The status of awarding honorary citizenship (first rather honorary township) was introduced in the middle of the 19th century. It has not been discovered, when this status was introduced in Šumperk – it was certainly already in place in 1850. It is worth noticing that this award was gained by T. G. Masaryk between the wars and none of the prominent persons of the Nazi Germany received any. After WWII, many honorary citizenships were awarded, in some cases even without deeper knowledge of the basic biographical data, at other times on the basis of the endless euphoria of the changes of those times. In 1948, honorary citizenship was awarded to P. Zenkl, Fr. Hála and A. Procházka. Afterwards, this award has not been used for more than 40 years and it was replaced by other prices, e.g. Award of Šumperk (Cena Šumperku).

This tradition was renewed only after 1989. The first honorary citizen of Šumperka (in memoriam) became Jan Zajíc in 1992. The municipal representatives decided to cancel the honorary citizenships of K. Gottwald and V. Nosek on 22th October 1998. Nowadays, the honorary citizens of Šumperk are these 52 personalities.