First-ever UK Town of Culture competition launched

Thousands of towns across the country have a chance to become the UK’s first-ever Town of Culture as part of a new competition aimed at boosting local pride.

The contest will run alongside the existing UK City of Culture contest, which was won by Bradford in 2025.

Three finalists will be chosen by an expert panel, with the winner awarded a £3m prize and two runners-up receiving £250,000 each.

It has been launched as part of efforts to “restore pride in communities” with applicants encouraged to showcase their “unique stories”, the government said.

Towns can start applying now and the strongest candidates will progress to a shortlist, with each shortlisted town receiving £60,000 in funding towards their final bid.

The first title will be awarded for 2028 when the winning town will start a year-long programme of cultural celebrations.

Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said the competition was a chance for towns to “make a real difference to their local community”.

“Great culture is not confined to our largest metropolitan centres; it is everywhere, rooted in communities across the country,” she said.

Her Wigan constituency is “fiercely proud” of its contribution to UK culture, she added, “from brass bands to Northern Soul”.

Chairing the panel which will choose the UK Town of Culture for 2028 is Sir Phil Redmond, the television producer who created Grange Hill, Brookside and Hollyoaks.

“Town of Culture is all about celebration, and that means actually telling us why your town is great,” he told BBC Breakfast.

He said the panel wants to hear “passionate, authentic voices”, with pitches focused on the “unique story” of each place.

Isla Telford, co-founder of Urban Wilderness CIC, is working on a pitch for the town of Longton in Staffordshire.

The town has a “really proud history of ceramics” and a “giant carnival” each year that tells the story of a pig, she told Breakfast.

“It’s a town that is very kind, we look after each other. We have creativity and talent running through our veins,” she said.

Community project leader Nic Sims, pitching the town of Ledbury in Herefordshire, said the local art gallery and poetry festival are highlights.

“It’s about bringing the rural element of what we’ve got around us that really makes these areas unique,” he told Breakfast.

Another town planning to enter is Grimsby in Lincolnshire, which one resident told the BBC has been “overlooked” in the past.

In Scotland, Paisley and Perth are both potential bidders for the prize, the Scotsman newspaper reported.

Sir Phil said the impact of the prize for the winning town could be hugely significant, based on what has happened in the places that won the UK City of Culture title.

He said about a decade later you see a “second wave” when young people who grew up in the area enter local positions of power and say “why can’t we do it again?”.

In Bradford, which has just finished its year as City of Culture, the impact has been felt “massively”, said Richard Dunbar, who led audience engagement for the city’s programme.

“It renewed our pride on a scale we couldn’t imagine,” he told the BBC.

Millions more people visited the city during 2025 and the investment helped fund thousands of events and training for young people, Dunbar said.

“It gives you that pride, but what it also does is gives the place and the people an opportunity to realise how good their place is, how good the arts is, how good they can tell their story,” he added.

Towns of all sizes across the UK are being encouraged to apply for the title.

Towns like Reading, Luton and Northampton have populations larger than some cities, but they would still be eligible for UK Town of Culture because they do not have city status.

The only towns that cannot apply are those which are part of Greater London.

To ensure towns of all sizes are represented, the competition’s three finalists will include one small town (with under 20,000 population), one medium town (20,000 to 75,000) and one large town (over 75,000).

The government aims to announce a shortlist in the spring, with the winner chosen by early 2027.

The government said the plan is part of Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s “ambition to restore pride in every part of Britain”.

It follows the government’s Pride in Place strategy launched in November 2025, which involves up to £10bn in funding to 244 towns across the country.