2025 was a terrific year for Welcoming Cities, we were joined in the network by 11 new members, continued to connect with our international partners, including setting up peer to peer connections.
1. Membership Growth:
- The network grew by 11 new councils in 2025, with increases across the following states:
- Queensland: 2
- New South Wales: 5
- South Australia: 2
- Western Australia: 2
- We end the year with 105 members, covering almost 60% of the Australian population, with around 40% of councils in regional areas.
2. Network support:
- Welcoming Cities spearheaded the launch of five publications
- Stories of Welcome – Vol. 6, and
- Extremism in in local communities; a toolkit for local governments in Australia to prepare and respond
- Regional Guidelines website
- Finding Home; a guideline orientation visits
- Racism in Schools Conversation Series; Framework, summary and model for community led action
- Welcoming Week- in our third year of welcoming week we are seeing consistent growth of the initiative with over 100 events across Australia.
- Increasing our research and analysis capacity, having created and presented community insights reports for local councils.
- The Welcoming Cities Awards for Change have gained momentum, with more entries and increasing recognition for councils and individuals contributing to social cohesion. Winners in 2026 were
- Local Government Award: City of Greater Dandenong’s Community Connector program
- Organisation Award: Integreat Queensland’s Moving Feast
- Welcoming Cities Award: City of Stirling’s Eva Mwakichako
- Welcoming Cities was proud to partner with Welcoming Clubs to deliver upstander training to many of our councils.
Welcoming Cities run many significant events throughout the year including:
- Welcoming Australia Symposium
- Western Australian Summit
- Queensland Summit series
- Victorian Summit
- NSW Summit
- Welcoming Week launch in WA
- Regular network meetings supporting members to learn, feel supported and create peer connections
3. Accreditation:
This year we have had three accredited councils
- Gladstone (Advanced)
- Salisbury (Excelling)
- Bendigo (Excelling)
4. International Engagement:
- Hosted a Japanese delegation to Australia and presented at the ‘International Forum on the Acceptance of Foreign Nationals and Their Integration into Japan’.
- Welcoming Cities again supported members to network with their international peers through the Global peer Connections program
- VIC Coordinator Bel Schenk represented Welcoming Cities at the Welcoming Communities (NZ) Hui.
- We continued our regular engagement with Welcoming international.