Türkiye’s Culture Route Festival will be held in 32 provinces in 2027, with Muğla among six new additions, Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy said on Friday as he presented his ministry’s 2027 budget to parliament’s Plan and Budget Committee. He also said the new Antalya Museum is planned to open to visitors next year, and that Istanbul will host UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee in the summer of 2027.
The committee reviews each ministry’s spending plan before the full budget goes to a vote in parliament (TBMM). Ersoy’s presentation covered tourism, museums, archaeology and heritage, according to reports by NTV, İhlas News Agency (İHA) and Yeni Birlik. None of the reports gave the ministry’s total budget figure for 2027.
Culture Route Festival reaches Muğla
The Culture Route Festival (Kültür Yolu Festivali) is the ministry’s series of city-wide arts programmes. The 2026 calendar covered 26 cities.
For 2027, Balıkesir, Denizli, Hatay, Kocaeli, Muğla and Tekirdağ will be added, taking the total to 32 provinces. Muğla, home to Bodrum, Fethiye and Marmaris, is among the newcomers. The reports gave no dates or venues for the new cities.
Antalya Museum, Haydarpaşa and Sirkeci
Ersoy said the new Antalya Museum is planned to open in 2027. Its enclosed area has been doubled and its exhibition space roughly tripled, according to the reports.
In Istanbul, the first phase of the conversion of Haydarpaşa station on the Asian side is targeted for completion in 2027. Plans include an archaeology museum for the Anatolian side, an archaeopark, a performing arts centre and a library. Sirkeci station on the European side is to house a Migration Museum, a thematic museum and exhibition spaces.
Museums and archaeological sites run by the ministry received 28.5 million visitors by the end of October, the minister said. Night opening hours drew more than 1.3 million visitors, about 35 percent more than in the same period last year. Entry prices for next year were covered in our report on museum entry fees for 2027.
Excavations and World Heritage Committee
Archaeological work in 2026 covered 261 excavation sites in 67 provinces. Including surveys, the number of projects is expected to reach 800 by the end of the year and 820 in 2027. A total of 126 cultural objects were returned to Türkiye from abroad this year, bringing the total since 2002 to 13,574, Ersoy said.
Türkiye has 22 sites on UNESCO’s World Heritage List and 80 on its tentative list. The 49th session of the World Heritage Committee will be held in Istanbul from 27 June to 7 July 2027.
On tourism, Ersoy cited 49.13 million visitors and $51.28 billion in tourism revenue in the first nine months of 2026, up 2.4 percent in revenue terms, with an average stay of 10.34 nights. Visitors spent $107.7 per night on average, up 4.6 percent. The third-quarter figures were covered in our report on record tourism revenue.
Sources
- Bakan Ersoy, Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı’nın 2027 yılı bütçesini sundu (NTV)
- Bakan Ersoy, Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığının 2027 yılı bütçesini sundu (İHA / Marmaris Yeni Sayfa)
- Turizmde 51 milyar dolarlık rekor: Bakan Ersoy 2027 vizyonunu TBMM’de açıkladı (Yeni Birlik)
Photo: Joe Wallace / CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
