The paper examines the territorial distribution of the JESSICA funding support (Joint European Support for Sustainable Investment in City Areas), a financial engineering instrument of EU Cohesion Policy among Polish cities. It addresses an existing gap in the literature and provides an analysis of a spatial distribution of repayable assistance, which is absent in CP studies. The study i) provides a comprehensive overview of the spatial distribution of the JESSICA funding across cities within particular regions, focusing on smaller cities regarded as secondary territorial cohesion cities (ScTCC) that should play an important role in territorialized development policy; (ii) assesses to what extent the JESSICA projects in SCTCC fit in with spatial-functional arrangements laid down in the regional spatial management plans; (iii) determines factors of the attractiveness of ScTCC as the JESSICA beneficiaries. Results confirm that ScTCC have enough capacities to implement revolving instrument projects, outperformed the capital cities in implementing the JESSICA projects, and are important but under-researched and under-represented actors of the urban and cohesion policy.