At the end of October, the Ministry of Culture will announce the winner. Padua, Capri, Pozzuoli and the Civita di Bagnoregio–Bolsena partnership are competing for the title and a €1 million award
It is now a matter of weeks: at the end of October, the Ministry of Culture will reveal the city that will be awarded the title of Italian Capital of Contemporary Art for 2028, following Alba, the 2027 Capital. The competition has therefore officially entered its decisive phase, after the selection process narrowed the field down to four outstanding finalists: Padua with “Ancora imparo. Esercizi di dissidenza” (“I am still learning. Exercises in dissent”), Capri with “Le sirene del nuovo” (“The sirens of the new”), Pozzuoli with “La città delle fragilità creative” (“The city of creative fragilities”), and the joint bid by Civita di Bagnoregio and Bolsena with “Arte che viene, arte che va” (“Art that comes, art that goes”).
True programmatic manifestos of a new aesthetic and territorial awareness, these bids are redefining the very concept of urban regeneration, with this autumn marking their most significant political and strategic test. The challenge is no longer simply about regenerating disused spaces, but about understanding how the languages of visual art can genuinely reactivate the social, economic and cultural identity of local communities.
The four projects in the running
Padua enters the competition with the programmatically titled dossier “Ancora imparo. Esercizi di dissidenza”, an explicit invitation to see the institution and urban space not as places of rigid preservation, but as arenas for critical thinking. In Padua’s proposal, contemporary art becomes a fundamental tool for questioning established certainties, engaging citizens and returning regenerated symbolic places to the community, transforming intellectual dissent into a practice of civic cohesion.
Capri challenges the purely glamorous and exclusive narrative associated with mass tourism through its project “Le sirene del nuovo”. The island is bidding to rediscover and revive its historic vocation as a laboratory of the avant-garde and an intellectual refuge, using contemporary languages to reconnect the complex relationship between Mediterranean myth, the protection of the natural landscape and global flows of creativity. In doing so, it seeks to demonstrate how the island’s beauty can also become a cradle for bold and contemporary artistic research.
Another profound interpretation of territorial resilience comes from Pozzuoli, which chooses to confront its complex geological and social identity head-on with the dossier “La città delle fragilità creative”. In an area marked by deep scars and by the constant environmental tension of the Phlegraean Fields, art becomes a means of care and civic resilience. The project turns signs of vulnerability into drivers of recovery and long-term urban regeneration, demonstrating how creativity can offer new perspectives through which a wounded community can learn to inhabit and protect its territory once again.
Completing this geography of transformation is the evocative partnership between Civita di Bagnoregio and Bolsena, brought together under the dossier “Arte che viene, arte che va”. The Tuscia area thus presents itself as an unexpected and compelling crossroads, capable of bringing the age-old and widely recognised fragility of the “dying town” into dialogue with the most dynamic and experimental currents of contemporary visual research. The initiative strongly demonstrates that small towns and inland areas can also become centres of widespread cultural revival, where historical heritage does not passively endure the passage of time but actively engages with the tensions of the present.
The strategic value of the call
The €1 million made available through the call goes far beyond the logic of a prestigious award or one-off funding for short-lived events. On the contrary, it is intended as a genuine economic and structural catalyst, with the resources strictly tied to the implementation of lasting cultural programmes and tangible interventions capable of generating an impact well beyond 2028.
At a time when local communities are seeking forward-looking responses to economic, climate and social crises, the competition to become the next Italian Capital of Contemporary Art confirms that investing in culture is not a decorative luxury, but a cornerstone of any genuine policy for the future.
