nostra will not accept applications or supplementary material by email or post, and there is no fee.

Create an account, select your category, and then download the reference document listing all the questions you will be asked in that category. This is the single most useful thing you can do early: it lets you draft answers offline, share them with project partners, and avoid discovering a missing question the night before the deadline. The platform lets you edit and resubmit at any point up to the closing date, so submitting a complete-but-improvable entry early is a sound tactic.

Applications must be written in English. Supporting photographs are limited to a maximum of 30 per entry, uploaded as JPEG or PNG files of no more than 5MB each, as single images rather than collages. Video material can be included by listing links to YouTube or Vimeo. You must upload a text file (.doc, .docx or .odt) with a clear caption and credit for every photo.

Two category-specific photo rules are strict and are a common failure point:

• Conservation & Adaptive Reuse entries must include ‘before’ and ‘after’ photographs taken from the same viewpoint and positioned side by side, with the context, surroundings and key details clearly visible in both.
• Heritage Champions nominations must include five recent, good-quality photos of the nominee — person or group — plus up to 25 photos of the related heritage work and activities.

Whatever the category, include images of work or activities in progress wherever you can. Assessors read process evidence as seriously as finished results.

Finally, every entry requires a signed authorisation form, downloaded from the platform, in which the owner, author or nominee authorises the entry. For Conservation & Adaptive Reuse and Research, the author also grants Europa Nostra and the European Commission permission to reproduce information and images of the work for non-commercial promotion of the Awards. Without a completed form, your entry will not be considered by the selection committees or the jury. Chase these signatures now, not in the final week — third-party owners and institutional legal offices move slowly in August.

How Entries Are Judged, Step by Step

The process runs in distinct stages, and knowing where your entry can fall out is useful.

1. Eligibility check. Europa Nostra staff read every application and confirm whether it meets the requirements. You will be told either way by email. Make sure you received the automatic confirmation of receipt when you submit, and check your spam folder if it does not arrive.
2. Selection Committees. There is one committee per category. They shortlist entries to proceed.
3. Independent assessment. Shortlisted entries are examined by local experts who may visit the site or project, or interview the entrant or another key person. They write a report for the jury. These assessment reports are confidential and are not shared with entrants or nominators.
4. Heritage Awards Jury. The jury selects up to 30 winners and shortlists up to 15 Grand Prix candidates.
5. Grand Prix decision. The Board of Europa Nostra makes the final Grand Prix selection, on the jury’s recommendation. Grand Prix winners and the Public Choice winner are revealed only at the European Heritage Awards Ceremony.
6. Public Choice vote. Online voting on the Europa Nostra website opens on the day the winners are announced.

Winners are informed of the outcome after the jury meets, but that information stays confidential and under embargo until the official announcement. Plan your own communications around that constraint.

Timeline for the 2027 Cycle

The 2026 edition offers the most reliable guide to how this cycle will run. Winners of the 2026 awards were announced on 21 April 2026, and the ceremony took place on 28 May 2026 at the Nicosia Municipal Theatre in Cyprus, hosted by European Commissioner Glenn Micallef and Europa Nostra’s Executive President Prof. Dr. Hermann Parzinger, as part of the European Cultural Heritage Summit.

Working back from that pattern, a 2027 entry submitted by 7 September 2026 will sit with selection committees and assessors through the autumn and winter, reach the jury in the new year, and produce an announcement in spring 2027 with a ceremony in the following weeks. Europa Nostra has not published exact 2027 announcement or ceremony dates as part of the call, so treat that shape as an expectation rather than a commitment, and check the official pages before making travel or communications plans.

One dated item is confirmed for the preparation phase: Europa Nostra has already held the first of two webinars on how to prepare an application for the 2027 Awards, and the second — same content — runs on Thursday 27 August 2026 from 17:00 to 18:00 CEST. It is free but registration is compulsory, and the presentation slides from the first session are downloadable from the apply page. If you are entering for the first time, attend or watch the recording before drafting.

Preparation Strategy and What Assessors Reward

The recurring theme across the categories is demonstrable effect. The Research category is explicit that it wants projects producing “tangible effects” or measurable improvements in community access and understanding — not simply good scholarship. Citizens’ Engagement asks for evidence of cohesion, inclusion and civic ownership. Education, Training & Skills asks whether capability actually transferred. Build your application around what changed, and show it.

