ICOMOS posts surplus on one-off revenue as subsidies shrink

The International Council on Monuments and Sites closed 2025 with a surplus of €230,420, roughly eight times its 2024 result, on income the organization said was inflated by a one-time accounting convergence rather than lasting growth, according to its newly released annual report.

The organization, one of three official advisory bodies to UNESCO's World Heritage Committee, published the report in June. It covers the year ICOMOS marked its 60th anniversary.

Total income reached €5.25 million compared to €5.02 million in spending, the report said. Activity-related revenue rose from €2.49 million in 2024 to €4.25 million in 2025.

A line item labeled "Other services" drove most of that rise, reaching €2,791,258 in 2025 from €1,014,287 the year before and €98,133 in 2023, the report said.

ICOMOS attributed the rise in activity revenue to several major multi-year international project partnerships that concluded in 2025. Under current accounting rules, the report said, a contract's entire value is recorded in the year the work ends, no matter how many years it ran.

The organization said the convergence of closures does not reflect a structural increase in its resources, "nor is it expected to recur at this level."

Government subsidies fell to €128,067 in 2025 from €211,223 in 2024 and €223,954 in 2023, a decline of about 43% over two years. ICOMOS said the decline shows it must broaden its funding sources.

Personnel costs passed €1 million for the first time in the three years the report covers, reaching €1,094,439.

ICOMOS proposed putting the surplus toward two priorities: digital transformation and its reserves, which the report said "remain limited in relation to the organization's commitments and operational needs." The organization expects 2026 to be leaner.

The report lists ICCROM and UNESCO among the principal financial partners that supported its work in 2025. ICCROM, the intergovernmental body that trains and advises on heritage preservation, is also one of two sister advisory bodies ICOMOS works alongside at the World Heritage Committee, together with the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

President Donald Trump ordered the United States to withdraw from 66 international organizations in January 2026, after the period the report covers, Urgent Matter previously reported. Both ICCROM and the IUCN appear on the memorandum's list. ICOMOS does not, and the report does not address the order.

The report is the first published under Céline Noguès-Weber, who became director general in January 2026, according to the organization's governance page. She succeeded Marie-Laure Lavenir, who retired after 10 years in the role. Henri Verrier, the organization's head of finances, retired after 37 years.

"Behind the complexity of a global network of experts, something remarkably simple: people who care," the new director general wrote in a letter opening the report.

At the organization's Annual General Assembly, held October 11 to 19 in Lumbini, Nepal, members adopted seven statutory resolutions and revised the ICOMOS Ethical Principles. The report said the changes reinforce standards of respectful conduct, non-discrimination, cultural diversity, and "appropriate behaviour toward staff" but does not say what prompted them.

The assembly drew 300 delegates from more than 50 countries to Lumbini, a World Heritage site recognized as the birthplace of the Buddha.

On the World Heritage side, ICOMOS evaluated 25 cultural and mixed nominations in 2025, leading to the inscription of 22 new sites—21 cultural and one mixed—at the committee's July session. It also produced 178 reports monitoring the state of conservation of threatened properties and 146 technical reviews of proposed projects.

The organization completed 31 Preliminary Assessments, a desk-based review of whether a site can potentially justify Outstanding Universal Value. The process becomes mandatory for all nominations submitted from February 2027, and the resulting reports are not published unless the state party moves ahead with a nomination.

The report also recorded an outcome from the organization's Heritage Alert program. In May 2025, ICOMOS and its Canadian committee called for action to stop the threatened demolition of the former Église Sainte-Marie in Nova Scotia, an Acadian church deconsecrated in 2023.

Nova Scotia authorities halted the demolition in November 2025 by maintaining the church's designation under the province's Heritage Property Act, according to the report. A local heritage association had gathered roughly 1,340 petition signatures and secured a $50,000 grant to digitally scan the building, and now plans to turn it into a museum of Acadian history.

Another alert, issued March 20, 2025, addressed the Ataköy Housing Estate in Istanbul, where one housing block had already been demolished. ICOMOS urged Turkish authorities to list the estate in the national inventory.

ICOMOS has kept issuing warnings since the period the report covers, including a second urgent alert in June 2026 over Israeli strikes on Tyre, Lebanon, a World Heritage site under Enhanced Protection where the council said the entrance precinct, administration buildings and archaeological warehouses were damaged, Urgent Matter previously reported.

In September 2025, ICOMOS called for an immediate halt to the destruction of cultural heritage in Gaza and to attacks, forced displacement and the appropriation of archaeological sites in the West Bank. The organization said the situation endangers heritage dating back millennia.

Other statements included a June appeal with the International Union for Conservation of Nature on more than 8,500 potentially polluting shipwrecks worldwide, and a November declaration joining Europa Nostra, DOCOMOMO International and the Architects' Council of Europe against a proposed Serbian law that would allow demolition of the Generalštab complex in Belgrade.

ICOMOS also sent experts into two crisis zones. After the 7.7-magnitude earthquake that struck Myanmar in March 2025, it organized two joint missions with UNESCO Bangkok and the Southeast Asian regional archaeology center SEAMEO-SPAFA, visiting more than 30 key sites.

In Ukraine, ICOMOS and UNESCO ran two technical assistance missions for the Historic Centre of Odesa, in February and June, funded by the World Heritage Fund and the government of Japan.

At the United Nations climate conference COP30 in Belém, Brazil, the Global Goal on Adaptation decision introduced five indicators tracking the protection and climate adaptation of heritage sites and cultural practices. ICOMOS said the outcome followed five years of advocacy by culture and heritage groups, and that cultural heritage entered the COP Action Agenda for the first time.

The organization launched its open-access documentation platform PUBLICOMOS in February 2025 with more than 15,000 references. It later added more than 1,000 historical administrative documents. Until November 2025, the report said, those archives could be consulted only by contacting its Documentation Centre or visiting its headquarters in Charenton-le-Pont, outside Paris.

ICOMOS said it has 12,795 members across 158 countries and territories, organized into 117 national committees and 31 international scientific committees.

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