The 48th session of UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee was held in Busan, Republic of Korea, from July 19 to 29, 2026. At the end of the session, the Committee inscribed 25 new properties on the World Heritage List. Of these, 19 are cultural sites, five are natural sites, and one is a mixed site recognized for both natural and cultural value. The Committee also approved two boundary extensions to existing sites and one revision to the inscription criteria of another.
With these additions, the World Heritage List now includes 1,273 sites across 173 countries. All 25 inscriptions were adopted by consensus. The session also marked the first entries on the list for three countries: Comoros, São Tomé and Príncipe, and South Sudan.
This article covers the 19 cultural sites added this year that span every inhabited continent.
1. Aalto Works, Finland
Aalto Works is a serial nomination covering 13 buildings and architectural ensembles built across Finland between the late 1920s and the 1980s. The designers include Alvar Aalto, Aino Marsio-Aalto, Elissa Aalto, and the wider Aalto studio. The inscription recognizes their contribution to the Modern Movement through a human-centered design approach that connects architecture with nature, daily life, and social well-being. The listed works include Paimio Sanatorium, Villa Mairea, Säynätsalo Town Hall, Seinäjoki Civic Centre, and five buildings in Helsinki, including Finlandia Hall, the Aalto House, and Studio Aalto.
In design terms, the collection shows a consistent set of ideas refined across four decades: red brick and white-painted surfaces, undulating or free-form walls used to soften institutional buildings, and interior spaces tuned to natural light and acoustics. Paimio Sanatorium is known for chair and door designs made specifically for patients recovering from illness. At the same time, Säynätsalo Town Hall arranges its council chamber, library, and offices around a raised brick courtyard.
2. Tashkent Modernist Architecture: Modernity and Tradition in Central Asia, Uzbekistan
This serial property comprises ten buildings and urban ensembles built in Tashkent between the 1960s and the early 1990s, during the city’s reconstruction following the 1966 earthquake. The buildings combine industrialized construction methods and seismic engineering with responses to local climate, materials, and cultural traditions. The listed properties include museums, hotels, residential complexes, exhibition halls, and public institutions that show how standardized Soviet-era modernist design was adapted to Central Asian conditions.
Architecturally, the buildings use large-span concrete structures, sun-shading screens, and domed or vaulted roof forms to manage Tashkent’s hot, dry climate, while facades often incorporate ceramic tilework, latticed grilles, and geometric patterns drawn from Central Asian decorative traditions. The Chorsu Market, with its ribbed dome, and the Central Exhibition Hall of the Academy of Arts are among the buildings that combine this precast, modular construction with locally rooted ornament.
3. Amazonia Theaters, Brazil
This inscription covers two nineteenth-century cultural landmarks built during the Amazon rubber boom: Theatro da Paz and Praça da República in Belém, and Teatro Amazonas and Largo de São Sebastião in Manaus. Both cities used these buildings to project themselves as cosmopolitan centers linked to international trade. The architecture draws on European traditions while including decorative references to the Amazon region. The theaters reflect the connection between monumental public buildings, urban planning, and the economic growth of the period.
Teatro Amazonas, inaugurated in 1896, follows a Renaissance Revival design with a dome covered in ceramic tiles in the colors of the Brazilian flag, and its auditorium ceiling is painted to evoke a view up toward the Eiffel Tower. Theatro da Paz, opened in 1878 and modeled partly on Milan’s Teatro alla Scala, is built in a neoclassical style with a colonnaded facade, a horseshoe-shaped hall lined with straw seats, and interiors finished in Carrara marble and native Brazilian hardwoods. Materials for both buildings, including marble and roof tiles, were shipped in from Europe at considerable cost, underscoring how much their cities invested in the rubber-boom years.
4. Jingdezhen Handicraft Porcelain Industry Sites, China
This serial property documents nearly a thousand years of ceramic production in Jingdezhen, one of the most influential centers of porcelain manufacturing in the world. It includes five component sites covering the full production process: extraction and transport of raw materials, kiln technology, workshops, commercial districts, and the systems that supported large-scale manufacturing. Jingdezhen hosted both imperial and civilian kilns, and its porcelain became a recognized symbol of Chinese craftsmanship worldwide.
