RIBA International Awards 2026: Best New Global Architecture Shortlisted

The RIBA International Awards 2026 shortlist brings together 52 projects from 18 countries across five continents, celebrating architecture that addresses the defining challenges of our time, from climate change and resource scarcity to social equity and rapid urban growth. Winners will be announced on 11 June 2026.

What Are the RIBA International Awards for Excellence?

The RIBA International Awards for Excellence are widely regarded as among the most rigorously judged architecture awards for buildings outside the UK. Organised by the Royal Institute of British Architects, the biennial awards are open to any qualified architect working on projects anywhere in the world, with the exception of UK-based buildings, which fall under a separate programme.

The awards sit within a broader RIBA programme that culminates in the RIBA International Prize, the pinnacle recognition for a single project that demonstrates visionary, innovative thinking alongside measurable social or environmental impact. Every project that wins an RIBA Award for International Excellence is automatically considered for the International Prize shortlist announced later in the year.

For architects and practices, making the RIBA International Awards 2026 shortlist is itself a mark of distinction, signalling to clients, collaborators, and the broader public that a project has been evaluated against some of the toughest criteria in global architecture.

The 2026 Shortlist: Scale, Diversity, and Ambition

This year’s RIBA International Awards 2026 shortlist is notably broad in its geographic and typological reach. China leads with 15 shortlisted schemes, followed by India with 7, Australia with 5, and Belgium with 4. Projects span cultural institutions, civic infrastructure, housing, educational buildings, places of worship, and industrial facilities, reflecting the awards’ ambition to recognise architecture regardless of programme or scale.

The shortlist includes work from some of the world’s most established practices: Foster + Partners, David Chipperfield Architects, Snøhetta, Hassell, WOHA, and Studio Mumbai all feature alongside boutique and regionally rooted studios that are less familiar to international audiences. That mix is deliberate. The RIBA International Awards for Excellence explicitly seek to reward ambition and quality at every scale, not just headline-making megaprojects from blue-chip offices.

Neil Gillespie, Awards Group Chair and Director at Reiach and Hall, described the selection as a testament to architecture’s social purpose: “These projects show how architects can respond to complex social, cultural, and environmental challenges, from revitalising communities and preserving heritage to pioneering sustainable and technologically innovative solutions. They demonstrate the power of architecture to connect people, strengthen identity, and create inclusive, resilient places for future generations.”

Key Projects on the RIBA International Awards 2026 Shortlist

Several projects on the list stand out for their ambition, their unusual contexts, or the clarity with which they address a specific problem. Here are some of the most compelling entries.

Kunstsilo, Kristiansand, Norway (Mestres Wåge, BAX, Mendoza Partida)

One of the most discussed projects on the shortlist, Kunstsilo transforms a decommissioned grain silo on the Kristiansand waterfront into a major contemporary art museum. Rather than erasing the industrial character of the building, the architects embraced it, retaining the raw concrete silos as the central spatial experience and inserting new programme around them. The result is a cultural landmark that carries the weight of the city’s industrial history while providing world-class gallery spaces for art from the Nordic countries.

Bidi Bidi Performing Arts Centre, Uganda (Hassell)

Located within the Bidi Bidi refugee settlement in northern Uganda, one of the largest in the world, this performing arts centre by Hassell is a rare example of civic architecture serving an acutely underresourced community. The building functions as a cultural anchor, providing space for creative expression, local identity-building, and community programming in a context where infrastructure is almost entirely absent. Its inclusion on the RIBA International Awards 2026 shortlist reflects the jury’s commitment to architecture that serves genuine human need rather than prestige alone.

Rockbund Shanghai, China (David Chipperfield Architects + Arquitectonica)

A large-scale adaptive reuse project on Shanghai’s historic Bund, Rockbund involved the painstaking restoration and contextual expansion of a row of former European colonial-era buildings. David Chipperfield Architects handled the historic structures while Arquitectonica designed new additions, creating a mixed-use cultural district that stitches together a fragmented urban block. The project navigates the tension between preservation and contemporary intervention with considerable skill, and its scale makes it one of the most significant urban conservation efforts to appear on any international architecture award shortlist in recent years.

DY Patil Centre of Excellence, Maharashtra, India (Foster + Partners)

Foster + Partners contributes a university building designed to accommodate 3,000 students in Maharashtra. The project is notable for its climate-responsive design in a challenging thermal environment, and for the way it integrates landscape and outdoor learning spaces into its overall programme. It is one of seven Indian projects on the 2026 shortlist, a record that underscores the country’s growing influence within international architecture discourse.

