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Good practice Imported

Vilnius Becomes an Open-Air Café — Emergency Street Dining During COVID-19

Lithuania · Vilnius · See the Lithuania profile · See the Vilnius profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 74% 57/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

In April 2020 Vilnius let cafés and bars use squares and streets free of charge for distanced outdoor seating so hospitality could reopen during COVID-19. 151 applications arrived within a day; over 160 venues joined a scheme later cited by the OECD as a model.

18 spaces
Public spaces opened on first day (22 April 2020)
151 applications
Applications received in one day (April 2020)
160+ venues
Venues that took up outdoor pitches (2020)
142 businesses
Businesses registered for voucher scheme (2020)
632 vouchers
Vouchers purchased (2020)
9,200 EUR
Value of vouchers purchased (2020)

Details

Maturity
Discontinued
Promoter
Vilnius City Municipality
Period
2020
Region (NUTS)
LT01
Keywords
tactical urbanism, hospitality recovery, public space, COVID-19 response

Context

As Lithuania eased its first COVID-19 lockdown in April 2020, indoor dining remained restricted and Vilnius's medieval Old Town streets were too narrow to fit socially distanced tables.

Objectives

The scheme aimed to let hospitality businesses reopen safely during the pandemic by giving them free, temporary use of public space for distanced outdoor seating.

Activities

On 22-23 April 2020 Vilnius City Municipality, under Mayor Remigijus Šimašius, announced that cafés, bars and restaurants could use public squares, streets and courtyards for outdoor seating free of charge for the rest of 2020, provided tables kept two metres apart and stayed at least one metre from pedestrian paths. Eighteen public spaces, including the UNESCO-listed Cathedral Square, were opened on the first day. A complementary voucher scheme (talonai.lt) saw 142 local businesses register and 632 vouchers worth roughly €9,200 purchased to support the hospitality sector, alongside separate gift vouchers for medical workers.

Results

Demand was immediate: the municipality received 151 applications in a single working day, and more than 160 cafés, bars and restaurants ultimately took up outdoor pitches.

Conclusions

The scheme kept much of Vilnius's hospitality sector trading through a period when indoor capacity was constrained, and was documented by the OECD's Observatory of Public Sector Innovation as an exportable COVID-19 response and covered internationally by outlets including the CBC and Euronews. No independent economic evaluation of the scheme's effect on business survival or revenue has been published, and unlike some other cities' programmes, it was framed and delivered as a time-limited emergency measure rather than a step toward permanent street redesign.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Low (< €50k)
Time to results
Short (< 1 year)
Staffing & skills
Delivered directly by Vilnius City Municipality under Mayor Remigijus Šimašius

Conditions for success

  • No infrastructure spend required — a fast permitting/fee-exemption decision rather than a capital project
  • Simple, clear distancing rules (2m between tables, 1m from pedestrian paths) allowed rapid rollout across 18 public spaces on day one

Common failure modes

  • The fee exemption was explicitly time-bound to 2020 as an emergency measure, with no published evidence that free public-space seating continued as policy afterward

Where it fits

Governance type
municipal
Scale
city-wide (Old Town-focused)
Income level
high-income

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Data sources

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