Europeana Foundation Business Plan 2026

The Europeana Foundation exists to democratise online access to Europe’s cultural heritage. We make cultural heritage data open and reusable so that people everywhere can explore, reinterpret and build on the stories that shape our shared past. This reuse sparks creativity, drives innovation and strengthens competitiveness in our own and other sectors — from education, research and tourism to the creative industries and cutting-edge technologies like machine learning. Our work takes on renewed importance in the era of AI, as cultural heritage data can help to build the world's knowledge.

We advance this mission through the Europeana Initiative, a networked organisation uniting the Europeana Foundation, the Europeana Network Association and the Europeana Aggregators' Forum. Together, we champion digital heritage as a public good, encourage the reuse of trustworthy heritage data, drive digital transformation in our sector, promote the ethical use of technology, and help shape Europe’s digital heritage policies for the future.

Since 2022, we are proud to deploy and steward the common European data space for cultural heritage, a flagship EU initiative central to the ambitions of the European data strategy. The data space is part of a thriving ecosystem for data sharing across Europe and a key action in the Culture Compass, the EU’s strategic framework for culture. It ensures global access to Europe’s culture and sets leading standards for the sharing of digital cultural heritage data - and its reuse.

We are committed to advancing the data space strategy 2025–2030, a shared vision developed collaboratively by the European Commission, Member States and the Europeana Initiative. The strategy identifies three priorities: 1) develop a robust and interoperable infrastructure while increasing the diversity and quality of our data offer; 2) facilitate access to heritage data and its reuse across sectors; and 3) support the digital transformation of our sector through capacity building, networking and innovation. Three cross-cutting themes — AI, 3D and multilingualism — further enhance the scale and impact of the data space.

This Business Plan sets out how the Europeana Foundation will drive this work forward in 2026 through concrete actions. It also showcases our own initiatives and projects that contribute to advance the strategic priorities of the data space.

Looking ahead, the task is complex. AI is rapidly transforming how we interpret the past and engage with history, and our role is to guide this change with clarity and purpose. At the same time, strong policy momentum for digital heritage opens new opportunities. We welcome the European Commission’s upcoming AI strategy for the Culture and Creative Sectors and look forward to helping shape it. The Data Union Strategy recognises the unique value of Europe’s cultural and linguistic resources in building the ‘AI continent’. Our responsibility is to harness this momentum while expanding a trusted data space that safeguards the integrity of data, serves the public interest and contributes to building and sustaining the world’s knowledge. This 2026 Europeana Foundation Business Plan is a concrete step toward that vision.

Our long-term vision is guided by the Europeana Initiative Vision 2030  Adapt. Adopt. Aspire. Achieve, with the data space strategy 2025–2030 serving as an anchor. As we evolve and the technological and policy landscape around us changes, our core values remain the same. All our efforts - and outputs - continue to be usable, mutual and reliable. The data space is both an opportunity to advance these values and a testament to them. In a rapidly changing world, our principles take on new meaning.

• Usable: We support cultural heritage institutions in opening up their collections so they can be used in new ways. We advocate for open content and technology, ensuring equitable access to heritage data and fostering research, creativity and innovation.

• Mutual: Collaboration, teamwork and mutual benefit underpin everything we do. Innovation must be reciprocal, with fair arrangements that deliver shared benefits and support economic sustainability.

• Reliable: We make heritage data accessible with great care and precision to ensure it is always authentic, trustworthy and robust — more important than ever in a world of misinformation and mistrust.

In 2026, we will take concrete steps to advance the three thematic priorities and three cross-cutting themes of the European Union data space strategy 2025–2030. At the same time, our organisation must be future-ready — adaptable, agile and sustainable. We will prepare the next tender for data space deployment from September 2026 and will pursue new partnerships and business development opportunities that align with our vision and priorities.

Three thematic priorities

1) Develop a robust and interoperable infrastructure while increasing the diversity and quality of our data offer

In 2026, we aim to increase high-quality, reusable and ‘fit for intended use’ data by 10%, with a particular focus on 3D data. We will further develop automated approaches to improve data quality and reusability, and integrate new harvesting mechanisms such as LOD/SPARQL. We will also develop and establish data-sharing pipelines between the data space and major initiatives such as ECHOES.

We will extend our data offer by providing access to data at dataset level. This will include curated datasets with a high potential for reuse, as well as datasets that are not yet part of the current offer. To do this, we will start developing a new catalogue component to our infrastructure, encompassing key data space principles such as the sharing of data at source, using new mechanisms such as the SIMPL open-solution and enabling the download of large amounts of data to facilitate AI-driven data consumption. This is an important step toward data sovereignty, allowing providers to keep control over their data and determine how and by whom it can be used.

2) Facilitate access to heritage data and its reuse across sectors

We will professionalise our API services, enabling more integrations and stronger, formalised partnerships — including with organisations using our data as training sets for AI. By ensuring reciprocity, we can bring added value back to the institutions that provide this data. We will continue to develop a sustainable model for reuse in the data space through targeted audience engagement, such as hackathons, campaigns and successful formats like Built with Bits. We will deepen our engagement with research and educational communities, and reach new actors in tourism, media and the creative sectors. At the same time, we will offer hands-on opportunities to learn how to reuse our data.