The site’s defining structure is the egg-shaped wood-fired kiln, a form developed locally that lets a single firing reach temperatures above 1,300 degrees Celsius while holding pieces requiring different heat levels in one chamber. Kilns were built from handmade brick without formal drawings, relying on techniques passed down between kiln masters, and their sloped interior beds were designed to guide flame and smoke evenly across the load. Surrounding workshop districts still show the layout of raw-material storage, molding sheds, and glazing areas that once supported this production chain.
5. Gdynia Modernist City Centre, Poland
This site recognizes one of Europe’s most complete examples of interwar modernist urban planning. Gdynia grew rapidly from a small fishing settlement into the main seaport of the Second Polish Republic between the First and Second World Wars, and its city center reflects that transformation. The property includes the city’s main streets, residential quarters, public buildings, and villas, illustrating how urban planning supported Poland’s economic ambitions and national identity during the interwar period.
Its buildings share a streamlined, nautical design language: flat roofs, rounded corners, long horizontal window bands, and curved balconies that resemble the decks and railings of ocean liners, a direct reference to the city’s identity as a new maritime gateway. The main axis, 10 Lutego Street, runs from the railway station straight toward the Southern Pier, giving the plan a clear symbolic direction toward the sea.
6. The Condominio Theatres of Central Italy
The full title of this inscription is The System of Italian-Style Condominio Theatres of the 18th and 19th Centuries in Central Italy. It covers ten theaters across Emilia-Romagna, Marche, and Umbria, built between the mid-eighteenth and late nineteenth centuries under the condominio model, in which municipalities and private citizens jointly financed and managed performance venues. The theaters follow the Italian tradition of tiered boxes, designed auditoriums, foyers, and stage machinery. The listing highlights how this ownership model helped expand public access to the performing arts across the region.
Each theater follows the Italian horseshoe plan, with multiple tiers of private boxes stacked around a central floor and topped by a gallery, a layout built to maximize both sightlines to the stage and social visibility between box-holders. Because construction and upkeep were shared among many co-owners, the interiors mix individually decorated boxes with a unified overall design, and most theaters retain their original wooden stage machinery, painted proscenium arches, and frescoed ceilings.
7. Beaches of the D-Day Landings, Normandy, 1944, France
This inscription protects a cultural landscape tied to one of the most significant military events of the twentieth century. The serial property extends along roughly 80 kilometers of the Normandy coast and includes Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword Beaches, along with Pointe du Hoc. It preserves structures and remains connected to the Allied landings of June 6, 1944, including parts of the German Atlantic Wall, military installations, battlefield traces, and commemorative sites related to Operation Overlord. The listing also includes the American Cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer.
As a design record, the site is less about individual buildings than about military engineering and commemorative landscape architecture working together. The German Atlantic Wall remains include reinforced concrete bunkers and gun emplacements set into the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc, built to a defensive plan that shaped the entire coastline, while the American Cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer follows a formal, symmetrical layout of white marble crosses and Stars of David set on manicured lawns above Omaha Beach.
8. Royal Capetian Fortresses of Languedoc, France
This property covers a network of eight fortified sites in southern France that reflect the consolidation of royal power during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It includes the fortified city of Carcassonne and the castles of Aguilar, Lastours, Montségur, Peyrepertuse, Puilaurens, Quéribus, and Termes. These fortifications were built following the Albigensian Crusade and mark the shift from feudal territories to a more centralized French state.
Most of these fortresses were built or rebuilt directly onto rocky outcrops, using the terrain itself as a first line of defense before any wall was added. Carcassonne is the most complete example, with two concentric rings of ramparts, 52 towers, and a drawbridge-fronted castle at its center, all restored in the nineteenth century under Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. The mountaintop castles further east, such as Peyrepertuse and Quéribus, are built in narrow, elongated plans that follow the shape of the ridge lines they sit on, with thick curtain walls and few openings facing the exposed approach routes.
