'Gyeongju' Virtually Confirmed as Host City for Next Year's APEC Summit... Final Announcement This Month

Results of the Three-Way Contest with Incheon and Jeju

The host city for the 2025 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit has been virtually decided as Gyeongju, Gyeongbuk. The APEC Summit will be held in Korea next year for the first time in 20 years since it was held in Busan in 2005.

According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the 20th, the APEC Summit Host City Selection Committee (Selection Committee) decided at its 4th meeting on the same day to recommend Gyeongju as the host city for next year’s APEC Summit to the APEC Summit Preparatory Committee.

Based on discussions and evaluations so far, the selection committee members chose Gyeongju as the optimal candidate city by majority vote, recognizing its excellence in various aspects such as contribution to national and regional development, culture, and tourism resources.

The host city for the 2025 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit has been virtually decided as Gyeongju, Gyeongsangbuk-do.
[Photo by Yonhap News]

Following a competition among three local governments including Gyeongju, Incheon, and Jeju Island for the 2025 APEC Summit to be held in Korea for the first time in 20 years since the 2005 Busan Summit, Gyeongju was tentatively selected. The final host city will be confirmed at the upcoming Preparatory Committee meeting based on the Selection Committee’s recommendation, with the next Preparatory Committee meeting expected to be held later this month.

Previously, the Selection Committee selected three candidate cities?Gyeongju, Incheon, and Jeju?at last month’s meeting, and formed an on-site inspection team to conduct field inspections according to the inspection plan. At the meeting on the 20th, the selection committee comprehensively reviewed the bid applications of the three candidate cities, the inspection results from the on-site inspection team, discussions from the 1st to 3rd meetings, and each candidate city’s hosting plans, and deliberated carefully.

Additionally, the Selection Committee resolved to recommend that major meetings to be held in Korea next year, coinciding with Korea’s chairmanship of APEC including the Ministerial Meeting and Senior Officials’ Meeting (SOM), be distributed and held in Incheon and Jeju, which were not selected as host cities. Korea plans to hold more than 200 APEC meetings of various levels throughout next year, starting with an informal Senior Officials’ Meeting at the end of this year.