The Story of ACES: Twenty-Five Years Turning Cities Into Engines of Sport

The Story of ACES: Twenty-Five Years Turning Cities Into Engines of Sport

An idea born at two in the morning

It was a night in 1999, in a hotel in central Madrid. Past two o'clock in the morning, when Gian Francesco Lupattelli — an Italian entrepreneur who had spent the day in meetings with Mayor José María Álvarez del Manzano — was struck by the question that would reshape his career and seed a global movement.

"If there's a European Capital of Culture, why not a European Capital of Sport?"

The mayor had asked him for something specific: an initiative that could set apart Madrid's bid for the 2012 Olympic Games, showing the world that the Spanish capital was a true sports powerhouse — its Municipal Sports Institute already counted more than half a million active users. What Lupattelli brought back the next day was far more than a one-off campaign. It was the seed of an association, a methodology, and a network that, a quarter of a century later, would reach more than six thousand cities across more than fifty countries and four continents.

That same week, Lupattelli founded the Association of Capitals and Cities of Sport in Brussels — known today simply as ACES.

The first Capital: Madrid 2001

The idea moved fast from concept to reality. In 2001, Madrid officially became the very first European Capital of Sport. It had competed with Lisbon for the title — and it had won.

For Madrid, the designation was no decorative trophy. It meant new sports facilities, a measurable rise in citizen participation in physical activity, and a substantive argument in the room where the International Olympic Committee — then chaired by Juan Antonio Samaranch — was evaluating Olympic candidacies. Madrid would make it to the IOC's final votes, competing against Paris, New York, and London. The Games went elsewhere in the end, but the Capital of Sport designation had done its job as a catalyst.

More importantly, it proved the model worked. Other cities took note.

Growing by tiers

Cities across Europe started applying. But it soon became clear that the "Capital of Sport" model served only a handful of big urban centers. Mid-sized towns, small municipalities, and rural counties — all places that also deserved recognition for their sports work — were being left out. Lupattelli and the ACES team decided to grow downward.

In 2007, the European City of Sport category was created, open to municipalities between 25,000 and 500,000 inhabitants. Boadilla del Monte and Palermo were the first recipients. It was the formal recognition of something already happening on the ground: municipal sport had moved beyond the realm of large capitals to become a development engine in mid-sized cities.

Three years later, in 2010, came the European Town of Sport category for municipalities of fewer than 25,000 inhabitants. Robledo de Chavela in Spain, Busca and Loano in Italy were the pioneers. For the first time, a town of five thousand people could fly the same institutional banner as Madrid or Istanbul.

In 2012, the Isle of Man received the first European Community of Sport title — a category designed for groups of municipalities, counties, or territorial groupings that share a common sports strategy. The category was formally consolidated in 2014.

Later would come Regions (Andalusia was the first, in 2021), Islands (Rab in Croatia, also 2021), Resorts (Albena in Bulgaria, 2019), and Euro-Mediterranean regions (Laayoune-Sakia El Hamra in Morocco, 2021).

Each new category answered a concrete question: how do we institutionally recognize the sports work of territories that don't fit the traditional boxes?

European Union recognition

In 2007, the European Commission published the White Paper on Sport — a foundational document of European public policy. Article 50 of that paper contains a line that would permanently shift the institutional status of ACES:

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"The Commission will also seek to further promote European visibility for sport events. The Commission supports the further development of the European Capitals of Sport initiative."

ACES Europe thus became the only sector organization explicitly recognized in an official European Union document. Since then, ACES has worked regularly with the Commission, the Parliament, and other EU institutions. Its Brussels headquarters — in the heart of the European Quarter at Rond Point Robert Schuman 6 — is no accident.

The European Week of Sport: the great Brussels partnership

In 2015, under then-Commissioner for Education, Culture, Youth and Sport Androulla Vassiliou, the European Commission launched the European Week of Sport (EWoS). It was a direct response to a Eurobarometer survey that had revealed nearly sixty percent of European citizens never — or almost never — engaged in physical activity. The continent's inactivity crisis had become a public-health emergency.

ACES Europe was an official partner from the very first edition, and has been one in every edition since. The annual #BeActive Awards ceremony, organized by the European Commission, typically takes place in the European Capital of Sport of the year — Lisbon in 2021, Genoa in 2024, Tallinn in 2025.

The EWoS growth numbers are striking. In its first edition, it gathered five million participants and seven thousand events. By 2018, those figures had climbed to twelve million participants and nearly fifty thousand events. In 2023, EWoS surpassed thirty-seven thousand events across forty countries. The cumulative total between 2015 and 2025 exceeds one hundred and eighteen million participants in more than four hundred and thirty-three thousand activities.

ACES doesn't just coordinate the presence of award-winning cities at these events. It accompanies the EWoS institutionally from day one.

Going global: ACES America is born

After nearly two decades of consolidating the model in Europe, ACES made the leap. In 2018, it announced the first edition of the World Capital of Sport category, open to cities on any continent.

Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, became in 2019 the first World Capital of Sport in history. That same year, Santiago de Cali received the first American Capital of Sport title, and ACES America was formally founded as the continental affiliate, headquartered in Cali.

ACES America operates with operational autonomy but within the same institutional framework as ACES Europe. It manages recognitions across the American continent: American Capital of Sport (five cities so far through 2026), American City of Sport, American Town of Sport, American Region of Sport. Its scope reaches from Argentina to Costa Rica, from Brazil to Mexico.

In 2020, Guadalajara (Mexico) became the first American city ever to hold the World Capital of Sport title. Its tenure was extended into 2021 because of the pandemic. It was proof that the model could cross oceans without losing its substance.

