CIVITAS Summer Course 2026 in Guimarães

Join CIVITAS in Guimarães, Portugal, at the CIVITAS Summer Course 2026 (28 June – 2 July 2026)!

Take part in an inspiring learning experience with experts and peers from across Europe. This year’s edition focuses on 'Lobbying and Advocacy', supporting the City of Guimarães as it tackles several key mobility challenges:

• Inter- and multimodality between the Bus Terminal and Railway Station: improving accessibility, safety and the overall user experience in a constrained area with high car dependency, diverse user needs and limited investment capacity.
• School mobility: promoting safe, inclusive and community-supported school routes through low-cost, high-impact measures that strengthen children’s autonomy and public acceptance.
• Sustainable urban logistics in the historic centre: redesigning goods distribution to reduce congestion and pollution while protecting economic activity and respecting heritage constraints through governance, regulation and stakeholder engagement.

This in-person event will span 3.5 days and be led by a team of experts and peers. The objective of the event is to exchange experience, contribute to finding new solutions to local mobility challenges, and develop personal and professional knowledge and skills.

On the last day, the course participants will present new solutions to the mobility challenges the City of Guimarães faces. Participants will become acquainted with “action learning”, which includes a mix of expert lectures, interactive tasks and case study group work related to the local mobility challenge. Experience has shown that participants will also learn from each other’s expertise. Practical assignments will help participants to apply the lessons learnt and meet peers from all over Europe. At the end of the CIVITAS Summer Course, certificates will be awarded. 

One of the main goals of this CIVITAS Summer Course is to support Guimarães in finding solutions for some of its sustainable urban mobility challenges. The city will present a few concrete mobility challenges to the participants. 

The programme includes introductions from representatives of the City of Guimarães and CIVITAS, a city tour passing several parts of the mobility challenges of the city, presentations of mobility experts (including CIVINET), group work to find solutions for the mobility challenges and social programme parts. More details regarding the programme will be shared soon.

The CIVITAS Summer Course is a free event. A limited number of places are available. To help cover travel and accommodation costs, a limited number of scholarships are available.

Who is invited to join?

The CIVITAS Summer Course is aimed at urban mobility professionals and at (a limited number of) students from European universities/universities of applied sciences or similar. Some examples of types of employers include, but are not limited to:

• Public authorities (municipalities, regional or national authorities);
• Non-governmental organisations (city networks, bicycle initiatives, environmental groups, etc.);
• Public-private organisations (cycling embassies, etc.);
• Knowledge and research institutes (universities, universities of applied sciences, research centres);
• Private organisations (consultancies, engineering companies, service providers);
• Particularly suitable participants include project officers and managers, policy advisers and officers, civil servants, consultants, experts, researchers, students (preferably master's and PhD), designers, engineers, and mobility team leads.

Reminder

Block the course dates in your calendar: Monday, 29 June 2026 (start: 8:30 CET)until Thursday, 2 July 2026 (end: 12:30/13:00 CET). We encourage applicants to reserve Sunday, 28 June 2026, as the travel day to Guimarães, since the CIVITAS Summer Course starts in the early morning on 28 June.

If you have questions or remarks, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us at academy [at] dtv [dot] nl.

Get inspired by previous editions: CIVITAS Winter Course in Klaipėda (Lithuania), CIVITAS Summer Course in Rethymno on Crete (Greece) and CIVITAS Summer Course in Trnava (Slovak Republic).

Registration for this event has now closed. Stay tuned for more information!

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