The Mediterranean has always been crossed.
By traders and students, by recipes and words, by tides and ideas that refuse to stay on one side. What looks like a distance is, in fact, a web of connections — woven over centuries between people, places, and cultures on two shores.
This year, the Day of the Mediterranean asks a simple question:
What connects us?
Not in the abstract. Not as a policy statement. But in the real, specific, sometimes unexpected ways that the Mediterranean shows up in daily life: in a recipe, a word, a face, a building, a feeling you can’t quite name.
This year's campaign
Across November, we are bringing together voices from the different shores of the Mediterranean to answer that question. Institutional leaders and community members, creators travelling to unfamiliar cities, and locals finding the Mediterranean in their own streets.
Forty-three countries connected by one Mediterranean Sea. Countless links, shared interests and a common horizon.
Their stories, videos, and perspectives will appear on this page throughout November — building toward 28 November, the Day of the Mediterranean.
What we're exploring
This year’s campaign follows four threads, and you can pick up any of them:
A place that feels Mediterranean even when you’re far from the sea
A thing — a food, a word, a craft, a sound — that travels between shores
A story most people don’t know, hidden in plain sight
A feeling: a moment of recognition, of familiarity, across distance
How to take part
You don’t need to be anywhere near the sea.
Follow the campaign on social media — @UfMSecretariat — where we will be sharing creator content, institutional voices, and moments from across the region throughout November.
Then ask yourself the question:
What connects you to the other side?
Share it. Use #WhatConnectsUs and #MediterraneanDay to join the conversation.
Why this matters
The Mediterranean is not a simple story. It is a region of extraordinary richness and real difficulty, of deep cooperation and persistent challenges.
But connection is not a luxury. It is the condition for everything else: for the dialogue, the trade, the shared responses to shared problems that this region depends on.
On 28 November, we mark that. Together.
The Day of the Mediterranean is an initiative of the Union for the Mediterranean, bringing
together 43 Member States across the Euro-Mediterranean region.