The design of effective responses to safeguard cultural landscape values in Europe needs collaborative action among the stakeholders involved. Despite considerable progress triggered by the European Landscape Convention (ELC) and other initiatives to link landscape science, policy and practice, a joint research–action agenda is still lacking. We respond to this challenge by identifying common priority questions for the sustainable management of cultural landscapes in Europe. To this end, we gathered, in a first phase, the most relevant research questions through a Delphi like process with the research community in this field. In a second phase, the questions were prioritized by three stakeholder groups: scientists (Ss), policymakers (PMs) and practitioners (Ps). The importance ranks and the similarity between groups’ priorities were calculated and analyzed. We found that the research question that addressed the issue of how to secure sustainable cultural landscapes where they are not economically profitable was the most important, with high level of agreement among all stakeholders. Alignment among the three groups was generally high; being higher between Ps–Ss and Ps–PMs than between Ss and PMs. Two questions related directly to the empowerment of public and private actors to protect and sustainably manage cultural landscapes ranking among the total top 20. Firstly the topic of what motivates people to become active stewards of the landscape, received high attention from Ss and not much from Ps. Secondly, how can public participation in cultural landscape assessments be fostered, was a question that received a high level of agreement among the three groups. Our exercise can assist the implementation of the ELC by outlining the potential direction of future applied research and by strengthening the ties between the multiple stakeholders involved in the stewardship of European cultural landscapes.
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