09 — Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. Creative & Cultural Icons.

TGNA Creative Capital Score: 65 · → Stable

Signs:

Old Quebec is the only fortified city in North America north of Mexico whose walls still exist, declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1985. The city is also the first Francophone city in the world to be designated a UNESCO City of Literature, a title it has held since 2017. Its historic district is one of the best-preserved examples of European colonial urban planning anywhere in the hemisphere. The Festival d'été de Québec attracts over one million festivalgoers every year, taking place on the Plains of Abraham and other locations across downtown Québec.

Events:

In July 2025, the Government of Canada granted $1.75 million to the Festival d'été de Québec to expand its international promotional activities and enhance visitor experience for the 2025 and 2026 editions. The city also hosted the UNESCO Group of Experts on the Diversity of Cultural Expression in the Digital Environment in 2024, chosen specifically for its dual status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and City of Literature. In fall 2025, Quebec City celebrated the 40th anniversary of its UNESCO World Heritage designation with large-scale light projections on the Old Port silos.

Trends:

Quebec City is quietly becoming one of the most studied models of sustainable cultural tourism in North America. As heritage cities across the continent struggle to balance preservation with relevance, Quebec City is demonstrating that the two are not in conflict. A new generation of festivals, digital creative industries, and international cultural institutions is choosing the city precisely because its historical identity gives contemporary creativity a context that newer cities simply cannot offer.

Drivers:

France built Quebec City as the strategic heart of New France and poured the architectural and institutional ambition of an empire into its walls. The result was a city designed to last. The Grand Théâtre, the Bibliothèque de Québec's 26 branches, the university system, the literary community that earned the city its UNESCO designation, none of this was accidental. It was the product of a French colonial tradition that treated culture as a pillar of governance, not an afterthought. That foundation, laid four centuries ago, is what makes Quebec City's creative economy structurally different from every other city in North America.

Quebec City is the first Francophone UNESCO City of Literature in the world. North America's most literary address.

Federico Quinzaños

Founder The Grand North America