Will it be Blackpool’s punk and rock? Sheffield’s steel and electronica? Or Swindon’s steam and iron?
Last week saw the deadline for submitting bids for the 2029 UK City of Culture, and the nine long-listed towns and cities, selected in March from an even longer list of 17, have proudly announced that their bids have been submitted.
If it all goes to schedule, a four-place shortlist will be submitted to the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport in the autumn. The winning “city” (towns feature a lot in this contest – which is a bit confusing given there’s also a 2028 Town of Culture competition) will receive £10 million. Three runners-up will get £125,000.
We should know who will follow in the wake of Derry (2013), Hull (2017), Coventry (2021) and Bradford (2025) by the end of 2026. In the meantime, here’s my ranking of the nine cities, from fabulously improbable to sure-fire favourite:
Inverness and the Highlands
1/10
This is definitely the winner for quirkiest long-lister – if it did win it would be a first ever for a city plus a region – but I’m not sure that a relatively affluent tourism hub in a region that might be seen as hard to reach (for someone from, say, Cornwall or West Wales) will make the grade when the judges come to making their final decision.
The bid is called “Beò! 2029” – the Gaelic word for “living” or “alive” – and openly states an aim of “tackling depopulation”. The local council has already chosen five “Youth Champions” aged between 14 and 24 – with music and Highland Dancing on four of their CVs – so we can assume some of the money will go towards motivating younger residents.
Inverness claims it’s not ultra-folksy and that we can “expect robotics, AI, and gaming to feature alongside film, Gaelic, the environment, and music”. It’s also bigging up beautiful settings, “with venues ranging from Wick harbour to Rum”. Also in its favour is the fact no Scottish town has hosted this event, after three English and one Northern Irish cities.
Swindon
2/10
The left-field option, the dark horse, the fun bet, and definitely not a city, Swindon in Wiltshire is known for its past importance as a railway-engineering powerhouse. Today, the STEAM museum attracts more than just rail fans with iconic Great Western Railways locos and replica workspaces, plus a fine array of objects, paintings, archive material and photographs.
What else is there to see? The confusing Magic Roundabout junction, which contains five mini-roundabouts, could be a fascinating backdrop for an installation. Perhaps the Oasis leisure centre could be rebuilt and the Manchester band said to have been named after it invited to perform?
Swindon’s bid is titled “A town that dreams in public” and targets five hot issues: democratic futures; young people leading change; humans and technology; climate imagination; and collective storytelling and identity. It’s easy to get to there from London and Bristol, but that might not be enough to sway the judges.
Portsmouth
3/10
“We are Pompey 2029” is the perky title of this city’s bid, with the council claiming more than 12,000 locals have helped with consultations and contributions. Some might mix Portsmouth and Southampton in their minds and, let’s face it, they’re rather close and have mainly maritime stories to tell. Portsmouth claims to be “Britain’s premier naval port”. Less well known is that it’s the UK’s “only island city”.
Venues, and potential backdrops for City of Culture events, include the Historic Dockyard, with the HMS Victory and Mary Rose as star attractions, and the modern Spinnaker Tower.
A group of “Patrons” is backing the bid, including Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, artist Paul Stone aka My Dog Sighs, comedian and author Suzi Ruffell, Portsmouth FC legend Alan Knight, yachtsman and disability sports ambassador Geoff Holt, swimmer Katy Sexton, Queen musician Spike Edney and Mark King, lead singer of Level 42. I’ve not heard of them, either.
Milton Keynes
4/10
A local commentator has described the people who envisioned Milton Keynes back in the early Sixties as “hippies in helicopters” – seeing a Modernist city form on bland Bucks in their trippy heads. Interestingly, “pagan-inflected mysticism” is also invoked. That recipe could make for a very cool series of festivals, blending music and architecture, design and art, Ye Olde England and the future.
On paper, MK has a lot going for it. The grid road system, myriad roundabouts, the Concrete Cows sculpture and a general vibe to delight urban explorers. Then there’s Bletchley Park, the Open University, Red Bull’s campus, and a good mix of shopping, cultural and entertainment/activity venues – including XScape and the MK Gallery, which has had some strong exhibitions over the years. But a fairly well-off Home Counties city (since 2022) might not be a great ad for a £10 million arts giveaway.
