Vilnius doesn’t want Olympic fanfare to make its waters swimmable. Whereas Paris spent billions cleansing up the Seine for a splashy opening, the rivers and lakes in Lithuania’s capital have lengthy been open for a dip every time the climate permits.
Allowing city swimming is only one method that the Baltics’ largest metropolis has sought to change into extra sustainable, serving to it earn the title of European Inexperienced Capital of the 12 months 2025.
Now Vilnius authorities wish to use these inexperienced credentials to spice up their international financial competitiveness too.
“One of many greatest challenges we have to combat is the [lack of] consciousness of Lithuania and of Vilnius,” says Mangirdas Sapranauskas, a senior division head on the metropolis’s improvement company, Go Vilnius, which oversees international direct funding (FDI) and worldwide expertise attraction. “The Inexperienced Capital title put us on the map.”
Foreigners now make up over 12% of Vilnius’ inhabitants, with international firms together with Moody’s, Nasdaq, and Thermo Fisher having workplaces there, and town’s FDI technique has received worldwide plaudits.
But it was solely after listening to from executives who selected to relocate there that Sapranauskas realized how impressed they have been by how inexperienced Vilnius is—almost everybody lives inside 300 meters of parks or different inexperienced areas; there’s even a forest, Vingis Park, inside strolling distance of its Parliament.
Vilnius’s chief sustainability officer, Anton Nikitin, says that being inexperienced improves high quality of life in a number of methods. Certainly, whereas recognizing the significance of unpolluted air and water, entry to nature, biodiversity and electrical public transportation, his definition of sustainability goes a lot additional.
“We’ve to change into extra people-oriented, and that’s the essential social a part of sustainability,” Nikitin says. “We don’t wish to be inexperienced as a result of we’re inexperienced; we wish to be inexperienced as a result of we would like our metropolis to be a really livable metropolis, a really secure metropolis, a really resilient metropolis.”
This citizen-first strategy extends to the nation’s superior digitalization of private and non-private companies, which 77% of Lithuanians imagine is making their lives simpler. Vilnius additionally actively encourages folks to have interaction with coverage debates and to take part in civic life by means of citizen assemblies.
A burgeoning startup scene
Are sustainability and high quality of life aggressive benefits for a metropolis seeking to appeal to expertise and funding?
They definitely don’t appear to harm. Vilnius is the second-fastest riser on the IMD good cities index, and Dealroom.co provides its tech ecosystem particular point out for its per capita enterprise capital, enterprise worth creation, and unicorn numbers (in absolute phrases, the Dutch analysis agency ranks Vilnius 113th globally).
The town’s star scale-ups embrace Nord Safety, the $3 billion Lithuanian firm behind Nord VPN, and second-hand market Vinted—which has now expanded throughout Europe and not too long ago unlocked a €5 billion ($5.9 billion) valuation in a secondary share sale.
“We’ve to change into extra people-oriented, and that’s the essential social a part of sustainability…”Vilnius’s chief sustainability officer, Anton Nikitin
They aren’t alone. No fewer than twenty Vinted alumni have already based new startups, to the delight of Vinted CEO Thomas Plantenga, whereas Nord’s mother or father firm, enterprise builder and investor Tesonet, is the largest backer of vibrant native tech complicated Cyber Metropolis. Aptly sufficient, tenants there embrace nexos.ai—the start-up launched earlier this yr by Nord cofounders Tomas Okmanas and Eimantas Sabaliauskas.
Having bootstrapped companies “from Vilnius to the world,” Okmanas is a self-described advocate of this “tremendous secure and inexperienced metropolis” with “nice expertise” that may additionally converse English. “I imagine being in Lithuania is admittedly a bonus,” says the entrepreneur. “You can not select your neighbors however other than that, it’s only a improbable place to dwell.”
Cyber Metropolis
It’s a standard theme among the many metropolis’s high-growth companies—each these beginning out and people who have relocated to Vilnius.
“Beforehand the principle questions [for companies looking to relocate] have been about taxes, salaries, and workplace prices. Now two further standards are simply as essential: expertise attraction and high quality of life. Firms need their folks to really feel good, surrounded by greenery, a terrific metropolis ambiance, and locations the place pure networking occurs,” says Darius Žakaitis, a founder at Tech Zity.
Identified for its startup hubs, Tech Zity is at present remodeling an industrial space of Vilnius with virtually no greenery right into a well-balanced $110 million tech campus as a result of open in 2026. “We’re planning 4 massive courtyards as out of doors extensions of the workplaces. There will likely be areas for working, occasions, or simply strolling round—like a park owned by the neighborhood. We see greenery not as ornament however as infrastructure for productiveness and well-being,” Žakaitis says.
What of bigger firms? Lithuania gives some concessions to strategic buyers, however as a European Union member, it faces restrictions on preferential tax incentives for international companies. In line with Sapranauskas, that’s the place “gentle issues come into play”—whether or not environmental coverage and digital public companies or sensible help like Worldwide Home Vilnius, which helps newcomers really feel at residence.
“Beforehand the principle questions [for companies looking to relocate] have been about taxes, salaries, and workplace prices. Now two further standards are simply as essential: expertise attraction and high quality of life…”
Darius Žakaitis, a founder at Tech Zity
The provision of expertise is a serious consideration. Whereas Vilnius is not essentially low cost in that regard—the typical month-to-month wage tripled from €797 in 2014 to €2,536 in 2024, pushed by power in fintech, cybersecurity, and life sciences—it’s nonetheless aggressive, partly due to its desirability as a spot to dwell.
“That livability issue genuinely helps town compete for worldwide expertise, particularly youthful generations who need sustainability to be a part of their on a regular basis life-style,” says Vlada Musvydaitė-Vilčiauskė, founding father of Lithuanian strolling app Walk15.
Now boasting 1.1 million customers, its platform additionally allows greater than 2,000 firms together with DHL, Nestlé and Novo Nordisk to encourage staff to stroll extra and change steps for rewards. These shoppers more and more level out that their groups worth not simply the workplace setting however the setting round it, Musvydaitė-Vilčiauskė says, favoring cities like Vilnius, which can be quickly increasing its cycle path infrastructure.
Musvydaitė-Vilčiauskė spends half of her time in Berlin, and in addition praises the German metropolis for its “scale, range, and worldwide vibe, which make it enticing for international expertise.”
However “if Berlin gives breadth, Vilnius gives steadiness”—with the tradition, worldwide neighborhood and burgeoning tech scene of a serious European capital, however greener, simpler to get round and “with out the stress of a a lot greater metropolis,” she says.
Being a inexperienced and nice place to dwell definitely isn’t needed or adequate for financial competitiveness, however Vilnius’s expertise exhibits that on the very least it helps. It additionally exhibits that smaller cities and international locations can discover a strategy to compete with main metropolises and financial powerhouses in the event that they lean into their strengths.
