The Junta de Extremadura awarded grants on 25 October 2026 to 68 municipalities and Mancomunidades with fewer than 20,000 inhabitants. A total of €1.45 million will go towards projects to digitise municipal services under the Pueblos Inteligentes. The responsible authority is the Consejería de Economía, Empleo y Transformación Digital. According to the regional government, the grants have been awarded; the total budget for the 2026 call was €1.5 million.
The funding scheme was launched by a resolution of the department’s Secretaría General on 15 December 2025 and published on 30 December 2025 in the Diario Oficial de Extremadura . Projects supported cover areas such as digital tourism and cultural services, smart mobility, administrative processes and public participation, energy management, environmental monitoring and the circular economy. The aim is to modernise municipal services and help rural areas in Extremadura withstand depopulation.
The support is 85 per cent co-financed through the Extremadura European Regional Development Fund (FEDER) programme 2021–2027. The remaining share is covered by the Autonomous Community and, where applicable, the beneficiaries, depending on the terms of the grant. The rules distinguish between individual municipal projects and joint solutions through Mancomunidades, enabling smaller places to access technical platforms and shared infrastructure too.
According to the regional government, the current round of awards is aimed primarily at projects already submitted that improve digital citizen services, the management of technical processes and the collection of environmental data. Detailed lists of beneficiary locations and the amounts awarded are held administratively; regional media reported initial overviews on 25 October. For further details, the administration refers to the published call and relevant administrative decisions.
The measure forms part of regional and national digitalisation programmes supporting local authorities in adopting connected solutions. Today’s decision primarily concerns small towns and rural municipalities in Extremadura; it gives these administrations the opportunity to standardise existing services, consolidate datasets and digitise processes such as appointment management, electronic applications and municipal energy monitoring. The regional government has not quantified claims about long-term demographic impacts or employment effects, which therefore remain open for now.
Editor: Mira Cadena (Article created with AI assistance).