I also feel like the notes that had buildings (like we have now) are just.. better. The initial run of 2002-2013 remains the best aesthetically, imo.
Does the same logic extend all elevated positions? A person in a national portrait gallery, a person with a statue, a person with an olympic medal or a nobel prize, a person with a fancy title like president or queen?
Or is there something specific about bank notes that makes them more problematic?
We can and do take away honours from living people, you might remember that Paula Vennells had an OBE, but that was removed because while she hasn't and likely won't ever be actually prosecuted for it, it's obviously her fault that so many UK subpostmasters were convicted of crimes they didn't commit and in some cases even committed suicide.
Likewise the present King of England's brother would in the ordinary course of things be a pretty important guy with the title Prince and so on. But he's not, he's just Andrew because even though again he's unlikely to face prosecution it does seem like he fucked an underage girl trafficked by Epstein so the King took away his titles.
But for example Oscar Pistorius has several medals for running - not just in paralympic events but straight up against people with both legs and no running blades. The medals weren't retracted when he murdered somebody or even when he was sent to prison for the murders. Oscar still ran really fast and the medals stand. But hopefully we are clear that "Was very fast" and "Is a terrible person" are compatible ideas.
Europe doesn't have a dearth of stunning architecture. Have they all been discarded in favor of ugly straightline modernist sloptitecture because they might be construed as offensive for some reason?
Because they are the european institutions, eg the EU parliament building, EU comission, etc.
They are mostly office buildings.
These are a current necessities, but nothing to sanctuarize for the future. The only thing that should remain stable in Europe are ideas, and the Swiss got it better on their notes
B) The most boring of the options. The tiny text with the bird facts should not be there.
C) Corporate hellscape.
D) wtf are those hands doing here
E) Again fronts look better than backs; fronts are very traditional bank-note to me.
F) Most interesting option. Certainly feels different than any other bank note I recall.
G) Ugh random vector shapes and gradients. Ugly in same ways as C)
H) Very inoffensive, very boring. Competing with B) in the most boring category.
I) Bit too much going on. The river map thing on the back side should be distinct in each note
J) The visual "sketchy" style just doesn't feel right here.
Ultimately F is visually my favourite although like many others I do dislike the "famous people" theme. Design I could be very nice with some tweaks
I think it's a bit strange to feature people on these, plus it would be difficult to agree on who to feature between the 21 € states. The birds look cool! But it would have been nice to modernize the current architecture-based design rather than feature random EU office buildings.
The US style? I much prefer the Japanese style instead (where €5 would be a coin instead of a note). When our largest coin is too small to buy a drink at a vending machine we've got a problem. ATMs don't turn over €5 notes anyway, so their existence is painfully awkward.
Also I like birds. H looks nice.
The current ones are much better looking than any of those.
;)
That's the only thing I'll miss if Romania ever switches to Euro. Cash you can launder. Literally.
I helped Claude build a simple web app (static, local, oss) to make you choose among pairs, to progressively determine your personal preference.
It outputs your top 3, you can share the summary like this:
Recto Verso Euro
My top euro banknote designs:
Design H
Design D
Design B
→ https://pil0u.github.io/recto-verso-euro/#r=HDBJIGECFA&c=68
You can see all side-by-side here: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/banknotes/future_banknotes/ht...
My takes:
Designs A and B and I are not terrible, but I'm not impressed.
Design C - the backside looks like the worst soulless corporate landing page graphics (Corporate Memphis style?).
Design D and E, H are okayish. Possibly I'd prefer something along these lines.
Design F has very strange coloring, the watercolor and sketch effect looks nice on screen, but I think more filled and more monochrome notes are more conventional and accepted, also some are bicolor. Not bad, but I'd not like it in everyday use probably.
Design G is somehow not good looking, I cannot phrase it. Both the font, and also the backsides scenes are meh, even the modernist buildings are better on some other series.
Design J : the creepy abstract cartoon people on the backside ruin it. Also somehow not aesthetically pleasing, but not catastrophic.
But the Canadian ones are physically impressive, they don't really crumble, and seem immune to both liquid and tearing.
Never underestimate the pettiness of man.
Was that an explicit part of the brief artists were given?
I feel like the selection of motifs is more interesting and where more of the creative process in defining a representation of Europe lies than just how to draw and layout those motifs.
And what are the options they give? I guess historical people with weird abstract community settings or birds with office buildings. Is that all the EU represents?
