A Hungarian city will be designated as the European Capital of Culture in 2023. The series of programmes are designed to show the multi-colour European culture, accordingly, the cultural values and cultural dimensions of the cities are in the focus. Several cities take part in the competition in the customary way by submitting their tender documentation within the framework of a pre-selection procedure. Győr, Veszprém and Debrecen proved to be the most probable candidate cities to win in Hungary, they were chosen to enter the second round of the selection procedure. Although the focus of intense attention usually falls on the cultural programmes planned for the project year, the period of the competition itself is also regarded an exciting phase of the project, since this is the period when candidate cities are expected to give an account of their plans, moreover, they are also expected to outline their projected development conception in the field of culture and their cultural potentials. The present study aims to analyse and confront the plans of three Hungarian cities that were selected to enter the second round of the competition and, consequently, it also intends to explore the visions, the strengths and weaknesses of the Hungarian cities of outstanding cultural ambitions mainly via factors denoted in figures. Today we know, that the winning city became Veszprém. Although based on the quantitative data we saw the other two cities as more likely to win, due to a number of qualitative as well as subjective factors, the city of Veszprém proved to be better during the selection procedure. We do not want to override the decision; we only outline an analytical framework for the cultural comparison of our culturally ambitious Hungarian cities.

Keywords: culture, European Capital of Culture, Hungarian cities, plans, competition