83% of cities studied have a smart mobility plan, only 17% have a budget for it—reveals PwC’s CEE Smart Cities Mobility Sprint 2026

• 83% of cities interviewed in CEE have an official sustainable urban mobility plan (SUMP) or smart mobility roadmap. 78% rank mobility planning as a high or very high urban development priority.

• Cities are building holistic mobility systems that work for everyone. 89% use or plan to adopt smart city and smart mobility indicators. But only 44% have an operational or advanced centralised mobility data platform. 

• Funding capacity is not keeping pace with ambition. Only 17% have a dedicated budget for SUMP or smart mobility activities, and 24% use specific financial instruments.

• Mobility is becoming a broader resilience and competitiveness agenda. 83% aim to align urban mobility planning with construction, logistics, and strategic infrastructure needs. 

• Environmental readiness remains uneven as compliance pressure grows. Only 56% have a formal air quality roadmap, although interviews show that cities are increasingly integrating air quality into broader mobility and urban planning measures.

Katowice, Poland, 23 September 2026 — Cities across Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) are entering a new phase in their mobility transformation. Strategic mobility planning is becoming more common, but the challenge is to convert the plans into funded, coordinated, and measurable action. 

According to the CEE Smart Cities Mobility Sprint 2026, launched today at the New Mobility Congress 2026, 15 of 18 cities examined (83%) have an official Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (SUMP) or smart mobility roadmap. 14 of the 18 (78%) consider SUMPs and smart mobility initiatives a high or very high priority on their urban development agenda. However, only three cities (17%) report having a dedicated budget for these activities. 

The CEE Smart Cities Mobility Sprint 2026 is based on interviews with local authorities in 18 cities across the CEE region. PwC Central and Eastern Europe worked in partnership with PSNM (The New Mobility Association) and EIT Urban Mobility to conduct the interviews, with the goal of reporting on the current readiness of cities to implement and benefit from SUMPs.

The report comes at a time when the policy requirements facing European cities are intensifying. The revised Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) Regulation requires 431 urban nodes across Europe to adopt a SUMP by the end of 2027, further reinforcing the role of strategic mobility planning. In parallel, the EU's revised Ambient Air Quality Directive sets stricter air pollutant limits to be met by 2030 as a step toward a zero-pollution goal by 2050.

Cities have a clear strategic direction, but implementation capacity remains uneven

The findings show that the region’s primary mobility challenge lies in cities’ uneven capacity to finance, govern, and deliver their plans. While 72% of cities identify EU funding as a strategic source for financing urban mobility systems, only 24% have specific financial instruments to support the implementation of SUMP actions.

Only 17% of cities have a separate, dedicated budget for smart mobility initiatives. Strategic ambitions are progressing faster than the organisational capacity and financial mechanisms required to turn them into sustained action.

Mobility investment remains largely project-driven rather than programme-driven. While cities are often successful in securing grants for individual projects, many have yet to establish stable, long-term financing structures covering the full implementation cycle, from delivery and operation to monitoring and maintenance. 

Actions cities are taking across key areas: 

• Governance and social: Political and technical leadership structures are generally well established, but responsibility for public engagement is less consistently formalised. While 17 responding cities confirmed that they have designated technical leadership, only 12 reported having an identified public engagement champion.

  Wrocław provides a strong example of a mature and institutionalised public engagement model. Its dedicated Department of Citizen Participation coordinates public consultations citywide, while external NGOs provide independent facilitation. The city’s public platform, “Wrocław Rozmawia” (“Wrocław Talks”), also archives consultation materials and reports from the past eight years, enabling residents to see how their input has informed city decisions. 

• Data, digital, and AI. Digitalisation is one of the areas showing the strongest implementation momentum. Traffic control centres, automated counters, journey-planning applications, and digital ticketing are becoming increasingly common across CEE cities. However, cross-platform data integration remains uneven. While 44% of cities report having an operational or advanced centralised platform integrating mobility datasets, 56% still rely on basic platforms with limited datasets or are only planning such systems.  

  This gap illustrates the region's ongoing transition from standalone digital tools and pilot projects to integrated city management systems. Prague is a leading example through its Golemio Data Platform. It combines real-time mobility data, cross-domain integration, analytics, public APIs, and decision-support tools to enable evidence-based urban mobility management.

