Belarusian President Aleksander Lukashenko has officially announced that Lida will become the first Tourist Capital of the Commonwealth of Independent States in 2027.
The announcement was made at the jubilee summit of CIS heads of state in Turkmenistan.
Belarus has been consistently promoting Lida’s candidacy since the spring of 2026. In April, at the opening of the Fourth Belarussian-Russian Tourism Congress and Travel Hub “Commonwealth” Forum in Minsk, Igor Petrishenko, the CIS First Deputy Secretary-General, announced plans to launch a new interstate programme Tourist Capitals of the Commonwealth.
In May, Lida hosted an off-site meeting of the CIS Council of Permanent Plenipotentiary Representatives, at which the city was presented as a model example of tourism potential for the Commonwealth.
In June, Belarusian Deputy Prime Minister Natalia Petkevich proposed granting Lida the corresponding status at a meeting of the CIS Economic Council in Moscow.
In July, the initiative was officially presented at the CIS Executive Committee, and in September it was endorsed by the CIS Tourism Council in Dushanbe.
Lida’s designation marks the first such case in the CIS’s practice. Two more Belarusian cities will receive their own statuses in 2027. Minsk will become the CIS Youth Capital, while Molodechno will be designated the CIS Cultural Capital.