1 The European Capital of Culture was due to be in the UK in 2023. However, due to its decision to leave the European Union, UK cities would no longer be eligible to hold the title after 2019. The European Commission's Scotland office confirmed that this would be the case on 23 November 2017, only one week before the UK was due to announce which city would be put forward. The candidate cities were Dundee, Leeds, Milton Keynes, Nottingham and a joint bid from Northern Irish cities Belfast, Derry and Strabane. This caused anger amongst the UK candidate cities' bidding teams due to the short notice of the decision, and because of the amount of money they had already spent preparing their bids.