UNESCO partnership

That same year, 2020, ACES Europe was formally recognized as an official UNESCO partner, joining the Kazan Action Plan that the organization had approved in 2017 as a global roadmap for public sports policy.

The UNESCO relationship has materialized in concrete projects. ACES is developing a policy paper for UNESCO on inclusive sports policies, has contributed to the D+D Cities Network (Sport and Development) in Latin America, and regularly participates in technical roundtables on measuring the impact of municipal sport.

American Week of Sport

Inspired by the EWoS success, ACES America launched in 2023 the first edition of the American Week of Sport (SAD), running from September 23 to 30. The initiative was born with strong institutional backing: the Organization of American States, the American Sports Council, the Ibero-American Sports Council, UN Tourism, UNESCO, national federations of municipalities, and the Recreational Cycleway Network of the Americas.

The SAD's growth has been dizzying. In 2023, it brought together thirteen countries, forty-one cities, three hundred and twenty events, and two million participants. By 2024, it had grown to sixty-four cities and five million participants. The 2025 edition, with Zapopan, Mexico as the host city, reached ninety-one cities, four thousand five hundred and forty-six events, and a historic record of eight million one hundred and seventy thousand participants.

The SAD is not a copy of EWoS. It is its American sister, with its own identity, its own calendar, and its own allies.

The new thematic categories

Between 2020 and 2025, ACES created a series of thematic categories recognizing more specific forms of sporting excellence. Dakhla (Morocco) became the first Euro-Mediterranean City of Sport in 2020. Alanya (Turkey) received the first Mediterranean Capital of Sport in 2024. Manchester that same year was named the first European Capital of Cycling. Alhaurín de la Torre (Spain) became the first European Capital for Integration and Volunteering, recognizing sport as a tool for social inclusion.

Quelimane (Mozambique) became in 2024 the first African City of Sport, marking the formal entry of the ACES model into the African continent. And in 2025, Erzurum (Turkey) received the first European Capital of Winter Sports, recognizing specialization in snow and ice disciplines.

Month of Physical Activity

Every April 6, the world celebrates the World Day for Physical Activity, institutionalized by the World Health Organization in 2002. The origin of this commemoration isn't in Geneva or Brussels — it's in São Paulo, Brazil. In 1996, the pioneering program Agita São Paulo, created by the Center for Studies of the Physical Fitness Research Laboratory (CELAFISCS) under the leadership of Dr. Victor Matsudo, had shown it was possible to mobilize millions of people toward physical activity through coordinated municipal campaigns.

Since then, April has become — across many countries in the Americas and Europe — the Month of Physical Activity, Sport, and Leisure for Development and Peace. ACES integrates this celebration into its annual institutional calendar, alongside the SAD (September) and the EWoS (September).

The network today

Today, ACES is a network of over six thousand award-winning cities across more than five decades of continuous activity in its categories. It operates in more than fifty countries across four continents: Europe, America, Africa, and Asia. Three operational headquarters coordinate the work: the European headquarters in Brussels, the American headquarters in Santiago de Cali, and the Italian headquarters in Genoa, the city where the founder lives.

ACES is officially recognized by the European Commission (White Paper on Sport, Article 50, 2007), UNESCO (official partnership since 2020), the Erasmus+ Sport program, UCLG (United Cities and Local Governments), the Organization of American States, the American Sports Council, and the Ibero-American Sports Council.

Beyond the awards, ACES develops in-depth institutional projects: a UNESCO policy paper on inclusive sports policies, a decalogue presented to the OAS on municipal sports policy across the Americas, the D+D Cities Network in Latin America, the EUAPPTIVE Project (Erasmus+, led by the Sport Innovation Hub in Gijón with partners from Denmark, Portugal, and Spain), and the European Sport and Healthy Company Award, presented annually at the European Parliament in Brussels in partnership with DCH (International Organization of Human Capital Executives) since 2016.

Verified impact

The numbers behind the recognitions are not symbolic. Andalusia, the first European Region of Sport in 2021, generated a documented economic impact of one hundred and fifty million euros. Marseille, European Capital of Sport 2017, attracted twenty million euros in additional public investment. Piemonte, European Region of Sport 2022, multiplied its regional sports investment by seven and a half times.

Cali, the first American Capital of Sport, recorded a ten percentage-point increase in citizen participation in sports. Antwerp, European Capital of Sport 2013, added ten percent more active citizens through a calendar of three hundred and sixty-five sports events in a single year. Glasgow — the only city twice named European Capital of Sport (2003 and 2023) — introduced what it calls "movement prescriptions" for older adults, with documented reductions in healthcare costs reinvested directly into municipal sports facilities.

Looking ahead

ACES is moving into its next chapter with an expansive horizon. After Guadalajara, the first World Capital of Sport in the Americas in 2020-2021, Buenos Aires will be the first South American World Capital of Sport in 2027. Porto-Gaia, in Portugal, will be in 2028 the first World Capital of Sport designated as a dual-city format — Porto and Vila Nova de Gaia, physically separated by the Douro River and joined under a single title.

The next frontiers are Oceania, with preliminary outreach in Australia and New Zealand, and Africa, where after Quelimane's designation work is underway on a sustainable African model that respects the continent's particularities. The network of cities continues to grow, institutional alliances are deepening, and the conversation about municipal sport as a tool for social transformation now crosses linguistic, climatic, and political borders.

As Nelson Mandela once said — a quote ACES often returns to in its institutional voice:

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"Sport has the power to change the world. It has the power to inspire. It has the power to unite people in a way that little else does."

Twenty-five years after that night in Madrid, the question Lupattelli asked himself at two in the morning still has an answer. And the answer is still: yes. Six thousand cities, in fifty countries and four continents, prove it.