Middlesbrough
5/10
Middlesbrough (not a city) has already been chosen to host the Turner Prize, the biggest contemporary art prize in the world, later this year. The venue, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (Mima), would, along with two museums, a 484-seat theatre and the Italianate Old Town Hall, be key sites for the City of Culture.
Middlesbrough has a fast-growing digital sector and many hope a win will help create quality jobs. The council is keen to stress that the town is home to at least 20 nationalities and that its long-established Mela is one of the most spectacular multi-cultural festivals in the North East. That regional factor may be important, as Middlesbrough sits on the industrial, poorer edge of North Yorkshire and is sentimentally and historically attached to Durham and beyond. The problem is: Hull and Bradford were Yorkshire winners. It’s surely too soon to have a third from the White Rose county.
Ipswich
6/10
As the football team Ipswich Town makes clear, this is also not a city. Indeed, the rivalry with Norwich hinges partly on town-vs-city tensions. But the football club is also very special, being a proper community asset, and support is less about success than togetherness. Even when Town is promoted, fans get ready for relegation the following season.
Ipswich is an unfairly overlooked gem of a place. It came third in our recent ranking of Britain’s 25 largest towns, and was praised for its lovely old streets, 13 medieval churches, and ancient sites like Wolsey’s Gate, Tooley’s Court almshouses, half-timbered Curson Lodge, pargeted Ancient House, and lovely Christchurch Park, with its world-class museum/mansion.
It also has superb pubs, a pleasant waterfront and even has a postmodern landmark in the Willis Building. DanceEast is considered a great specialist venue. Ambassadors for the bid include Emma Freud, Richard Curtis and Libby Purves, so media coverage can be assured.
Sheffield
7/10
The big-hitter of the pack. Shortlisted in the 2013 race, the “capital” of South Yorkshire for 2029 could be an opportunity to demonstrate the UK City of Culture can rival the European shindig – which Liverpool successfully hosted in 2008 and which we were booted out of after Brexit.
Sheffield, with more than half a million residents, has nationally important and world-famous venues like the Crucible, two major universities, theatres, cinemas, galleries, plenty of places for live music – and bands like Human League and Pulp in its pop music DNA.
The bid is themed as “from grassroots to global” and highlights a creative sector of nearly 25,000 workers contributing over £1 billion annually. Arts, education, music, big money and a big centre: the Steel City would have been an ideal choice for a renaissance story – except, once again, for the Yorkshire problem.
Wrexham
8/10
Shortlisted in 2025, the Welsh city – crowned in 2022 at the fourth time of asking – has had a heady few years since Hollywood duo Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney bought into Wrexham AFC and made their Netflix promo series Welcome to Wrexham. A new museum set to open later this year has been dubbed the Museum of Two Halves, as it will combine local history – which is considerable – and football history on one site.
But the bid promises to be more than a footy tie-in. Co-titled “Wrecsam2029” it will be “an opportunity to showcase Wales to the world; the Welsh language is one of the defining strengths of our bid”. Wrexham has proven it can pull off a major cultural event with the National Eisteddfod 2025 and various spaces and projects – Tŷ Pawb, Stori Brymbo, the Wrexham Public Art Trail – reflect a healthy local appetite for the arts and culture. Will 2029 be Wales’s year?
Blackpool
9/10
Not a city, Blackpool is nonetheless Lancashire’s fourth largest urban area, after Preston and Lancaster – which are cities – and Blackburn. From one angle you could say it was a shoo-in for a City of Culture year. It’s known for serious, enduring economic and social deprivation and seaside towns have a relatively high profile among politicians and the media.
Blackpool is also known for its cultural savvy, from hosting the annual Rebellion festival – the UK’s biggest punk gathering – to recently securing the David Bowie: On Tour exhibition and Happiness! The Ken Dodd Exhibition. The contrast between these two late legends sums up Blackpool’s curious, unpigeonholeable nature.
As a place with very distinctive cultural history in pier-end light entertainment – as winningly displayed at the excellent Showtown museum – Blackpool could use a year of more mixed offerings to become a more substantial winter destination. The one weak link in this case is that it is already the most visited seaside resort in the country; numbers alone haven’t enriched it. But this remains a very solid bet.
Chris Moss is the author of Where Tourists Seldom Tread: Postcards from Bypassed Britain and Lancashire: Exploring the Historic County that Made the Modern World, available at the Telegraph Bookshop.