The Future Melbourne Committee will consider the Heritage Strategy 2026: Stories of people and place for adoption at its meeting on 17 February 2026.

The meeting papers are available online.

We have made some changes to the Heritage Strategy since it was deferred by Future Melbourne Committee on 2 December 2025.

We changed the order of the Priority Areas to better reflect the purpose of the Strategy. "Stewardship" is now first because this action is at the core of what our role is at City of Melbourne - to care for and manage our city’s heritage. This is now followed by "Distinctive Places", as this is the namesake of our Strategy: Stories of people and place. We have changed the name of the action titled “Climate and biodiversity emergency” to “Sustainability and environment” to better reflect the objectives of the actions in this Priority Area, rather than the problem they are responding to.

The order of the Priority Areas is now:

• Stewardship
• Distinctive places
• Aboriginal heritage
• Powerful experiences of our multicultural city
• Sustainability and environment

We have updated the language in the actions to be clearer and more consistent and have moved some actions around to ensure they better align with the Priority Area they sit under.

Throughout the document we have included language to better reflect the cultural diversity of Melbourne and its heritage, as well as highlight how layered and complex the stories of Melbourne are, and how a single can place carry multiple stories.

You can have your say at the Future Melbourne Committee meeting by making a comment, requesting to be heard, or asking a question. Further information can be found on the Getting involved in meetings page.