Within recent decades, climate change has been considered as one of the most ‘wicked’ environmental and social problems in the world. To address this global issue, climate change experimentation (such as the utilisation of alternative fuels or the congestion charge) and experimental governance has emerged as new approaches for climate actions and city governance.

While city network is a form of experimental governance and gaining influence in supporting climate experiments, little is known regarding the role of city networks during the design, implementation and beyond experimentation. In this circumstance, this paper has reviewed relevant literature and developed a conceptual framework to explore the complexity of climate experiments and the importance of city networks in transforming experiments’ outputs to achieve larger climate change mitigation and adaptation outcomes.

Each component of the framework has been described, exemplified and illustrated where feasible. While this conceptual framework is neither complete nor a fixed formula for success, it provides a good starting point to understand climate experiments and critical conditions/aspects to transform outputs to long-term climate change mitigation outcomes.