The study examines municipal educational and cultural services as well as the changing work tasks of local educational and cultural leaders from the perspective of networks. The framework of the study is the so-called “future municipality,” which refers to municipalities after the implementation of the national health and social services reform. Local educational and cultural leaders as well as other experts were interviewed in order to understand the effects that the reform has on municipal educational and cultural services, on the one hand, and on networks in which educational and cultural leaders will operate in the future municipality, on the other. The reform requires that health and social services become the responsibility of regions, and educational and cultural services consequently become the largest remaining task for municipalities. The informants suggested that the reform causes network-based operations to continue to grow as municipalities’ resources decrease and as their knowhow becomes scattered. The analysis also suggests that network operations as well as their very nature are changing. Professional and operational networks are becoming increasingly important, while traditional hierarchical and formal networks are losing their relative importance. From the theoretical standpoint, the informants’ responses reflected collaboration – the deepest form of network relationship. However, the current practices that the informants described exemplify cooperation and coordination, that is, more traditional forms of network relationship.