• Funding and financing. EU and external funding remain the primary drivers of mobility transformation across CEE cities. Around 72% of cities strategically use EU funding to strengthen resilience, adaptability, and innovation in their urban mobility systems. But the use of specific financial instruments remains limited. Only 24% of cities report using instruments such as green or municipal bonds, public-private partnerships (PPPs), or specialised credit lines to finance smart mobility investments. 

  Despite this, interviews indicate a growing recognition that funding sources need to be diversified to support long-term transformation. Many cities see significant potential to expand the use of PPPs selectively in areas where the private sector can deliver projects more efficiently than municipal authorities. This shift is already emerging in cities such as Riga, where PPPs are evolving into an increasingly important pillar of the city's long-term mobility and infrastructure strategy. Ljubljana provides a more established example, using PPPs to deliver public bike-sharing and e-car-sharing services, as well as bus-stop equipment and maintenance.

• Competitiveness and resilience & security. Next-generation mobility planning is moving beyond transport alone. It’s increasingly recognising mobility’s role in economic development, energy resilience, fuel security, climate adaptation. 89% of cities already incorporate fuel security, alternative fuels, and energy resilience into their future transport plans. 83% seek to align mobility planning with the needs of the construction sector, logistics operators, and strategic infrastructure delivery.

  Lviv provides a particularly strong example of this shift. For the city, resilience is an operational necessity. It needs to maintain a continuous and reliable transport system amid air raids, power outages, large-scale population displacement, and growing pressure on infrastructure. At the same time, Lviv continues to expand electric transport and adapt mobility services to evolving security and humanitarian needs.

• Environment. Improving air quality is driving a broader shift towards sustainable urban mobility. Cities are prioritising public transport renewal and electrification as key measures to reduce transport-related emissions and improve urban air quality. However, interviews show that cities increasingly recognise that lasting improvements require a more comprehensive approach. Alongside cleaner vehicle fleets, many are investing in walking and cycling infrastructure, parking reform, public transport priority measures, traffic management, access restrictions, green infrastructure, and more advanced monitoring systems. 

  The findings highlight a growing understanding that air quality outcomes depend on integrated mobility and urban planning interventions rather than single-sector solutions. Riga demonstrates how evidence-based monitoring can support both policymaking and public engagement. Through its citizen-science initiative “Breathe, Riga!”, the city collected more than 696,000 air quality measurements, identifying a 9-10% increase in particulate pollution during rush hours. These insights strengthened the case for targeted interventions.

About the CEE Smart Cities Mobility Sprint 2026

• This is a follow-up project to the CEE Smart Cities Mobility Index 2024, which was intended to be a starting point for collective regional action. The 2024 Index was an assessment of the smart city thinking and activities across urban mobility stakeholders in the region.  

• The CEE Smart Cities Mobility Sprint 2026 is a qualitative research and engagement initiative conducted by PwC CEE to assess the state of smart mobility in 18 cities across Central and Eastern Europe: Belgrade, Bratislava, Bucharest, Budapest, Gdańsk, Katowice, Košice, Ljubljana, Łódź, Lviv, Ostrava, Prague, Riga, Rzeszow, Tallinn, Warsaw, Wrocław, Zagreb

• It focuses on how cities incorporate data-driven decisionmaking, funding and financing mechanisms, and security, environmental, governance, and social aspects into their urban mobility planning, and how these efforts align with SUMPs and other evolving policy frameworks (such as The European Green Deal, Ambient Air Quality Directive, Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy). The Sprint also examines the ways cities address and mitigate negative economic, social and environmental impacts of the energy and supply chain disruptions via interventions in their urban mobility systems. 

• The report was launched on 23 September 2026 at the New Mobility Congress in Katowice.

About PwC

At PwC, we help clients build trust and reinvent so they can turn complexity into competitive advantage. We’re a tech-forward, people-empowered network with more than 364,000 people in 136 countries and 137 territories. Across audit and assurance, tax and legal, deals and consulting, we help clients build, accelerate, and sustain momentum. Find out more at https://www.pwc.com/

About PwC Central and Eastern Europe 

PwC Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) is part of the PwC global network of firms. PwC CEE is a Strategy Council Territory within the network, influencing strategic direction and facilitating alignment for the execution of strategy. In CEE, we operate as one partnership across 27 countries, with over 13,000 people working together across our region to serve our clients and contribute to our sustainable future development. Learn more at https://cee.pwc.com/