Republic of Poland submits bid for Specialised Expo 2022

BIE has informed: The Republic of Poland submitted today a formal letter of candidature to the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) to organise the Specialised Expo 2022 in the city of Łódź. This is the first bid to host the Expo, which will be the next Specialised Expo to be held after Expo 2017 in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, organised under the theme ‘Future Energy’.

Specialised Expos, known officially as International Recognised Exhibitions, are organised every five years, between each World Expo. They can last up to three months and are designed to respond to a specific challenge facing humanity. The most recent Specialised Expo was held in the city of Yeosu in the Republic of Korea in 2012, which attracted over 8 million visitors under the theme ‘The Living Ocean and Coast’.

Poland’s candidature for Łódź is based on the theme of ‘City Re:Invented’, and the Expo would open on 15 June 2022 and close on 15 September 2022, should the bid obtain the vote of the majority of members of the BIE.

Following this first submission by Poland, all other countries wishing to organise the same Expo now have six months to submit their own bids, with the final deadline being 15 December 2016 at 6pm (Paris time). Once the list is closed, the project examination phase of the bidding process will be launched, including the submission of bid dossiers, BIE Enquiry Missions, forums and a vote by the 169 Member States to decide on the host country when the General Assembly of the BIE meets in November 2017.

The Secretary General of the BIE, Vicente G. Loscertales, welcomed the bid, commenting that “by submitting this letter, Poland is officially opening the candidature phase for the Specialised Expo to be held in 2022/23, which gives other interested host countries six months to submit their bids before the candidate list is closed.”

Poland is a founding member of the BIE, although it left the organisation between 1950 and 1960. The country has never hosted an Expo, but it has actively participated in many World and International Expos. Łódź is located 135km south-west of Warsaw, and is Poland’s third largest city with a population of over 700,000.