UNESCO adds 25 new sites, bringing world list to 1,273

The UNESCO World Heritage Committee met in Busan, Republic of Korea, from July 19 to 29, 2026, for its 48th session. The result is the inscription of 25 new properties: 19 cultural, five natural and one mixed. The World Heritage List thus reaches 1,273 sites spread across 173 countries, according to the account of the decisions published by Wanderer and confirmed by the list reported by Infobae.

The Korean session is best read by looking at the criteria used to select the properties, rather than at their geography. Three categories recur.

The first is that of twentieth-century memory. The Normandy landing beaches, in France, and the genocide memorials in Cambodia enter the list: two places that have no aesthetic or archaeological value in the traditional sense, but document historical events of the last century. This is a use of the list as an archive of public memory, alongside its original function of monumental protection.

The second is that of archaeological and urban complexes. Japan inscribes Asuka-Fujiwara, which includes 19 locations south of Nara with the ruins of palaces, Buddhist temples, monumental tombs and the remains of the capital Fujiwara-kyo. Greece enters with Mount Olympus — a property combining natural and cultural dimensions — and with the Minoan palaces. France adds the megalithic complexes of Carnac and the coasts of Morbihan, Tunisia adds Sidi Bou Saïd. From China comes the porcelain district of Jingdezhen, with the remains of the Imperial Kiln. Italy inscribes the aqueducts and hydraulic systems of the Caserta Royal Palace.

The third is the environmental category, concentrated mainly in Africa: Mount Mulanje in Malawi, the Gola Tiwai forests in Sierra Leone, the Gola rainforest complex in Liberia, the Gid Biy cultural landscape in Cameroon. Outside the continent, Mexico obtains recognition for the Wixárika Route, the path toward the sacred sites of Wirikuta: an itinerary, not a monument.

Alongside the new inscriptions there are two extensions of properties already on the list. In Germany, the inscription of Berlin’s modernist Siedlungen is extended to the Waldsiedlung Zehlendorf, built between 1926 and 1932; in Korea, the Getbol, the intertidal mudflats of the Yellow Sea, were extended. The Committee also revised the recognition criteria for Garamba National Park, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, inscribed since 1980: a decision concerning how an already protected property is classified, not its continued presence on the list.

The World Heritage List reaches 1,273 sites in 173 countries.

The overall count says something about how the mechanism works. With twenty-five entries in a single session, the list grows by about 2% over ten days of proceedings: a pace that over the years has fueled debate on the management sustainability of the system, since each inscription entails conservation and monitoring obligations for the State that obtains it.

What we do not know, based on the sources consulted. The complete, itemized list of all 25 properties is not available: those mentioned here are the ones reported by the two accounts used. We do not know how many candidacies were rejected or postponed in the same session, nor which properties were added to or removed from the List of World Heritage in Danger, a decision the Committee routinely makes at the same meetings. The specific criteria applied to the Garamba Park revision are not known.