Whatever they go for I hope they do not open the can of worms that is historical people, or any people for that matter. It will start all kinds of tiresome discussions and people will draw on them making it difficult use defaced bills.
If you really want historical people as a gesture of appreciation or celebration of their achievements then make that a limited edition.
From the brief:
> “Rivers and birds” highlights the resilience and diversity of Europe’s natural ecosystems by showcasing different stages of rivers and various bird species, emphasising the importance of nature and environmental protection. The European institutions featured on the banknotes remind us of the fundamental values of the European project, which also embraces environmental protection.
https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/pr/date/2025/html/ecb.pr2501...
I kept wondering what all the people and birds were, there's a table on this Motifs page: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/pr/date/2025/html/ecb.pr2501...
I think the buildings are ugly, and D does its best to obscure them. So that's my winner.
F has very strong "Soviet children's book" vibes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_van_Beethoven
If you don’t recognise someone else, they are named in the brief.
https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/pr/date/2025/html/ecb.pr2501...
I didn't even know who the person on the 200€ bill is until today and I have a suspicion she was chosen by some woke EU bureaucrat. I'm sure Europe had better persons in its history.
If Maria Callas is suitable for currency, why not put Daft Punk on it?
Considering she was a pretty big deal, it’s telling that your reaction to learning about someone important you had no knowledge of is to use bland unsubstantiated accusations to insult the person who made the pick instead of “interesting, I should’ve known, I wonder why I haven’t learned about her in school (or have since forgotten), let me deepen my understanding of who this person was and her relevance”.
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> a person with a fancy title like president
"President" is not a fancy title. It is, in fact, a title specifically chosen to be boring and unglamorous.
For reference, the two previous runs at the top of the page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_banknotes
Since you mentioned English isn't your first language, this use of the "to stick" verb where it's about adhering to something (metaphorically in your case) has a different past participle, "stuck". You wrote "sticked" which makes sense but isn't used for this meaning today. Nobody will misunderstand but it will sound wrong to them, we'd say e.g. "Perhaps if we'd stuck with Zig the game would be finished by now" or "Somebody stuck their chewing gum to the table".
Most of these new designs are monochrome excepting that the European flag is itself blue because that's what colour the flag is. A few of them are more colourful, and I see what you mean about that adding to clutter. For their purpose they're successful because the big reason to use colour is that people with very poor sight (some of whom are legally blind but do retain some ability to determine colour) can tell a red note from a blue one, the small accents in a different colour won't affect that. If your sight is good enough to figure out it's a European flag, you don't need this cue, you can read the large numerals saying "100" nearby to determine it's a €100 note.
Europe is a continent with countries that have literally centuries of enimity and nationalism between them. You cannot put a French building on a banknote.
Bland and inoffensive is what keeps the Union together. Its why Strasbourg exists. Its why there are Dutch translators despite the fact every Dutch member of parliament speeches in English.
Having multiple languages is more of that "differences are fine". The use of Directives rather than Regulations for many purposes allows a country's government to incorporate local differences in how we do things. A Regulation applies everywhere, but the Directive just tells your government to make local law to meet some goal. What we want to achieve is the same in Paris and San Gimignano but how we do it will vary by local culture.
Although the ECB does not today "withdraw" notes in the sense that they cease to be valid for most purposes, it does deliberately destroy old notes and issue new ones with different images to replace them, so the original series must be getting pretty rare by now - not rare enough to be worth serious collectors paying money for it, but your ten year old may never have seen an actual old Euro €500 note even though in principle those still are valid money in the Eurozone.
I'd like the birds front with the other option for the back (public squares or something?)
The selection of people is also quite poor but that's because people are a poor choice: Most notable historical people are very linked to specific countries, often against other countries so picking neutral ones is hard. They also clearly decided to have an equal number of men and women, which makes it even harder. Obviously there aren't enough different banknotes to represent every country, either.
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I miss seeing machines that would bend a 12oz can of soda for 25¢. Those were the days.
I sometimes go to coin-op car washes, it sucks having to punch a fist full of quarters into the machine for a quick wash.
Cash is freedom.
I wonder how much of cash transactions are actually legitimate. It’s usually drugs, illicit services or untaxed income. While I don’t like tax just as much as next guy, the blatant dodging of is what me. Sure there are few legit privacy freaks and some genuinely unbanked. But blending those into single pot makes it much worse as they are already associated with fringes of society.
