Jointly organised by the Council of Europe and the European Union, the European Heritage Days return this autumn under the theme Heritage at Risk: Revive, Resist, Reimagine. The 2026 edition shifts the focus from passive celebration to active safeguarding, examining the vulnerabilities facing Europe’s built environment and intangible culture.
Across participating countries, thousands of historic monuments, archaeological sites, and workshops will open to the public, predominantly throughout September. The programme addresses multiple fronts of risk. It highlights the physical threats of climate change and extreme weather on historic landscapes, alongside the steady erosion of traditional craft skills, regional languages, and intergenerational knowledge.
Crucially, the initiative also focuses on resilience. Through the Revive and Resist strands, the events showcase how communities are fighting back, using adaptive reuse, oral history projects, and living craft practices to sustain their cultural identity in the face of economic and environmental pressures.
photo: European Heritage Days