April the 22nd, 2026 – The City of Zagreb is set to invest a massive 23 million euros in cultural projects aimed at “decentralising” the capital’s cultural scene and bringing it closer to individual neighbourhoods.
As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, Zagreb Mayor Tomislav Tomašević presented five new capital investments in Zagreb’s culture this week worth 23 million euros in total. During the presentation, he emphasised that the city government’s intention is to decentralise culture and “bring it” to people in their neighbourhoods.
“Culture is one of our strategic projects in the City of Zagreb. Cities differ primarily when it comes specifically to culture, whether it is ‘hardware’ – such as our cultural heritage and buildings, or ‘software’ – such as cultural content,” stated Tomašević.
Alongside the lengthy and extensive works being carried out in Paromlin, Kino Europa, the Art Pavilion, the Museum of Arts and Crafts, the Croatian Film House and the Comedy Theatre are all now nearing completion. These projects are worth 209 million euros in total, of which 131 million euros are from European funds, around 71 million euros from the Zagreb city budget and around seven from the state budget.
For the City of Zagreb, there are currently five new capital investments in culture – the Pluto Cultural and Art Center, the Tesarna Music Centre in Gredelj, the Jelkovec Cultural Centre, the Tržnice Trnje Intercultural Social Centre and the Draškovićeva Gallery. Together, they’re all worth around 23 million euros, as revealed by Tomašević, who added that, according to the current plan, these projects will be financed exclusively from the city budget.
The head of the City Office for Culture and Civil Society, Emina Višnić, singled out the Pluto Centre on the site of a former factory in Ljudevita Posavskog Street as the most valuable project of all. There, a large gallery space is being planned. It will become Zagreb’s very first contemporary “kunsthalle” with a range of accompanying facilities estimated at 11.5 million euros excluding VAT. She announced that the protected Tesarna building in the Gredelj complex will also be converted into a concert and educational space, i.e. a music centre for the development of new original music, and that 2.5 million euros have been planned and set aside specifically for this project.
The urban settlement of Sopnica-Jelkovec in Sesvete will receive a brand new centre for cultural and social life with a large hall and spaces for workshops and other programmes. New facilities are also planned in Stari Trnje, where an Intercultural Social Centre with a gallery and a smaller hall will be built on the site of the former market.
These projects are worth 4.2 and 3.9 million euros, respectively, and the fifth of the announced projects was the new city art gallery in Draškovićeva Street, for which around 800,000 euros have been set aside. With the completion of these upcoming projects, Zagreb’s residents will receive five new, modernly equipped spaces for culture and art on an area spanning approximately 10,000 square metres.
It was also highlighted at the presentation that the renovation of the Tuškanac Cinema has been launched, and the reconstruction and expansion of four cultural centres – Novi Zagreb, Ribnjak, Maksimir and Dubrava – is in preparation. The estimated value of these projects stands at a whopping 38.7 million euros, and they will also be financed from the city budget.