What do you mean? Clearly they did agree, which is why we have those design proposals. Those aren’t random people chosen by the designers, they were in the brief.
https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/pr/date/2025/html/ecb.pr2501...
I want some birds too!
I found that much nicer than constantly clicking to show the reverse sides, but to each their own!
I have zero reason to complain honestly. It's never impacted me negatively at all... but aestetically it feels weird when mixed together with other bills.
If you're sorting money, you'll already know which ones are 10$ because they're that colour of purple... but the number won't be facing the right way. If you're making an ATM UI that lets people pick what mix of bills to withdrawl, RBC chose to show pictures of the bills for some reason, featuring the old horizontal 10$ bill (which it doesn't dispense) because clearly the actual 10$ bill wouldn't fit in the UI. [1] (I didn't expect this to be illustrated by a random youtube video, but it turns out the internet has everything.)
Is that a problem? No. Is it juuust weird enough that family from overseas visting me will mention how weird it is every single time they use an ATM? Yes.
If the euro switched to vertical all at once maybe that wouldn't be as weird, but the old horizontal bills are going to be circulating for a long time.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_ten-dollar_note
[1] https://youtu.be/sRxo_L9ODwo?si=pihBzi4XTaLoXngF&t=47 (Warning, you have better things to do with your time than watch the slowest person ever withdraw two 10$ bills)
Every redesign introduces new (secret) watermarks, patterns that are hard to copy, so it's also a "tech" update. Eventually more and more of the details become public. By now the current banknotes are too well known and I guess the counterfeits are getting too close.
But if I wanted to create counterfeit euro bank notes I could just go with the old ones, no?
Anyway, I think creating new designs just for fun is a good enough reason for me to create new notes.
Maybe it is also just fun...
PS you can even vote for them! https://surveys.ecb.europa.eu/10b/neweuro/
An average lifetime of a banknote is 1-2 years for smaller amounts, 2-4 years for bigger ones. It is estimated that 15-25% of all banknotes are replaced every year. From about 30 billion individual banknotes in circulation that makes 4.5B to 7.5B each year.
So why not introduce new designs (and new protections?)
May I propose 6 shades of off-white adorned with geometric shapes. €5 gets dots, €10 lines, €20 triangles and so on. €100 may have pentagrams instead of pentagons to keep Twitter on its toes.
And that’s only the finalist 10; I’d genuinely love to see the whole submission set.
It's also unfortunate that the nice peaceful bird motif was paired with the ugly modern buildings on the other side.
I don't want to open old wounds but Mozart's nationality is debated and warrants its own long Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozart%27s_nationality
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Daft Punk honestly sounds cool, but we probably shouldn't be putting any living personalities on there. Feels kinda weird.
Weird and ill-advised. Living people who appear on bank notes tend to be monarchs and dictators. Imagine having someone on the euro notes that suddenly becomes overtly anti-EU. Not a good call to promote someone who’s against you.
Remember when Star Trek mentioned Musk? That did not age well.
https://www.cbr.com/star-trek-discovery-elon-musk-joke-star-...
Faces are a terrible idea for a common currency shared by 21 countries.
You have to pick one writer, good that the English left for good so Shakespeare's out, but how do the French feel about Cervantes vs. Victor Hugo?
The Poles complaining that they didn't get enough recognition because Marie Curie's maiden name isn't given enough prominence should tell you all there is to know about this being a good idea.
I think you just made J.S. Bach roll over in his grave.
And don't forget: Brahms, Handel, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Richard Strauss, Wagner.
The competition is not so one-sided.
So al will be watered down to abstract art or animals in the end, so that the suggestion with the least amount of friction gets accepted.
Like all decision in democracy, it is not about finding the best solution, it's about the solution with the least nr of votes against it. That is why democracy never works in the long term, because it is a long, drawn out, trip to the bottom.
Working democracies are the countries with most livable places on Earth..this includes many countries in Europe.
Putting 6 people of 27 member states is just asking for trouble and lacks representation.
(I still prefer the current approach of using non-existing bridgets as a motif.)
On the other side: most classic composers are from times when there was no Germany. E.g. J. S. Bach is from Sachsen-Eisenach :-)
Europe used to be much more of a mess than today's neatly drawn nation states, retroactively assigning origin is a silly endeavour.
(Edited "Germany" to German - "Germany" was an interesting typo and not entirely wrong: He said "One people, one empire, one leader!")