The new World Report on Cultural Policies, presented by UNESCO in Barcelona during Mondiacult 2025, offers the first comparative snapshot of national and local cultural strategies. The new report draws on more than 1,200 national and local reports, along with 200 case studies produced between 2019 and 2024, to map trends in heritage, creative industries, cultural diversity, gender equality, and cultural policies. The document highlights that culture contributes nearly 3.39% of global GDP and employs 3.55% of the working population, although it warns of marked inequality in investment, access, and institutional presence.
Among the most notable findings is the fact that 93% of states currently integrate culture into their national sustainable development plans (up from 88% in 2021), but only 46% of countries in the Global North and 58% in the Global South have included culture in their international cooperation strategies. The report also calls for culture to cease being the “missing SDG” and to be given its own goals, indicators, and budgets to ensure its weight in global agendas.