In particular, we will highlight reuse cases for training large language models (LLMs) to inspire and support the implementation of the Data Union Strategy, which aims to unlock the potential of digitised heritage for AI development.

3) Support the digital transformation of our sector through capacity building, networking and innovation

In collaboration with the ENA and EAF, we will continue delivering high-quality, inspiring events and training opportunities on key topics shaping our sector — from 3D and AI to competitiveness or copyright. A wide variety of formats will help build capacity across the data space and beyond, including Twin it! cafés, policy talks and Europeana Writers’ Room creative writing workshops.

The Europeana Academy will be updated and expanded, ensuring the continuous growth of both self-paced and instructor-led training opportunities. This includes thematic training developed by, for, and in collaboration with EU-funded projects such as the 3D-4CH Competence Centre and ECHOES.

Three cross-cutting themes

In addition, we will focus on three cross-cutting themes that underpin the deployment, scaling and long-term success of the data space. These themes are embedded across all three priorities.

1. Artificial Intelligence. We will harness the potential of AI for digital heritage and, vice versa, unlock the value of heritage data for Europe’s AI economy. In doing so, we will establish our organisation as a recognised thought leader in this field. Building on the Alignment Assembly on Culture for AI, we will develop a vision for AI in the data space, offer guidance for the use of AI in our sector, deliver actionable policy recommendations, and continue participating in innovation projects in the AI domain.

2. 3D. We will empower Member States and heritage institutions to advance 3D digitisation with a clear reuse intent. The highly visible Twin it! Part II campaign will build capacity around fit-for-purpose 3D digitisation and the updated Europeana Publishing Framework. This May, we will celebrate the campaign’s “Grand Finale” in Brussels and Limassol. We will also explore the potential of AI for 3D digital twins, in line with the Apply AI Strategy and the Culture Compass.

3. Multilingualism. We will celebrate Europe’s linguistic diversity by enabling data space users to access and contribute content in their own language. A key milestone has been the launch of a data space website in all EU official languages, supported by improved machine translation quality.

A key focus in 2026 will be connecting the data space with AI Factories, Data Labs and the wider AI ecosystem in Europe. We aim to make our data available through Data Labs and formalise collaborations with AI Factories interested in heritage data, expanding opportunities for the data space - from computing services to storage. We will also engage with initiatives like the Apply AI Alliance, strengthening our expertise and credibility as a key interlocutor with the European Commission in preparing the 2027 AI Strategy for the Culture and Creative Sectors. Partnerships with the European Heritage Hub and AI4LAM will be central to this work.

Reflecting our trusted position in the heritage ecosystem, we are proud to participate in numerous EU-funded projects that strengthen both our work and the data space. Supported by Digital Europe, Horizon Europe, Erasmus+ and the Pilot Projects and Preparatory Actions (PPPA) framework, these projects advance our core values of usable, mutual and reliable heritage data.

• 3D-4CH is establishing an online Competence Centre for 3D heritage, focusing on the preservation, digitisation and knowledge transfer of cultural heritage in the EU and Ukraine.

• 3DBigDataSpace is expanding high-quality 3D content in the data space by aggregating datasets, creating a sustainable Europe-wide storage solution, and enhancing data quality through AI.

• AISTER is enhancing the capacities of European Higher Education institutions in AI and human participation for cultural heritage safeguarding in emergencies.

• CommonsDB is developing and validating a prototype for an interoperable public registry of rights information for public domain and openly licensed works.

• Data Conversations is developing an interactive, AI enhanced impact design and assessment tool, building on the Europeana Impact Playbook and other best practice tools.

• DEPLOYTOUR is establishing the European Tourism Data Space. We are working on connecting heritage and tourism to the digital realm and building synergies with the data space for cultural heritage.

• DIGICHer is working with representatives from the Sámi, Jewish and Ladin communities to design a framework promoting equity, inclusion and diversity in the representation of digital cultural content in the data space and beyond.

• ECHOES is paving the way for the European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage - a collaborative workspace where heritage professionals can access data, tools and services to advance heritage science. Through the data space, we will deliver a valuable dataset for researchers.

• Eureka3D-XR is enhancing 3D and XR scenarios in the data space, offering tools and resources for cultural institutions to create immersive experiences with cultural content.

• The European Heritage Hub is a leading advocacy platform for cultural heritage in Europe. We contribute our digital expertise and collaborate to shape joint positions that advance shared goals, including in areas such as AI and competitiveness. The project concluded its Pilot stage in July 2025 and was extended for another 18 months as a Preparatory Action.

• EXCENTRIC is empowering organisations in the European Cultural and Creative Sectors and Industries to develop, adopt and integrate collaborative data-driven tools and practices for smart digital operations.

• HERITALISE is researching and developing advanced digitisation techniques and AI-powered tools for documenting and representing visible and non-visible features of cultural heritage assets.

• XRCulture is enriching the data space with high-quality 3D models, leveraging innovative AI-based digitisation methods and novel XR applications.

In addition, we have just started two new projects funded under Horizon Europe to promote engagement and collaboration in the European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage (ECCCH).

• ECHOLOT will enhance the development and adoption of the ECCCH by cultural heritage professionals and researchers, serving as an interoperability hub facilitating the exchange of cultural heritage data between systems.

• INFINITY will advance the ECCCH with an innovative ecosystem of tools and methods that enhance the lifecycle management of digital cultural heritage objects.