9. Mount Amel Castles, Lebanon
This property includes five fortified sites in the Jabal Amel region of southern Lebanon, showing nearly a thousand years of military architecture and territorial administration. The castles sit on strategic hilltops and ridges above key routes, and their construction reflects successive periods of Crusader, Ayyubid, Mamluk, Ottoman, and local rule. Their towers, walls, gateways, and residential quarters show how fortification methods changed over time and how the sites functioned as both military posts and administrative centers. This inscription was fast-tracked due to regional conflict and placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger at the same time.
Because each castle was rebuilt and extended by successive rulers, their design layers different construction methods on the same footprint: Crusader-period masonry at the base, Mamluk-era towers and machicolations added above it, and later Ottoman repair work in a lighter, less fortified style. Qalaat Chama’ and the other Jabal Amel castles typically combine a central keep with an outer curtain wall following the natural contours of the hilltop, using minimal cut stone in favor of roughly dressed local rock bonded with lime mortar.
10. Rock Mosques and Associated Sacred Sites of Mangystau, Kazakhstan
This serial property includes five underground religious complexes carved into the rock formations of western Kazakhstan between the twelfth and eighteenth centuries. Each site is linked to prominent Sufi figures and is surrounded by cemeteries, pilgrimage routes, and water sources that form part of a wider spiritual landscape. These complexes are built into the natural terrain of the Mangystau Peninsula, reflecting how religious spaces were adapted to a nomadic cultural setting.
These mosques are carved downward and inward into soft limestone cliffs and plateaus, producing low-ceilinged prayer halls, niches, and burial chambers cut directly from the rock instead of freestanding walls and domes. The excavated interiors follow simple rectangular or cave-like floor plans, with mihrabs and tomb markers carved into the stone itself, and the surrounding necropolises of carved gravestones extend this rock-cut approach across the wider landscape.
11. Sebastia, State of Palestine
Sebastia is a historic settlement in the central highlands of the West Bank with archaeological remains spanning several millennia. The site preserves evidence from successive civilizations, including public buildings, religious structures, urban infrastructure, and defensive works. Sebastia served as an administrative, religious, and economic center at different points in its history, and its layered remains reflect continuous settlement and adaptation in the eastern Mediterranean. This site was also fast-tracked through the emergency procedure and added to the List of World Heritage in Danger because of regional conflict.
The site’s best-known design element is a Roman-period colonnaded street, close to a kilometer long and originally lined with around 600 columns, that connected the city gate to its forum and public buildings. Herod the Great rebuilt the hilltop city in this Roman style, adding a temple platform reached by a monumental stairway, a basilica, a stadium, and a theater, all set out around a formal Roman urban grid. Later Byzantine builders added a basilica church, and Crusader-period builders reused parts of the site for a cathedral later converted into a mosque, so the standing remains layer Roman, Byzantine, and medieval construction on the same ground.
12. Ancient Capitals of Asuka and Fujiwara, Japan
This property includes 19 archaeological components in the southern Nara Basin that document Japan’s earliest centralized state formation, between the sixth and eighth centuries. It covers the remains of imperial palaces, government facilities, Buddhist temples, and large burial mounds associated with the Asuka Capital (588 to 694 CE) and the Fujiwara Capital (694 to 710 CE). The sites show the early adoption of Chinese-style administrative systems, urban planning, and Buddhist architecture, which later shaped the development of Nara and Kyoto.
Fujiwara Palace was Japan’s first capital built to a Chinese-style grid, laid out on a roughly one-kilometer-square site enclosed by walls with gates on each side and organized around a north-south processional avenue leading to the palace gate. At its center stood the Daigokuden audience hall, built with tile roofing and stone foundations, a construction method that broke from the timber posts driven directly into the ground used at earlier Asuka palaces. Government offices flanked the palace to the east and west in a planned block layout, while Buddhist temples such as Asukadera followed evolving arrangements of pagodas and halls that trace the shift from Korean-influenced temple design toward later Japanese conventions.
