The Journal of Cultural Management and Cultural Policy offers international perspectives on a wide range of issues in cultural management and cultural policy research and practice. Cultural participation has been a central topic in cultural policy discourse as well as in the theory and real-life practice of cultural management for over 50 years now. But what do we mean by cultural participation? Who is the driving force behind participation? How can we measure whether the goals of cultural participation have been achieved? The discourse conducted in the 1970s under the claim 'culture for all' has (again) gained momentum in recent years with regard to the distribution of power, structural exclusions and the creation of new or different access points. The contributors paint a differentiated picture of cultural participation, also considering diversity, accessibility and inclusion.