Fostering Transition in Governance Networks with the European Green Capital Award

We are living in an epoch of unprecedented global environmental changes at a speed and scale that transgresses all our traditional political and governance settings. Local authorities in Europe, as key “players” in this challenging multi-level governance landscape, have been shaped by the European Union (either top-down or bottom-up) to foster networks for environmental and climate transition. The European Green Capital Award (EGCA) for European Cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants is one such initiative that propels environmental local political leadership and commitment to governance transition. This paper is particularly interested in investigating the governance dynamics that occurred in the EGCA winning cities since 2020 and explores in detail the case of Guimarães, the winner of EGC 2026. The primary question is to understand how local governance structures of those cities (networks and stakeholders) adapt to apply to the EGCA. It uses available documents on the winner cities’ applicants, up to the 2025 round, and interviews with key stakeholders of Guimarães 2026. The results show that cities do transition to different local governance models, either demonstrating the importance of building bridges between academia, companies, citizens and political decision-makers for knowledge exchange, environmental policy integration and civil society mobilization, or enabling opportunities to strengthen multi-level networks at the European level to pursue long-term sustainability goals. The Guimarães 2030 Governance Ecosystem Framework is one critical example of the dynamic governance changes that occurred over 10 years in order to apply the EGCA.