A few practical moves that strengthen an entry:

• Quantify at the right scale. Number of apprentices trained and still working in the craft; visitor numbers before and after reopening; volunteer hours; percentage of a structure stabilised; publications and their uptake. Modest, verified numbers beat grand unevidenced claims.
• Document methodology, not just outcome. Especially in Conservation & Adaptive Reuse, assessors are heritage professionals. Explain the intervention decisions, the materials, the reversibility, and why alternatives were rejected.
• Show durability. Who maintains this in five years? Where does the money come from? Selection committees look for projects that will still exist when they are held up as best practice.
• Prepare for a site visit. Because shortlisted entries may be assessed in person or by interview, make sure the person best able to explain the project is reachable through the autumn and winter, and that the site is presentable.
• Write for a non-national reader. Your assessors are European experts who may know nothing about your region’s administrative structures or funding bodies. Explain acronyms and local context in one clause rather than assuming.

Common Mistakes

The most costly errors are administrative rather than substantive. Missing or unsigned authorisation forms stop an entry before it is ever judged. Sending material by email or post — which will not be added to your dossier. Uploading collages instead of single images, or omitting the captions-and-credits file. In Conservation & Adaptive Reuse, submitting ‘before’ and ‘after’ photographs taken from different viewpoints, which makes the comparison unreadable.

Beyond paperwork: entering a master’s thesis in Research, which is explicitly excluded; entering a project in the wrong category and being assessed on criteria it was never built for; and writing a promotional narrative rather than an evidenced one. Assessors and committee members read hundreds of entries and are unmoved by adjectives.

Note also that Europa Nostra’s published FAQ carries at least one date reference left over from a previous edition. Where a general FAQ page and the 2027 Call for Entries document disagree, follow the Call for Entries and the platform, and email [email protected] if anything remains ambiguous.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is there a fee to enter? No. There is no submission fee for the European Heritage Awards / Europa Nostra Awards.

Can I still edit my application after I submit it? Yes. The application platform allows you to log in and change your entry up to the deadline. Do not email or post changes or additional material.

Can I enter a project that is not yet finished? The categories reward demonstrated achievement, and assessors look for tangible effects, so an entry needs results you can evidence. Photos of work in progress are welcomed as supporting material, but build your case on what has already been delivered.

Who chooses the Public Choice Award? The public, through an online poll hosted on the Europa Nostra website, which opens on the day the winners are announced. Only winners from countries participating in the Culture strand of the Creative Europe Programme are eligible.

Can someone nominate a person without their involvement? No. Heritage Champions nominations require a signed authorisation form from the nominee, alongside the required photographs.

What if I win — what am I committing to? Winners are asked to sign an agreement with Europa Nostra and the European Commission permitting non-commercial use of photographs of the winning entry, used only to promote the Awards and the winners. Photographers retain their rights and are always credited.

Official Links and Contacts

• Apply and read the Call for Entries: europeanheritageawards.eu/apply
• Category descriptions: europeanheritageawards.eu/categories
• Frequently asked questions: europeanheritageawards.eu/faq
• Submission platform: european-heritage.awardsplatform.com
• Europa Nostra awards programme: europanostra.org/our-work/awards

For questions about preparing or submitting an application, contact Camilla Scopigni, Programme Assistant, at [email protected] or +31 (0)70 302 40 50. For questions about the awards programme itself, contact Elena Bianchi, Heritage Awards Coordinator, at [email protected] or +31 70 302 40 58. For help choosing a category, email [email protected] with a brief description of your initiative.

Next Steps

If you intend to enter, work backwards from 7 September 2026. Register on the platform this week and download the question list for your category, so you know exactly what evidence you need. Identify who must sign the authorisation form and ask them now. Assemble and caption your photographs — including matched before-and-after pairs if you are entering Conservation & Adaptive Reuse — well before the final fortnight. Register for the 27 August webinar if you want to hear the criteria explained directly by the team that runs the scheme. Then submit early, and use the remaining days to refine rather than to scramble.