13. The Medinas of the Historic Sultanates of the Comoros, Comoros
This inscription covers six historic towns that developed as urban centers within the island sultanates of the Comoros archipelago from at least the eleventh century onward. These towns grew through trade links across the Indian Ocean, and their layout and architecture reflect centuries of exchange between African, Arab, Persian, and other maritime cultures. Islamic influences combine with local building customs shaped by the islands’ environment. This is the first World Heritage inscription for Comoros.
Construction across the medinas relies on coral stone and lime mortar, a building method shared with other Swahili coast towns such as Zanzibar and Lamu, producing thick walls, flat timber-supported roofs suited to tropical rain, and multi-story houses set along narrow, shaded alleyways. In the Moroni medina, the fourteenth-century Old Friday Mosque, also known as the Badjanani Mosque, is built entirely from coral stone with a minaret added in the twentieth century, and its carved wooden doors are a recurring decorative feature across the town’s older houses.
14. Ancient Buddhist Site of Sarnath, India
Sarnath, located near Varanasi, is recognized as the place where the Buddha is traditionally said to have delivered his first sermon after enlightenment. Over the centuries, it grew into one of Buddhism’s most significant pilgrimage sites, supported by royal, monastic, and community patronage. The archaeological remains include stupas, monasteries, and temples across two archaeological zones, documenting the development of Buddhist architecture and religious practice from antiquity through the medieval period.
The site’s dominant structure, the Dhamek Stupa, is a solid cylindrical tower about 43 meters tall and 28 meters wide, built from a core of Ashoka-period stone faced with red brick added during later expansions. Its lower section is covered in carved sandstone bands from the Gupta period showing floral scrolls, geometric patterns, and figures of birds and humans, set within eight niches that once likely held images, while the upper drum is left plain and smooth. Nearby, the Ashoka Pillar and the surrounding monastery and stupa foundations show a simpler, undecorated architectural style typical of the site’s earlier Mauryan-period construction.
15. The Cemetery Complexes of the Xiongnu Nobility, Mongolia
This property includes eight funerary landscapes tied to the Xiongnu Empire, a major nomadic confederation of ancient Eurasia active from the third century BCE to the second century CE. The sites contain large burial structures, satellite graves, and ceremonial features that reveal the social organization and technical capabilities of Xiongnu society. Located along historic routes connecting Central Asia and China, these cemeteries add to what is known about nomadic civilizations and their role in Eurasian trade and cultural exchange.
The largest tombs, such as those at Noyon Uul and Gol Mod, are built as square or rectangular earthen mounds set above deep vertical shafts that can reach 20 meters down, each approached by a sloped ramp on the south side leading to a timber burial chamber. These chambers were constructed as nested wooden boxes lined with felt and textile hangings, sometimes decorated with sun and moon motifs, and surrounded by smaller satellite graves arranged around the main mound. The scale of excavation and log construction required for a single tomb points to significant organized labor, which is part of why the sites are read as evidence of a structured, hierarchical Xiongnu society.
16. Alamūt Castle and Related Fortifications, Iran
This property covers seven fortified sites in Iran’s Alborz Mountains, including Alamūt Castle and six related fortifications. From the late eleventh century, Alamūt served as the political, military, and intellectual center of the Nezāri Ismaʿili community, functioning as both a defensive stronghold and a place of scholarship. The fortifications show how construction and resource management were adapted to mountainous terrain. The sites remained in use until the fall of Alamūt in 1256.
Alamūt Castle itself sits on a narrow rock ridge accessible only by a single steep path, and its builders relied on that terrain instead of heavy walls for defense. The most notable engineering feature is a great water channel, or qanat, cut directly into the southern rock face in two sections totaling about 183 meters long, together with several cisterns hewn into the stone, giving the fortress enough stored water to withstand prolonged sieges. Surviving construction on the ridge combines stone, brick, and plaster in towers, halls, and a concealed entrance tunnel, while related fortresses such as Lambsar follow similar principles, using rock-cut cisterns and terrain-based defense.
