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Good practice Imported

Milano & Partners International Talent Attraction

Italy · Milan · See the Italy profile · See the Milan profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 54% 67/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Milano & Partners, the city official investment and promotion agency, runs a talent attraction platform offering relocation guidance, networking, and sector-specific landing pads for international professionals.

~280,000 19% of city population
Foreign residents in Milan (2022)
2.7 EUR B
Announced FDI attracted (2022)
15,000+
Annual relocation information requests handled
60+
Fast-track onboarding partner companies

Details

Maturity
Scaling
Promoter
Milano & Partners (Comune di Milano)
Period
2017–present
Region (NUTS)
ITC4
Keywords
Public Agency

Context

Milano & Partners is the official foreign investment and city promotion agency of the Comune di Milano, established in 2017. Its talent arm focuses on attracting international professionals and students through a one-stop relocation portal, a curated Expat in Milan guide, and dedicated landing pads in fintech, fashion-tech and life sciences.

Activities

The agency works in partnership with Assolombarda (the Milan employers association), major universities (Bocconi, Politecnico) and the Milan Chamber of Commerce, and hosts the annual Milan International Week bringing together 400+ global companies.

Results

In 2022, Milan ranked 7th globally in the Euromonitor Top 100 City Destinations and recorded its highest-ever number of foreign residents (approximately 280,000, or 19% of the city population); the city attracted over EUR 2.7 billion in announced FDI that year (fDi Intelligence/FT data). Milano & Partners reports handling 15,000+ relocation information requests annually and maintaining partnerships with 60+ companies offering fast-track onboarding support.

Conclusions

While Milan's overall attractiveness trend is well documented by independent city-ranking data, the specific contribution of Milano & Partners' talent programme to that trend, versus the city's broader economic pull, is not established in the available sources.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Medium (€50k–€500k) — Funded through the Comune di Milano budget and co-financed by private-sector partners (Assolombarda, Chamber of Commerce); specific annual budget not itemised in the available sources.
Time to results
Medium (1–3 years) — Operating continuously since 2017 (8 years to 2025).
Staffing & skills
Milano & Partners agency staff (talent and investment teams), Comune di Milano (city government, primary funder), Assolombarda, Bocconi, Politecnico and the Milan Chamber of Commerce as delivery partners

Conditions for success

  • City-government ownership combined with co-financing from the local employers' association and universities
  • Sector-specific 'landing pads' (fintech, fashion-tech, life sciences) that match talent services to the city's actual industry clusters
  • A single digital relocation portal covering housing, bureaucracy and career matching to reduce the practical friction of moving

Common failure modes

  • No mechanism found for isolating the programme's own effect from Milan's broader economic and cultural pull on foreign residents and investors
  • Growth is described as constrained by city housing supply rather than programme capacity

Where it fits

Governance type
municipal agency with private-sector co-governance
Scale
city (Milan)
Income level
high-income

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes

Indicative funding routes for practices of this type — always check each programme's current calls and eligibility rules.

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

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