As a national leader in the ICT sector, Sofia has ambitions to become a leading European city in terms of ICT business and creative and recreational industries.

The fact is that ICT is the fastest growing industry in the city with a growth of 21.8% in 2016 compared to 2012. The city council has declared that it will formulate a well-coordinated smart city concept and contribute to including all stakeholders in the city transformation process. With this commitment, the city of Sofia joined in early 2018 in the European Commission's programme Digital Cities Challenge, which started at the end of 2017 and will continue until June 2019.

In the implementation of the Cluster Sofia Knowledge City’s goals for organizational capacity building, internationalization, and for the creation of successful international partnerships, several working visits were organized in leading cluster organizations, research institutes, accelerators, non-governmental organizations and agencies, technology parks, and smart cities organizations in Austria, Slovenia, Italy, and the UK.

Quite often the members and experts of the Cluster Sofia Knowledge City come up with various proposals and ideas for projects that not only are feasible and realistic but can also provide a significant social impact on the city and its citizens and guests.

In July 2018, the following new ideas were prepared and presented to the municipal management, related to important areas for the municipality, such as cybersecurity, healthcare, and ecology.

They were as follows:

A series of working visits were organized by the cluster team in leading cluster organizations, research institutes, technology parks and smart city organizations in Austria, Slovenia, Italy and UK. These visits are aligned with the aim to build organizational capacity, internationalization, and successful partnerships.

In July (16-20.07.) Milena Koleva – strategy and development expert at the cluster – visited Italy and participated in several working meetings with cluster managers of Emilia-Romana Associazione Clust-ER, Greentech, Agrofood, ICT, Building and Construction, Health and Wellbeing, Mechanics and Mechatronics in Bologna, EURAC Research institute and NOI Tech park in Bolzano as well as innovation center Verona 311 in Verona.