Lithuania’s tiny capital (it has fewer than 750,000 people) is focusing on its small but mighty attributes. There’s history, and the city threw a rager for its 700th anniversary in 2023, with an all-year party featuring summer music festivals, citizen-led placemaking projects, and an art biennial that drew a global cognoscenti. They discovered a UNESCO- protected walkable centre replete with Gothic, Baroque and Renaissance layers that are never too crowded. This year is all about the city’s second-most educated residents (trailing only London) and Top 5 labour force participation revealing the launch of the €100-billion Tech Zity campus. Spanning 55,000 square metres and housing 5,000 digital workers, it will eclipse Paris’s Station F, today Europe’s largest startup campus. Housed in the New Town district in new and renovated warehouses, the area will feature housing, restaurants, bars and classrooms, further boosting the local tech industry that launched global unicorns like cybersecurity firm Nord and used clothing retailer Vinted. The hits will keep coming in 2025 as Vilnius becomes the European Commission’s European Green Capital. Its airport also just doubled its capacity, and Michelin just awarded Pas Mus Restoranas a star and recommended a dozen other rooms in the city. Now, if residents could only stop looking over their shoulders at Russian aggression in the region.