The figures contained in Confindustria’s Manifesto reveal the scale of the phenomenon: 117,793 companies, 309,613 people employed and turnover close to €60 billion
Bringing culture firmly into the country’s economic agenda, treating it as a driver of growth, innovation and competitiveness, with a national strategy. Italian culture is claiming its industrial, productive and strategic role. This was the message that emerged from “The Industrial States of Culture”, the conference promoted by Confindustria Cultura Italia on 11 June 2026 in Rome.
The initiative brought together institutions — AICC, AIE, ANICA, APA, FIMI, PMI and Univideo — and representatives of the cultural supply chains around a clear thesis: books, cinema, audiovisual production, music, museums, performing arts, digital content and heritage are not marginal or ancillary sectors, but a structural part of the national economy.
The figures contained in the “Manifesto of the Cultural Industries” show the scale of the phenomenon: 117,793 companies, 309,613 people employed, turnover close to €60 billion and more than €21 billion in added value.
According to Confindustria Cultura Italia, these figures call for a step change in public policy: no longer episodic interventions or fragmented measures, but a genuine industrial policy for culture, structured and multi-year. The strongest political message to emerge from the day concerned precisely the need for stability.
Tax credits, VAT, incentives, audiovisual funds, support for reading, internationalisation, access to Transition 5.0, partnerships, training and professional development are not separate issues, but parts of the same agenda: building medium- to long-term planning capable of ensuring continuity of investment and certainty for operators.
As Luigi Abete, president of Confindustria Cultura Italia, summarised, the aim is to move beyond a fragmented view of individual sectors: “We are like a supply chain of different cultural products.” A supply chain that needs to be recognised in its overall dimension, avoiding a situation in which each sector is treated only through special regulations or separate interventions. One of the central themes of the day was the relationship between cultural heritage, business and public administration.
The issue is a delicate one: much of Italy’s heritage is public, but its enhancement requires management skills, investment capacity, technological innovation and models of use that often also come from the private sector. The point is not to replace the public sector, but to build more mature forms of collaboration.
Public-private partnership, in this sense, was identified as a tool that is still too weak, often reduced to the management of marginal services, when it could instead become a lever for co-design and territorial development. The challenge is particularly evident in less visited places. Major attractions continue to concentrate a significant share of flows, while hundreds of cultural sites remain on the margins of public use.
For this reason, the issue of enhancement cannot be separated from accessibility, domestic demand and the creation of new audiences.
Another strong axis of the discussion was the link between culture and Made in Italy. In the “Made in Italy 2030 White Paper”, the artistic and cultural sector is included among the strategic sectors alongside areas such as tourism, the blue economy, space, health and wellbeing. This choice carries both political and industrial significance: it recognises that Made in Italy is not only material production, but also imagination, creativity, storytelling, languages and content.
Culture helps build the country’s attractiveness, feeds Italy’s international reputation and strengthens the competitiveness of many other supply chains. Hence the call for specific tools to support the internationalisation of cultural enterprises, following the model already used for other productive sectors.
Promotion abroad does not concern only food, design or fashion, but also music, audiovisual production, publishing, video games, cultural formats, catalogues, digital content and creative professionals. This point was also reiterated by Emanuele Orsini, president of Confindustria, who stressed the need to give greater visibility and support to a sector that is an integral part of Made in Italy: “Culture is an industry that feeds other industries and other services.”
The discussion between the different sectors showed how closely cultural production is connected to the rest of the economy.
Audiovisual production, for example, activates technical services, post-production, logistics, information and communication technology (ICT), transport, hospitality, catering, professional services and real estate activities. The value does not remain on set, but spreads along extensive supply chains. The same applies to music, which today operates across streaming, live performance, physical formats, vinyl, synchronisation, biopics, soundtracks and global markets.
Independent companies, in particular, were identified as a safeguard for research, cultural diversity and the development of new artists. Publishing, in turn, is no longer merely the world of the printed book: it is a supply chain connected to television, podcasts, cinema, education, schools, libraries and content production.
Yet it continues to face deep-rooted critical issues: low reading rates, the fragility of small publishers, difficulties faced by independent bookshops and territorial divides, especially in southern Italy.
Technological innovation was one of the most recurrent themes. Artificial intelligence is recognised as an opportunity, but also as a risk factor if it is not governed by clear rules. Cultural enterprises are not asking for technology to be stopped. They are asking for transparency, copyright protection, action against piracy and platform accountability. The risk does not concern only economic loss, but the very sustainability of professional creativity.
The demand that emerged was clear: apply existing rules, strengthen enforcement, encourage agreements between platforms and rights holders, and make artificially generated content recognisable. AI can become an instrument of innovation for cultural production, organisation and distribution, but it cannot turn into a mechanism for extracting creative value for free.
Finally, the relationship between culture and tourism was identified as one of the main areas for development. The two sectors should not be read as being in competition, nor as separate compartments fighting over the same economic spillover. On the contrary, they generate value precisely when they work together. Culture gives quality to the tourism offer, while tourism broadens audiences, opens up markets, brings visitors into local areas and can contribute to the economic sustainability of cultural places.
But for this relationship to work, coordinated strategies are needed: integrated promotion, infrastructure, territorial itineraries, enhancement of minor sites, cultural and industrial tourism, and the involvement of businesses.
