Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities Annual Event

The 5th Annual Conference of the EU Mission for Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities will take place in Turin from 27 to 29 May 2026, over two full days of high-level dialogue, practical exchanges, and mobile workshops across the city. We expect around 500 participants, including Mayors, national authorities, investors, EU agencies. This edition comes at a particularly exciting moment, as we collectively move from planning to delivery, with a working title centred on "From Plans to Impact: Delivering and Financing Europe’s Climate-Neutral Cities". 

Across the programme, we will shine a spotlight on how cities are translating their Climate City Contracts into tangible projects, with a strong emphasis on implementation, funding and financing, and investment readiness. We will also bring in perspectives from well-established national platforms, including for example from Sweden, Spain and Romania, to show how coordinated national support can accelerate the development and scaling of urban investment pipelines. 

Several sessions will offer concrete links with broader Commission priorities and provide highly practical, hands-on exchanges. A dedicated workshop of the Affordable Housing Taskforce will look at innovative approaches to upgrading and expanding affordable, climate-resilient housing. In addition, a European Innovation Council session on innovative procurement will illustrate how pre-commercial and innovation procurement can help cities test, adopt and deploy European solutions more rapidly. 

The structure of the conference is designed to support meaningful interaction. On 27 May, participants will take part in mobile workshops across Turin, an opportunity to visit real sites, observe solutions in practice and exchange directly with local project teams. 28 May will serve as the main political day, bringing together Mayors, Member States and EU representatives, while 29 May will be devoted to technical and practitioner-focused discussions. Throughout, we intend to move beyond traditional panels towards a more interactive, operational format, enabling deeper conversations on practical implementation challenges, governance solutions and opportunities for scale-up.