Braga and Cascais compete for ‘European Rising Innovative City’ award

Braga and Cascais are among the 8 semifinalists for the “European Rising Innovative City” award, an initiative promoted by the European Innovation Council to highlight the work done in this area by municipalities with a population between 50, 000 and 250, 000 inhabitants.

Selected by a group of independent experts from a total of 39 applications, the two Portuguese cities will now compete for this European title with Castellón de la Plana (Spain), Haarlem (The Netherlands), Leeuwarden (The Netherlands), Ludwigsburg (Germany), Trondheim (Norway) and Vantaa (Finland).

The winner is entitled to a prize of €500,000 and will be announced during the European Innovation Council Summit, scheduled for 24 and November 25. Before that, during October, the eight semi-finalists in this category, already invited to the “group of pioneering cities actively pushing the boundaries of urban innovation,” will defend their applications at private hearings.

In 2021, Portugal fell seven places in the main European innovation ranking, and is now in 19th position. This was even the first inversion in the upward trajectory that the country had been following since 2014 in the European Innovation Scoreboard.