Portugal project candidate project at the World Summit Awards

O cultural Heritage 360 project was selected to represent Portugal at the World Summit Awards 2026, an initiative dedicated to digital innovation, announced today the Cultural Heritage, Public Institute.

The Cultural Heritage 360 “promotes new forms of knowledge, enjoyment and appreciation of Portuguese cultural heritage, through the production and public provision of high-quality digital content, including virtual visits, three-dimensional digitalizations, photogrammetric surveys, high-resolution images, films, infographics and other interpretive resources,” explains the Cultural Heritage Institute, in a statement.

The project brings together “more than 61 thousand digitalized cultural goods”, available here.

The Portuguese Association for Communications Development coordinated the selection process for national representation at the World Summit Awards.

The online provision of “more than 61 thousand cultural goods” of Portuguese museums, monuments, palaces and archaeological sites was announced last April, when the completion of digitization, which was funded by the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR), was presented at a public session in Lisbon.

The digitization “to make the Cultural Heritage available universally and free”, placing it “in the palm of the people’s hands, both of a ten-year-old and of a researcher”, then highlighted the project coordinator, Luís Sebastian.

The digitalized cultural goods were previously chosen by the directors of museums, monuments, palaces and archaeological sites and, among goods of various scales, typologies and materials, are goods classified as “national treasure”. There are also pieces of jewelry, clothing, painting, photography, sculpture.

In addition to cultural goods, it is also possible to access virtual visits to buildings such as museums, monasteries, the See of Lisbon and the National Pantheon, protected archaeological sites and documentaries.

In the project, 67 virtual visits and 13 documentaries were carried out.

The Cultural Heritage 360′′ was funded by the PRR, with about €14,4 million, to which 250 thousand euros were added, from the Cultural Heritage Institute, according to the figures advanced in April.

The implementation of the project began in April 2024, under the responsibility of Cultural Heritage, had more than 20 partner entities, among public bodies, municipalities, foundations and archives, and involved more than 50 specialists in areas such as computer science, conservation and restoration, modeling and graphic design and photography, as well as researchers and teams from 65 museums, monuments, palaces and archaeological sites.

The World Summit Awards were created within the framework of the World Summit on the Information Society of the United Nations, and, according to the Cultural Heritage Institute, “distinguish digital solutions that use technology to respond to concrete challenges and contribute to a more inclusive and people-oriented society, in line with the United Nations Agenda 2030’s Sustainable Development Goals, and are organized into eight categories, according to areas of activity, one of them being ‘Culture and Heritage’.”.

The World Summit Awards winners will be known in January.