2025: a great year to be proud of!

Route Development and Quality Improvements

becoming the future EuroVelo 18. This new candidate route will link Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia, following the Sava River from its Alpine source toward the Danube. The route will connect three European capitals (Ljubljana, Zagreb and Belgrade) and is expected to be officially integrated into the EuroVelo network by 2029, provided it meets the criteria.

A lot happened along EuroVelo 15 – Rhine Cycle Route, too: one of the most popular routes of the network was extended of 62 km into Austria and Liechtenstein. The Principality is now the 39th country being crossed by the European cycle route network.

2025 also saw the confirmation that EuroVelo 15 has great route quality. The stretch from Breil/Brigels in Switzerland to Rolandswerth and Rheinbreitbach in Germany was successfully recertified for the third time, following a detailed survey using the European Certification Standard (ECS) methodology.

The ECS methodology to assess the quality of cycle routes turned 10 years. More than 300 inspectors from 32 countries were trained since the methodology’s launch in 2014 and this year, the EuroVelo team held two Route Inspectors’ Training courses in Brussels and Ljubljana. On-site assessments make it possible to collect detailed data on route quality and identify priority improvements to guide route development and we are proud to count more than 5,000 km across eight countries being surveyed this year.

Better data, Better routes

. With this year’s EuroVelo Route Development Status Report, we once again took a snapshot of the network and saw that 69% (over 63,000 km over 91,800+ km total length of the EuroVelo network) of it is fully ready to cycle. The development increased by 2%, thanks largely to progress in Greece, but it is still not fast enough to meet 2030 targets.

In 2024, ECF launched a Danube Cycling Tourists Survey, with a special focus on multimodality. Its results were published in 2025 Cycling tourists and one highlight was the showing of high demand of public transport offers to access the destination among the 5,000 survey respondents. In the case of the EuroVelo usage barometer, based on data from a sample of 546 automatic counters installed by Eco-Counter, we have observed a stable traffic in 2024, compared 2023, but a good increase of 0.5% – also thanks to the good weather – in the first eight months of 2025, compared to the same period of the previous year.

Thanks to the precious ECF data team, we have been able to estimate that more 166 million people, roughly 31% of the European population, live within 5 km of a EuroVelo route. And 90% of NUTS-1 (major socio-economic regions) have one or more EuroVelo routes crossing their territory.

Awards to give and receive

The EuroVelo & Cycling Tourism Conference 2025 was held on the shores of Lake Balaton, in Balatonfüred, Hungary. It gathered 350 participants from 31 countries, under the theme “Cycling towards a sustainable future”. The conference programme saw 60 speakers share their expertise on policy, cycling tourism and sustainable mobility with four keynote speeches, two plenary sessions and eight parallel sessions, along with 12 exhibitors. There were also interactive workshops and technical visits on and close to EuroVelo 14 – Waters of Central Europe.

We already look forward to the next EuroVelo & Cycling Tourism Conference, which will take place in Utrecht, the Netherlands, from 30 September to 2 October. And don’t forget that the bid to host the EuroVelo & Cycling Tourism Conference 2027 is open until 30 January 2026!

. For the first time, the conference celebrated excellence in cycling tourism through two award categories: Best Cycle Route Development and Best Cycling Tourism Initiative. The Best Cycling Tourism Initiative Award, sponsored by SRAM, was awarded to the Amazon of Europe Bike Trail, while the Best Cycle Route Development Award went to the Western Pomerania Voivodeship, marking an important milestone in acknowledging innovation across the network.

EuroVelo also shone beyond the Conference. For the first time in 2025, it not only gave awards but also received some. At the Deauville Green Awards, a major festival for environmental and social responsibility films, two animated short videos created to promote EuroVelo 15 – Rhine Cycle Route and EuroVelo 8 – Mediterranean Route received Silver Awards in the category of Eco-tourism and Responsible Travel. The two films, A Cycling Holiday for Everyone and A Once in a Lifetime Experience, were produced within the framework of their respective Route Partnerships.

NECCs and Projects

The National EuroVelo Coordination Centres (NECCs) are at the core of the work to develop the routes. The gathering of National EuroVelo Coordination Centres, the EuroVelo General Meeting, took place this year in Balatonfüred, Hungary, just before the EuroVelo & Cycling Tourism Conference. A central element of the meeting was governance and networking. EuroVelo Council elections were held, resulting in the re-election of Christian Weinberger and Pinar Pinzuti for a second term, alongside the election of Wanda Nowotarska (Poland) as a new Council member.

The EuroVelo family also expanded further in 2025, with two new National EuroVelo Coordination Centres: SwitzerlandMobility, already serving as the Swiss NECC, extended its coordination role to Liechtenstein, following the already mentioned developments along EuroVelo 15 – Rhine Cycle Route. In addition, the Polish Tourism Organisation became the new NECC for Poland. If you would like to read more about the NECC achievements of the year, as well as about the EuroVelo mid-term strategy review, you can read the dedicated recap article.

Two EU co-funded projects developing EuroVelo routes continued in 2025: Baltic Biking UPGRADE, focusing on EuroVelo 10 – Baltic Sea Cycle Route (BBU - Interreg South Baltic Programme) and ICTr-CE centred on EuroVelo 13 – Iron Curtain Trail. Within the BBU project, ECF focused this year on web developments, long-term governance with a proposal for a EuroVelo 10 Partnership and route’s quality assessment. The final ECS surveys were carried out in June, bringing the total assessed length to over 2,600 km, with the conclusions to be published soon. The Interreg Central Europe project ICTr-CE entered its third and final year, which meant a focus on ensuring the long-term sustainability and transferability of the project’s outputs, as well as putting in place a framework for the long-term governance of the route in the project areas.

Communication and marketing

In terms of communications, this year started with a new newsletter template and mailing system, which already showed strong results: 59% average open rate between January and November. If you do not receive the EuroVelo monthly newsletter yet, you can always subscribe.

EuroVelo social media presence grew steadily, especially on Instagram and LinkedIn, showing that both cyclists and professionals are increasingly interested in what we do. And we are sure that sometimes, the two overlap!

Communication and marketing activities were also carried out as part of Route Partnerships, ad hoc agreements with national and regional partners. Attentive followers will have noticed lots of work being done on EuroVelo 15 – Rhine Cycle Route, EuroVelo 8 – Mediterranean Route and EuroVelo 19 – Meuse Cycle Route. In addition, promotional activities related to EuroVelo 1 – Atlantic Coast Route are now secured.

Something’s cooking

Even if this year has not yet concluded, the EuroVelo team is already preparing for the coming one. What is keeping us busy is the design of a new EuroVelo Overview Map and new route development categories! Stay tuned for a new physical and digital map and a revised legend, which will improve how information about the route is shared with cyclists.

EuroVelo is growing, evolving and reaching more people than ever before. Thank you for cycling along with us!

Article by Mariona Garcia-Arbós i Mata