New Partners, New Projects: The Mayor’s Climate Challenge in 2026

Bratislava is launching the second year of the Mayor’s Climate Challenge. Companies signed voluntary commitments that should have concrete impacts – on energy bills, in building operations, and in the city’s streets. Climate policy often ends with promises. City of Bratislava wants to move in the opposite direction by setting up cooperation with companies in a way that can be measured, compared, and repeated. That is why the city is continuing the Mayor of Bratislava’s Climate Challenge programme.

Participating companies focus their commitments on energy efficiency, renewable energy sources, green-blue infrastructure, waste management, mobility, and neighbourhood cooperation. Concurrently, the city offers expertise, consultations, and anonymized benchmarking in order to set the climate measures realistically and comparably among the participants.

All ten partner organizations from the first year remain committed to the program, and in January 2026 six new companies joined them by signing a memorandum – a voluntary framework for cooperation between the city and businesses in achieving the target climate goals.

Soňa Andrášová, Head of the City’s Climate Office, says we are living in a period when public and political attention shifts from one crisis to another. Hence, the city appreciates all the more that climate remains important for its business partners – and that commitments within the challenge translate into concrete measures with practical benefits for buildings and everyday life in Bratislava.

Cooperation between the city and companies as a new standard

The Climate Challenge is based on a fundamental principle – the city helps, companies act, and the public recognises the results. Four main objectives of the challenge follow from this principle: building long-term partnerships, demonstrating practical solutions, reducing emissions from existing buildings, and recognizing responsible companies and their leadership.

The city’s chief strategist, Ján Mazúr, declares he notices a growing trend of cooperation between the business sector and Bratislava, aimed to consistently improve life in the city. He notes this has already been evident in initiatives such as 10,000 Trees or the Climathon, as well as major systemic steps in urban development. As a good example, he mentions the zoning plan interventions in Mlynské nivy, where 18 different zones and 14 developers came together to eventually create accessible public infrastructure. He adds that the Climate Challenge builds on these experiences and represents another chapter in cooperation between the city and businesses.

Targeting areas with the greatest impact

In 2026, the Climate Challenge targets sectors where measures can deliver the greatest effect; namely food retailers, owners and managers of large commercial and office spaces, as well as other companies in Bratislava that manage at least **10,000 m² **of building space or have more than 15 locations in operation.

The ambition is to concentrate cooperation where decisions lead to real savings, improved building operations, and tangible changes in the city. Among the new partners in the second year is Wood Real Estate. The company’s representative, Martina Zacharová, emphasizes that the measures implemented in the company must always make economic sense and cannot be merely a public relations stunt.

She also highlights the difference in scale: while changes in households have limited reach, interventions in a building of around 40,000 m² represent an entirely different level of impact. From participation in the Climate Challenge, Wood Real Estate expects mainly information and insights sharing – both successful ideas and dead ends – so others do not have to learn through the trial-and-error method. The company is also interested in ideal solutions already working in real life, such as projects improving building energy efficiency through replacing gas boilers with heat pumps. Wood Real Estate wants to understand what contributed to the success of such projects and identify processes that can be replicated elsewhere.

First municipal company in the challenge

A novelty of the second year’s Mayor’s Climate Challenge is the participation of the municipal company Bratislava Water Company (BVS), which is entering the challenge with projects involving two photovoltaic power plants. Matúš Letko, Director of Business Relations at BVS, notes that cooperation on such projects is natural for the company and something it has been strengthening over time. Sustainable electricity generation complements its established participation in the 10,000 Trees initiative as well as its activities in implementing water-retention measures.

BVS already has photovoltaic systems installed on seven facilities and plans to add two more installations through the Climate Challenge – at the wastewater treatment plant in Petržalka and pumping station Baníková – with a total capacity of 600 kWp. The company’s ambition is to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.