17. The Roças of São Tomé and Príncipe: Colonial Agricultural System and Forced Migration
This inscription includes six former plantation complexes, known locally as roças, that document the layout of Portuguese colonial agricultural production on the islands. Built mainly for coffee and cocoa farming from the late nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth century, the roças combined farmland with processing facilities, worker housing, administrative buildings, and social infrastructure within structured settlements. The listing acknowledges both the design of these plantation landscapes and their history, including their connection to forced labor and migration. This is the first World Heritage inscription for São Tomé and Príncipe.
Each roça followed a consistent spatial hierarchy inherited from earlier Brazilian and Portuguese plantation models. The Casa Grande, a large administrator’s residence with arched windows, upper-floor verandas, and wooden floors, sits at the top of the site overlooking the estate, while the senzalas, communal worker housing, are set apart at a lower level to reinforce social distance. Between the two lie the production buildings, drying terraces, fermentation tanks, storage sheds, and, in the larger roças, hospitals, chapels, schools, and narrow-gauge rail lines used to move coffee and cocoa down to the coast for export.
18. Village of Sidi Bou Saïd, Tunisia
Sidi Bou Saïd is a historic village on a Mediterranean promontory near Tunis, built around the tomb of the Sufi saint of the same name. The village is known for its white-and-blue architecture and its close relationship with the surrounding cliffs and coastline. The inscription recognizes it as an example of how architecture, urban form, and spiritual tradition can develop together over centuries in a Mediterranean setting.
The village’s design traces back to Andalusian refugees who settled there after fleeing Spain, bringing building traditions later reinforced in the early twentieth century by Baron Rodolphe d’Erlanger, whose own house combined Moorish and Andalusian motifs with early Modernist elements. Houses are whitewashed with thick walls to manage heat, arranged around inward-facing courtyards, and fitted with heavy wooden doors painted a specific shade of blue, decorated with brass hand-shaped knockers and iron grilles that cast latticed shadows across the narrow streets. Zellige tilework, carved plaster, and horseshoe arches appear throughout the village, reflecting the same Andalusian-Moorish vocabulary found in parts of southern Spain and North Africa.
19. Wat Phra Mahathat Woramahawihan, Nakhon Si Thammarat, Thailand
This Buddhist religious complex has a history of more than 1,500 years and sits along historic maritime trade routes between the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Its development reflects continuous exchange with religious and cultural traditions from India, Sri Lanka, Java, Myanmar, and Mon communities. The site is associated with the Great Reliquary and long-running traditions such as the annual cloth-wrapping ceremony, and it remains an active center of Buddhist worship and pilgrimage.
The temple’s central structure, the Phra Borommathat Chedi, is a bell-shaped stupa about 78 meters tall, built in Sinhalese Buddhist style, with a wide square base ringed by sculpted elephants supporting a tapering spire capped in roughly 600 kilograms of gold leaf. This bulbous-base, narrow-spire form marks a deliberate architectural break from the earlier Srivijayan Mahayana Buddhist tradition once practiced in the region, signaling the arrival of Sri Lankan-influenced Theravada Buddhism in the early thirteenth century.
Around the main chedi, more than 150 smaller stupas are arranged in a symmetrical pattern within the walled temple compound, alongside a gallery of Buddha images and a shrine built around a Bodhi tree said to descend from the tree under which the Buddha attained enlightenment.
The session reflected UNESCO‘s continued use of the emergency listing procedure for heritage under threat from armed conflict, applied this year to sites in Lebanon, Palestine, and South Sudan. At the same time, the first-ever inscriptions for Comoros and São Tomé and Príncipe point to an ongoing effort to bring more of Africa’s heritage onto the list, since several African states still have no sites inscribed.
Taken together, the 19 cultural sites added this year cover a wide range of periods and building types: prehistoric burial landscapes in Mongolia, medieval fortresses in France, Lebanon, and Iran, colonial plantation systems in West Africa, sacred rock-cut complexes in Kazakhstan, and twentieth-century modernist architecture in Finland, Uzbekistan, and Poland.
