The European Central Bank has unveiled 10 proposals for the first full redesign of euro banknotes since the single currency's paper money entered circulation 24 years ago, with the public invited to weigh in on whether cultural icons or wildlife should grace the continent's most tangible symbol of integration.
The competition marks a departure from the deliberately neutral bridges and windows that have adorned euro notes since 2002. Instead, Europeans are being asked to choose between banknotes featuring Maria Callas, Ludwig van Beethoven, Marie Curie, Miguel de Cervantes, Leonardo da Vinci, and Bertha von Suttner — or notes depicting the wallcreeper, kingfisher, bee-eater, white stork, avocet, and northern gannet over landscapes typical of the continent. The public survey on the ECB's website closes on 21 September, with a final decision expected at the end of 2026 and new notes entering circulation in 2030 or 2031.
A Question of Identity
Philippe Geoffroy, the head of section for new banknotes at the ECB, said the feedback from the public has been very clear: "They want money that feels European." He added that while the main reason behind the redesign is to stay well ahead of counterfeiting, the ECB wants to increase identification with the single currency and make it more graphically meaningful. "We want to move away from neutrality," he said.
The 10 shortlisted designs were picked from 1,241 applications to an open call in 2025. Five proposals focus on culture, five on wildlife. Each offers a different graphic interpretation of colours and motifs for the €5, €10, €20, €50, €100, and €200 notes that were determined by the ECB in advance. The new notes will continue to be printed on paper rather than polymer, as in some countries such as the UK.
The lineup of cultural icons is intended to represent different corners of the eurozone, albeit with a glaring hole in the Baltics. Callas was born in New York but her career flourished in Greece and Italy. Curie discovered radium and polonium with her husband, Pierre, and her career spanned Warsaw and Paris. Von Suttner, the Austrian pacifist and women's liberation leader, spent time in Prague, Tbilisi, and Vienna. Beethoven, the German composer, Cervantes, the author of Don Quixote, and Leonardo da Vinci, the Renaissance polymath, round out the cultural proposals.
Design Experiments
A Dutch book designer, Joost Grootens, has cropped the images of cultural figures tightly around their eyes, accentuating their vision rather than their iconic status. Jan Robert Dünnwelle, a German illustrator, has rendered the same personalities in a free-flowing, sketchy style of a graphic novel. In the French artist Isabelle Daëron's proposals, the birds are flying across a vertical layout rather than the more conventional horizontal one, as are those of Ville Tietäväinen, a Finnish graphic designer, who has depicted the bird's journeys in sequence, progressively moving from the mountains to the sea.
While none of the birds that would be depicted on the wildlife notes are exclusively found in Europe, they would be paired on their flipside with pictures of buildings that house the EU's political, legal, and financial institutions in Brussels, Strasbourg, Luxembourg, and Frankfurt.
The current euro banknotes deliberately depict neutral motifs in order to avoid offending individual member nations: imaginary bridges, doorways, and windows that exemplify historic architectural styles without depicting specific real-life European buildings or places. New notes including the face of the mythological princess Europa in the watermark and the hologram stripe were introduced 13 years ago without changing the overall design.
In Britain, the Bank of England drew some ire earlier this year when it announced that redesigned notes would depict wildlife instead of historical figures such as Winston Churchill or William Shakespeare.
The public survey will feed into but not solely determine which design the central bank chooses as a winner. A second, quantitative survey and the verdict of a jury of designers will also have a bearing on the choice. A combination of the two themes is not expected.
Why This Matters:
The redesign of euro banknotes is more than a technical exercise in anti-counterfeiting — it's a test of whether the EU can craft a shared visual language that resonates across 20 member states without erasing national identities. The choice between cultural figures and wildlife reflects a deeper tension: does European identity rest on the achievements of individuals who crossed borders, or on the natural heritage that belongs to no single nation? The lineup of cultural icons — spanning from the Polish-French scientist Marie Curie to the Austrian pacifist Bertha von Suttner — offers a vision of Europe built on intellectual exchange, artistic achievement, and social progress. Yet the glaring absence of Baltic representation reveals how difficult it remains to balance geographic inclusion with symbolic weight. For a currency used daily by 350 million people, the decision matters. It will shape how the next generation of Europeans see themselves — and whether they recognise their continent in their wallets.