Leadership training for cities

The Bloomberg LSE European City Leadership Initiative helps city leaders strengthen the innovation capacity of their organisation, develop their teams’ skillset, drive rapid progress in a key priority area and build close connections with their peers across Europe.

Strengthening city leaders and their teams

Across Europe, city leaders are stepping up to tackle complex challenges – from climate adaptation and housing to digital transformation and inclusive growth. Launched in 2025, the Bloomberg LSE European City Leadership Initiative brings together visionary leaders, researchers, and policymakers to exchange ideas, co-create solutions, and drive meaningful change.

Through a year-long intensive classroom, field-based, and capacity-building training, including immersive inaugural convenings in London and Berlin, participating cities learn evidence-backed strategies from world-class faculty on how to drive performance, work across departments, mobilise collaborations, and operationalise solutions that deliver tangible results for citizens.

Who can participate?

Each year, a cohort of cities from across the 46 member states of the Council of Europe plus Kosovo participate in a year-long, immersive programme. Participation is designed for a core city delegation comprising the mayor, two senior leaders, and up to ten members of the city team. It equips mayors and their teams with key competencies in city government innovation to shape their local approaches, empowering them to achieve measurable progress.

The opportunities to learn from, and collaborate with other mayors from across Europe have been central to our success in West Yorkshire, which is now one of the UK’s fastest growing city regions. By strengthening our collaboration through this unique initiative, we will build stronger, fairer and greener city regions that work for all.

What makes this programme unique is its focus, not only on policies, but on how cities actually work. It truly helped me and our teams reflect, learn and work together better to achieve real change.

This initiative pushed us to rethink how we work as a city. By breaking down silos and creating cross-functional teams we are building a mission-driven administration, capable of delivering real innovation for Izmir.