The UNESCO Creative Cities Network (UCCN) was created in 2004 to promote cooperation with and among cities that have identified creativity as a strategic factor for sustainable urban development. The 69 cities which currently make up this network work together towards a common objective: placing creativity and cultural industries at the heart of their development plans at the local level and cooperating actively at the international level.

Previous Creative Cities annual meetings have been held in:

  1. Paris (UNESCO HQ, 2008), 
  2. Santa Fe (2008), Lyon (2009), 
  3. Shenzhen (2010), 
  4. Seoul (2011), 
  5. Montréal (2012), 
  6. Bologna (2013)
  7. Chengdu (2014).
The 2016 Annual Meeting will be held in in Östersund, Sweden.