Gibellina Italian Capital of Contemporary Art 2026

Gibellina is the 'Italian Capital of Contemporary Art' for the year 2026. The Minister of Culture, Alessandro Giuli, proclaimed the first Capital of Art of the present in Rome, in the Sala Spadolini of the Ministry, in the presence of the Director General for Contemporary Creativity, Angelo Piero Cappello, and the President of the Jury, Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo. Also present were representatives of the five finalist cities: Carrara, Gallarate, Gibellina, Pescara and Todi. In October, the names of the five finalist cities were announced. The Jury, chaired by Sandretto Re Rebaudengo and composed of Sofia Gnoli, Walter Guadagnini, Renata Cristina Mazzantini and Vincenzo Santoro, chose them after examining the 23 nominations submitted by the respective delegations in public hearings on 25 October in Rome at MiC. The new award established by a call for applications in April 2024 aims to encourage and support the planning and implementation capacity of Italian cities in the field of the promotion and enhancement of contemporary art.

The city of Gibellina has won with the 'Portami il Futuro' project, which will be developed through initiatives related to contemporary art and creativity, cultural design, urban regeneration, restoration and above all the construction of a vision of the future that takes into account beauty as a shared and regenerating value. And thanks to the State's contribution of one million euro, the town will be able to showcase, for a period of one year, cultural projects that include activities such as exhibitions, festivals and reviews, as well as the construction and redevelopment of spaces and areas dedicated to the enjoyment of contemporary art.

The Sicilian municipality - famous for Alberto Burri's 'Great Cretto', first realised between 1984 and 1989 and later completed in 2015, on the site of the old town of Gibellina, which was completely destroyed by the 1968 Belice earthquake - received the award with the following motivation from the jury "The first 'Italian Capital of Contemporary Art' with its candidacy offers our country an organic and solid project, delivering to today's Italy an exemplary model of cultural intervention, based on values and actions that recognise to art a social function and to culture the status of common good. For its planning capacity in reactivating its extraordinary heritage of works, combining in the present memory and future, conservation and valorisation, attention to the local and international ambition; for its capacity to involve the new generations and the entire citizenry, calling upon the broader territory on the basis of a common civic awareness, forging alliances with public and private, national and transnational institutions; for being a pioneer city of what we now call urban regeneration, and for its capacity to be both a city-work and a city to be inhabited: for its project, with which the city will become a great laboratory where the practices and energies of contemporary art will be called upon to share thoughts and solutions on the themes of public space, community, landscape, sustainability and the capacious concept of heritage. For all these reasons outlined above, we believe we can identify the city of Gibellina as 'Italian Capital of Contemporary Art' 2026'.