Inclusive choral practices have become increasingly common and visible as socio-musical spaces that promote participation, accessibility, and cultural dialogue. While research from the Global South and Australia has produced valuable frameworks for understanding socially transformative musical initiatives, the European context remains comparatively underexplored. This lack of research is striking given the long history and cultural significance of choral singing across the continent, where choirs have provided low-threshold entry points to music-making for people of diverse backgrounds.This paper presents preliminary insights from an ongoing postdoctoral research project that investigates inclusive choirs in Europe, with a focus on their role as drivers of social sustainability and educational transformation. The presentation draws on the project’s initial phase: a systematic meta-analysis of existing literature and reported practices of inclusive choir-making in European contexts. The meta-analysis synthesises academic studies, practitioner accounts, and project reports to explore dimensions such as institutional frameworks, repertoires, accessibility strategies, leadership models, pedagogical approaches, and modes of public engagement, and to identify both innovative practices and persistent barriers to inclusion.Preliminary results highlight a growing body of choirs experimenting with multimodal and multisensory practices, including polyphonic use of sign language, body percussion, and tactile sound technologies. Many of these ensembles adopt participatory leadership models that challenge traditional hierarchies and seek to redistribute musical authority, thus lowering barriers to entry and creating more equitable spaces of music-making. At the same time, choirs are increasingly connecting their practices to broader societal agendas, such as migration, cultural diversity, intergenerational dialogue, and ecological responsibility. Moreover, the analysis reveals important challenges, including limited institutional support, fragmented funding structures, and uneven recognition within mainstream music education and cultural policy. Professional training opportunities for choir leaders rarely address inclusivity and sustainability as defining choir leaders’ core competencies, hence creating a gap between emerging practices and established educational frameworks. Despite their accessibility and transformative potential, inclusive choirs are frequently marginalised as “non-professional” initiatives, which restricts their capacity to influence wider music education and policy discourses.By presenting these preliminary insights, the paper positions inclusive choirs as living laboratories for democratic participation, ethical reflexivity, and sustainability in music education. It invites the ISME community to consider how inclusive choral practices might inform broader pedagogical and policy debates, connecting traditional local community initiatives to pan-European and global frameworks for social transformation.This paper is part of the project [name omitted], funded by Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions [project number omitted].