Design Contest is Next Step for New Euro Banknotes

The European Central Bank (ECB) has launched a public contest for the design of future euro banknotes – the next step in the euro banknote redesign process which will culminate in a decision in 2026.

The ECB first announced plans for a new design – the first in over two decades – in December 2021. In July 2023 it published a shortlist of six possible design themes, drawn up from an original list of 29 themes by the Theme Advisory Council (TAG) – an independent group established in 2021 with members drawn from fields such as history, natural and social sciences, the visual arts and technology. These six themes were put to a public survey, and the two frontrunners – European Culture, and Rivers and Birds – were announced in November 2023.

The motifs for these themes, chosen by the Governing Council of the ECB, were announced this January. For European Culture, they focus on shared cultural spaces and prominent Europeans (among them opera singer Maria Callas, Beethoven, Marie Curie, Leonardo da Vinci, the novelist and Nobel laureate Bertha von Suttner, and the novelist and playwright Miguel de Cervantes). The other – Rivers and Birds – focuses on the resilience and diversity of the natural world, with images of the main European institutions on the reverse.