On 30 September 2025, the Council of Europe’s Intercultural Cities (ICC) Programme, in partnership with the Union of Polish Municipalities and the intercultural city of Kraków, organised a one-day capacity-building course on tackling disinformation at the Multicultural Centre in Kraków. The training brought together municipal directors, communication and public-relations staff from Białystok, Katowice, Kraków, Lublin, Poznań, Rzeszów and Warsaw to examine how an intercultural approach can strengthen the cities’ resilience to disinformation.

Disinformation ­is false information deliberately created to mislead, harm or provoke and it often targets marginalised groups. It increasingly affects local governance and community cohesion. The training course focused on disinformation in Krakow and looked at practical responses which protect democratic processes and vulnerable populations. Participants completed a preparatory survey prior to the event so the training was tailored to local needs.

The training included an introduction to key terms and concepts; an examination of how disinformation interacts with intercultural policy; facilitated group work to draft local responses and communication strategies. The course aimed to help cities: identify local effects of disinformation; design practical, city-level prevention and rapid-response measures; and strengthen peer learning so good practices can be shared and scaled across municipalities.

This training course on countering disinformation was organised as a follow-up to the Academy on the Integration of Migrants and Refugees in Polish Cities, under which previous training courses had been organised in the intercultural cities of Lublin and Wroclaw.