In recent days, the handover between the European Capitals of Culture 2023 and this year's European Capitals of Culture was held in Athens, for the second time ever since the European Capital of Culture programme was born. It is a happy intuition of Nancy Braun, Director General of Esch 2022, who already desired this initiative for the first time last year for the handover from Esch 2022, Novi Sad 2022 and Kaunas 2022 to Veszprem 2023, Eleusis 2023 and Timisoara 2023.

On January 9th, 2023, the European Capitals of Culture of 2022 (Esch, Kaunas, Novi Sad) officially handed over their titles to the cities and regions which will be representing the European Capitals of Culture in 2023 (Timisoara, Veszprem, Eleusis).