If culture had its own Sustainable Development Goal, which indicators could cities actually report? This set is derived from what 173 cities promised in their bid books and what 41 evaluation and monitoring reports found. It is offered for debate, not adopted.
Version v1-full · published 11 Sept 2026 · a fixed snapshot: the numbers only change when a new run is published.
Every measure named in 167 bid books and 41 evaluation and monitoring reports, quoted with its page and checked against the source.
Roughly one in three of a winning city's own promised measures is reported against by its own evaluation.
Across 14 winning cities holding both their own bid book and their own evaluation, 429 of 1478 promised measures (29%) were reported against.
Corpus-wide, 27.3% of concepts promised in any bid book appear in any outcome document — a looser figure that also counts cities that never won.
Bid books show what a city intended; evaluation and monitoring reports show what happened. Open a card for the documents and the quoted passages behind its numbers.
| # | Theme | Lab indicator | Verdict | Best match in the Archive |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.1 | Economic | Cultural Budget - Total | Strong | budget allocation· 146 bids · 25 outcome |
| 1.2 | Economic | Cultural Budget - Administration | Present | wages, overheads and administration expenditure· 115 bids · 14 outcome |
| 1.3 | Economic | Cultural Budget - Marketing | Strong | promotion and marketing expenditure· 133 bids · 22 outcome |
| 1.4 | Economic | Cultural Budget - Cultural Programming | Strong | programme expenditure· 134 bids · 23 outcome |
| 1.5 | Economic | Cultural Budget - Capital | Strong | cultural infrastructure budget spending· 91 bids · 26 outcome |
| 1.6 | Economic | Cultural Budget - Evaluation | Present | evaluation budget allocation· 61 bids · 10 outcome |
| 1.7 | Economic | Value of investment into culture - Local government | Strong | city funding· 92 bids · 23 outcome |
| 1.8 | Economic | Value of investment into culture - Regional government | Present | region funding· 54 bids · 6 outcome |
| 1.9 | Economic | Value of investment into culture - National Government | Strong | national government funding· 127 bids · 16 outcome |
| 1.10 | Economic | Value of investment into culture - EU | Strong | events with eu co-funding· 60 bids · 20 outcome |
| 1.11 | Economic | Value of investment into culture - Private sector | Strong | Funding — private sponsor· 137 bids · 25 outcome |
| 1.12 | Economic | Value of investment into culture - Revenue Generated | Present | merchandise sales· 17 bids · 13 outcome |
| 1.13 | Economic | Total funding (€) to Cultural & Creative Industries in city | Strong | workplace units in dcms creative industries· 83 bids · 18 outcome |
| 1.14 | Economic | Funding for cultural sector per capita | Absent | — |
| 2.1 | Social | Average participant satisfaction levels | Strong | satisfaction levels· 16 bids · 21 outcome |
| 2.2 | Social | Number of social media followers | Strong | twitter followers· 40 bids · 18 outcome |
| 2.3 | Social | Number of attendees | Strong | Event attendance· 141 bids · 34 outcome |
| 2.4 | Social | Number of participants | Strong | event attendance/participation count· 62 bids · 28 outcome |
| 3.1 | Governance | Budget Spent on specific cultural intervention (ECoC / other) - Administration / Marketing / Programming / Capital / Evaluation / Total | Strong | programme expenditure· 134 bids · 23 outcome |
| 3.2 | Governance | Hours dedicated to the evaluation and monitoring of our cultural programme | Absent | — |
| 4.1 | Infrastructure | Value of investment in cultural infrastructure and facilities (€) | Strong | cultural infrastructure budget spending· 91 bids · 26 outcome |
| 5.1 | Cultural Vibrancy | Number of businesses working in the cultural sector | Present | number of enterprises· 13 bids · 5 outcome |
| 5.2 | Cultural Vibrancy | Number of activities - cultural projects / cultural programmes | Strong | number of cultural events· 113 bids · 31 outcome |
| 5.3 | Cultural Vibrancy | Number of cultural actors | Strong | number of artists· 78 bids · 19 outcome |
| 6.1 | Image and Perceptions | Percentage of attendees who rated artistic content as high or very high - quality | Absent | — |
| 6.2 | Image and Perceptions | Percentage of positive media coverage | Strong | media coverage· 49 bids · 27 outcome |
The Lab's list lines up with what evaluations already count — budgets, attendance, activities, media. 18 of 26 are strongly reported against.
Participant satisfaction is evaluated more often than it is promised — the reverse of the Archive-wide pattern. Wellbeing, inclusion and legacy are promised often and evaluated rarely, and do not appear on the Lab's list at all.
Funding for cultural sector per capita; Hours dedicated to the evaluation and monitoring of our cultural programme; Percentage of attendees who rated artistic content as high or very high - quality
Should there be an 18th Sustainable Development Goal, for culture? Honestly, we don't know. But if there were one, it would need indicators — things you can actually measure. So we asked a simpler, answerable question: what do European Capitals of Culture already promise to measure, and what do their evaluations actually measure?
167 bid books with readable text — the documents cities write when they apply for the title, full of promises — and 41 evaluation and monitoring reports — the documents written afterwards, about what actually happened. All of them are public. 6 further documents were left out because they were scanned images or had lost their text; we name them.
It read every page and copied out, word for word, every sentence where a city named something it would measure or an evaluator reported a result — 58,775 of them. For each one it recorded which city, which year, which document, and whether an actual number was attached or just an intention. We checked its work: on a random sample of 500, it had copied the original wording correctly 90 times out of 100; the rest were paraphrases, which we flag and never use as quotes.
It did not judge, rank, or recommend. It did not decide what counts as a cultural indicator. It grouped similar sentences together — "visitor numbers" with "audience figures" — and then stopped. A human expert reviewed those groupings, merging, splitting and discarding, before anything was counted.
For each indicator we count three things: how many of the 167 bid books mention it (a promise), how many of the 41 evaluations report on it (a result), and how many mentions come with real data. The indicators shown here are chosen by a written rule that favours indicators cities actually evaluate over ones they merely promise, and insists on a spread across themes and countries. Change the rule and the list changes — we show the rule so you can argue with it.
For the 14 cities where we hold both their bid book and their own evaluation, roughly one in three of the measures they promised (29%) was ever reported against. Every number on this page can be traced back to the document it came from. Click any of them and read the original.
It is not a verdict on any city. It is not a proposal for what an 18th goal should say. It is a starting point, derived from the record — a cause for debate.
