The Handover Ceremony of the European Capitals of Culture will be held in Nova Gorica – Gorizia with the large-scale spectacle Borderless Lights, featuring an illuminated Handover Ceremony co-organised by the current and future European Capitals of Culture. The ceremony will take place on Friday 5 December at 18:30 at Europe Square in Nova Gorica.
The European Capital of Culture 2025 Nova Gorica – Gorizia will symbolically conclude the year with Borderless Lights, which this time will shine in the spirit of Europe-wide collaboration. The central highlight will be the historic public handover ceremony, co-organised with the present and upcoming European Capitals of Culture: Chemnitz 2025 (Germany), Oulu 2026 (Finland), Trenčín 2026 (Slovakia) and GO! 2025 (Slovenia and Italy), in the presence of Minister of Culture of Slovenia, Asta Vrečko, Minister of Culture of Slovakia, Martina Šimkovičová, Vice President of the Region Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Mario Anzil, representative of Ministry of Culture of Italy, mayors and other high representatives of all four ECoC cities.
The Handover Ceremony will be the final event of the GO! 2025 closing week celebration, taking place from Saturday, 29 November, to Friday, 5 December 2025 in the EPIC District – the meeting point where cities and cultures converge. With a series of events, light installations from all over Europe selected by the R.o.R. festival, and unique cross-border experiences, Nova Gorica – Gorizia will symbolically conclude a year in which culture connected people, spaces, and ideas beyond borders. Handover Ceremony, illuminated by Borderless Lights, will serve as a luminous epilogue to a year that demonstrated the power of a shared European future shaped through culture.
Programme of the Handover Ceremony, 5 December 2025
11:00 EPICenter – Press conference, followed by signing of Agreement on Cooperation between 2025 European Capitals of Culture Chemnitz and Nova Gorica – Gorizia
16:00 EPICenter – Round table and presentations of current and future European Capitals of Culture
Participants: Samo Turel, Mayor of Nova Gorica, Rodolfo Ziberna, Mayor of Gorizia, Mija Lorbek, CEO of GO! 2025 Institute, Sven Schulze, Mayor of Chemnitz, Andrea Pier and Stefan Schmidtke, CEOs of Chemnitz 2025, Patrik Žák, Vice Mayor of Trenčín, Stanislav Krajči, CEO of Trenčín 2026, Lauri Nikula, Chairman of the Oulu City Council, Risto Ruohonen, Chairman of the Oulu Culture Foundation Board and Piia Rantala Korhonen, CEO of Oulu 2026
17:30 Europe Square: Light Parade
Slovenian and Italian parades (brass bands, majorettes, dancers, schoolchildren…) will set off from their respective sides of the border and meet in the Europe Square. The lights will symbolically connect the two cities and highlight the ECoC message: culture dissolves borders.
18:30 Europe Square: CEREMONIAL HANDOVER OF THE ECoC TITLE
The teams of Nova Gorica – Gorizia and Chemnitz will ceremonially hand over the ECoC title to Trenčín (Slovakia) and Oulu (Finland), the next European Capitals of Culture.
ON STAGE: GO! 2025 will be represented by Mayors Samo Turel, Rudolfo Ziberna and CEO Mija Lorbek. Chemnitz 2025 will be represented by Mayor Sven Schulze and CEOs Andrea Pier and Stefan Schmidtke. Trenčín 2026 will be represented by Vice Mayor of Trenčín Patrik Žák and CEO Stanislav Krajči.
Oulu 2026 will be represented by Lauri Nikula, Chairman of the Oulu City Council, Risto Ruohonen, Chairman of the Oulu Culture Foundation Board and CEO Piia Rantala Korhonen.
This is going to be the first open public handover of the ECoC title in history, which will be followed by Borderless Party, with the Pan-ECoC music programme contributions from Finland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Italy and Germany. The event will be headlined by the German producer and DJ Fritz Kalkbrenner, who opened the 2025 cultural year in Chemnitz and will symbolically close it in Nova Gorica.
