The art funding in Switzerland goes back almost a century. In the form of Pro Helvetia, many art forms, including games, are held up as national treasures. We talked to Cécile Vulliemin, Head of Design at the Swiss Arts Council, about Swiss’s cultural message and its art funding.
Switzerland’s games funding might not be on par with the ever-enhancing funding race in the German federal states and federal government, but that’s not to say that the art funding of the Swiss nation isn’t top-notch. Responsible not only for games funding, but for the general range of art is Pro Helvetia, the Swiss Culture Foundation. It is carried by the Swiss Federal Republic and was funded as far back as 1939 by the Federal Council. Pro Helvetia incorporates several funding forms, from product funding and location enhancement to residences for artists and delegations to events.
The alignment of Pro Helvetia is shaped, like any cultural undertaking of the Federation, by the Ministry of Culture in the form of a four-year plan, the so-called Cultural Message. The current Cultural Message runs from 2025 to 2028 and is heavily focused on digital transformation in art and culture, sustainability, and the working conditions in the culture sector. In reaction, Pro Helvetia has revised several of its funding formats as of January 2026 to better fit the trajectory. Notably, games funding in general is exempt from these changes, but several related formats have been changed and the overall topic of AI has been put into a bigger focus. Checking in with Pro Helvetia, we talked to Cécile Vulliemin, Head of Design at the Swiss Arts Council, and had her explain some of the changes and trajectories of Switzerland’s arts and culture funding landscape to us.
GamesMarkt: The current Swiss Cultural Message runs from 2025 to 2028. Why were some of the funding formats by Pro Helvetia changed in January 2026, during this runtime?
