The Green Living Areas Through Your Lens – Photo Awards 2026 are officially open!

Organised by the Interreg Euro-MED Green Living Areas Mission through its Community4LivingAreas (C4LA) governance project, the Photo Awards invite citizens and partners of the Green Living Areas Mission Thematic Projects to capture and share inspiring stories of positive change taking place across the Mediterranean.

Across our cities, towns, islands and rural areas, communities are implementing innovative solutions that make territories greener, healthier and more resilient. Through the Green Living Areas Through Your Lens – Photo Awards 2026, we want to celebrate these transformations and give visibility to the people, places and initiatives driving the ecosystemic transition across the Mediterranean.

Four themes reflecting the ETU Initiative’s priorities

Participants are invited to submit photographs under one of four categories reflecting the main themes addressed by the ETU Initiative, the Green Living Areas Mission’s platform supporting local and regional authorities in accelerating the ecosystemic transition.

🌿 Better Places, Better Lives
Show how public spaces and community initiatives are improving quality of life.

🚶 Moving Differently
Capture sustainable mobility solutions that make communities cleaner, safer and more connected.

☀️ Powering a Sustainable Future
Highlight clean energy, efficient buildings and innovative solutions supporting the energy transition.

🌳 Nature at the Heart of Our Communities
Show how biodiversity and nature-based solutions are making territories more resilient and enjoyable places to live.

Open to projects and citizens

The competition welcomes two participant groups:

• Partners of the Green Living Areas Mission Thematic Projects, who can showcase their project activities, pilot actions and results.
• Citizens aged 18 and over, who wish to share their own perspective on greener living areas.

Each participant may submit up to three photographs, accompanied by a short description explaining the story behind each image.

Photographs will be assessed by an independent jury based on their relevance to the selected category, their visual and creative quality, and the strength of the story conveyed through both the image and its accompanying description.

Awards

🏆 Overall Grand Prize
The best photograph across all categories and participant groups will receive a digital photo frame.

🏅 Category Awards
Eight additional winners (one Project and one Citizen for each category) will receive a selfie stick with integrated light.

To encourage broad participation, each participant may receive only one award.

Key dates

📅 Submission deadline: 16 September 2026

🏆 Winners announced: 30 October 2026

📍 Winning photographs showcased at the Interreg Euro-MED Mid-Term Event, Marseille (France), 25–26 November 2026.

Take part!

The ETU Initiative brings together tested and transferable solutions that help territories accelerate the ecosystemic transition. Through the Photo Awards, we invite you to capture these solutions—and the positive changes they create in people’s everyday lives.

👉 Read the Call for Submissions and submit your photographs here.

We look forward to discovering the stories, people and solutions shaping greener living areas across the Mediterranean!

The Ecosystemic Transition hUb (ETU) has launched its first Open Call, inviting organisations, projects, and practitioners to submit tested solutions that support the green transition of Mediterranean territories.

The objective of the call is to expand the portfolio of solutions available on the ETU platform, complementing those developed within the Interreg Euro-MED Green Living Areas Mission.

The call is open to publicly available solutions that have already been tested in real contexts — urban, rural, coastal, or island — and that support local authorities in designing and implementing sustainable strategies and actions, particularly within one or more of the five key ETU themes:

• green resilient planning
• green energy systems
• green mobility
• green community engagement
• financing the green transition

Solutions may include:

• tools and digital platforms
• governance and participatory approaches
• planning methodologies
• financial instruments
• community engagement initiatives

Selected solutions will:

• gain visibility on the ETU platform
• be shared with a wide network of public authorities and practitioners
• contribute to knowledge exchange, policy discussions, and ETU events

Beyond visibility, the call aims to facilitate replication and scaling, enabling solutions to be adapted and implemented in new territories.

Particular attention will be given to solutions that support key planning processes such as Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMP), Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plans (SECAP), and Urban Nature Plans.

This first call is part of a broader ETU roadmap. Future calls (ETU call 2 and ETU call 3) will support local authorities in testing and transferring individual solutions, as well as implementing integrated packages of complementary tools.

How to apply

Complete the online application form. Submissions will be reviewed on a rolling basis by the Community for Green Living Areas (C4LA) consortium.

Solutions that meet the eligibility criteria will be featured on the ETU platform.

Apply now and contribute to accelerating the green transition across the Mediterranean!

The Interreg Euro-MED Green Living Areas Mission has launched the Ecosystemic Transition hUb (ETU), an initiative designed to support Mediterranean cities and regions in accelerating the green transition.

By connecting projects, experts, and local authorities, the ETU acts as a practical support framework, helping territories identify, combine, and apply tested solutions adapted to their local context.

The ETU builds on several years of work under the Interreg MED Programme, where it was initially developed as the Ecosystemic Transition Unit. At that time, it focused on supporting rural and island municipalities in advancing their renewable energy transition through a systemic approach addressing energy planning, governance, and infrastructure.

With the launch of the Green Living Areas Mission, the concept has evolved into the Ecosystemic Transition hUb, expanding its scope beyond renewable energy to address the broader green transition of territories — from mobility and climate adaptation to community engagement and spatial planning.

At the core of the ETU lies a simple idea: territories function as interconnected systems. Decisions related to energy, mobility, land use, governance, and finance are deeply interdependent and must be addressed in an integrated way.

To support this approach, the ETU framework is structured around six pillars — organisational, environmental, social, territorial, technological, and financial — reflecting the key dimensions that need to evolve together to build resilient and sustainable living areas.By bridging knowledge, tools, and actors across the Mediterranean, the ETU initiative aims to turn tested and successful solutions with high replication potential into actionable approaches that can be scaled and implemented across territories, supporting local authorities in moving from strategy to implementation.

As part of the Ecosystemic Transition hUb (ETU), the Green Living Areas Mission is developing the ETU platform — a space where cities, practitioners, and project partners can explore and share a growing portfolio of solutions for the green transition.

The platform functions as both a knowledge hub and a practical tool, providing access to methodologies, digital tools, and real-life experiences developed across the Mediterranean.

The core of the platform is a growing portfolio of tested solutions, developed and implemented in real territorial contexts. These include tools, methodologies, digital platforms, and practical approaches that support local authorities in addressing concrete challenges.

For each solution, the platform provides key information, including:

• the challenge addressed and the solution’s added value
• the organisations behind it
• direct access to the solution

It also highlights where and how the solution has been tested, presenting the results achieved and the lessons learned from pilot experiences.

To facilitate navigation, solutions are structured using the ETU Matrix, which combines five themes of the green transition — green resilient planning, green energy systems, green mobility, green community engagement, and financing the green transition — with six cross-cutting pillars reflecting the ecosystemic dimensions of territorial transformation (organisational, environmental, social, territorial, technological, and financial).

Beyond accessing solutions, users can:

• stay informed about the latest ETU news and upcoming events
• connect with local partners through the Territorial Antennas
• learn about ETU calls to submit new solutions or benefit from transfer opportunities

The platform is designed to support key territorial planning frameworks such as Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMP), Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plans (SECAP), and Urban Nature Plans.By bridging knowledge and practice, the ETU platform helps local authorities move from inspiration to implementation, facilitating the transfer and scaling of solutions across Mediterranean territories.