Kon-Tigo, Guerrero, Mexico (Manuel Cervantes Estudio)

Designed in the aftermath of Hurricane Otis, which devastated Acapulco in 2023, Kon-Tigo is a post-disaster infill housing model developed by Manuel Cervantes Estudio. The project provides compact, dignified housing for displaced families using locally available materials and construction methods that can be replicated by non-specialists. It is a powerful example of architecture as an immediate social and humanitarian tool, and its shortlisting signals the RIBA jury’s interest in work that engages with real-world urgency.

Themes Running Through the 2026 Shortlist

Reading the RIBA International Awards 2026 shortlist as a whole reveals several recurring preoccupations that are shaping global architectural practice right now.

Adaptive reuse is the most consistent thread. Kunstsilo in Norway, Rockbund in Shanghai, Royale Belge in Brussels (Caruso St John Architects with Bovenbouw), and the Taoxichuan Ceramic Culture Industrial Park in Jingdezhen all demonstrate how existing structures, whether industrial, historic, or modernist, can be transformed into relevant contemporary places without the environmental cost of demolition and new build.

Social equity is another defining concern. The Bidi Bidi Performing Arts Centre, the School at Joram in Arunachal Pradesh, the Zebun Nessa Mosque in Bangladesh, and Manuel Cervantes Estudio’s Kon-Tigo all address communities that are underserved by mainstream architecture practice. Their presence on the shortlist alongside large institutional projects by Foster + Partners and David Chipperfield Architects reflects a genuine broadening of what the architecture awards community considers excellent.

Sustainability and material innovation feature in projects ranging from Wood Up’s mass timber construction in Paris to The Plus, BIG’s net-zero furniture factory in Norway for Vestre, and Vietnam’s Urban Farming Office by VTN Architects, which integrates productive landscape directly into a commercial workplace.

You can read more about global trends in sustainable architectural design in illustrarch’s coverage of the RIBA Asia Pacific Awards, which highlighted many similar themes across the region.

The RIBA Award for International Excellence: How Judging Works

Reaching the RIBA International Awards 2026 shortlist requires passing through several rounds of evaluation. Entries are first reviewed by the Awards Group, which includes up to 30 jurors drawn from across the profession. Projects that pass initial review are then visited on site by RIBA Local Ambassadors, architects based in the country where the project is located who provide detailed site reports to the central jury. This on-the-ground assessment is what distinguishes the RIBA International Awards from many competing programmes where judging is conducted at a distance.

The Awards Group then uses these reports, alongside the full submission documentation, to determine which projects receive an architecture award. Winners of the RIBA Award for International Excellence are subsequently considered for the International Prize shortlist, announced in September 2026, with the winner revealed in December 2026.

For a broader understanding of how RIBA structures its professional frameworks, the illustrarch guide to RIBA Work Stages provides useful context on the institute’s approach to architectural process and quality.

Full 2026 RIBA International Awards Shortlist

The complete list of 52 shortlisted projects is as follows, organised alphabetically by project name:

What the 2026 Shortlist Tells Us About Architecture Today

Looking across the full list, the 2026 RIBA International Awards shortlist functions almost as a snapshot of where serious architectural practice is right now. The geographic weight toward China and India reflects the volume of construction happening in those countries and the increasing sophistication of local practices. The strong showing from Australia, Belgium, and Norway reflects well-funded and intellectually engaged architectural cultures where craft and design ambition coexist with demanding environmental requirements.

Perhaps most significantly, the shortlist confirms that the architectural awards community has moved well beyond the era when a shortlist like this would have been dominated by iconic objects designed by a handful of globally famous offices. The 2026 selection includes anonymous village community centres in Inner Mongolia, a small courier station tucked under a Shanghai bridge, and a single-room guesthouse in rural Iran alongside library masterplans by Snøhetta and tech campuses by Foster + Partners. That breadth is a strength.

The RIBA architecture awards have long carried authority precisely because they are genuinely global and genuinely rigorous. The 2026 shortlist maintains that reputation. With winners announced on 11 June 2026, and the International Prize shortlist to follow in September, this year’s cycle promises to be one of the most interesting in recent memory.

For related coverage on prestigious architecture awards and the practices behind them, explore illustrarch’s articles on the top architecture awards globally and the 2026 RIBA Royal Gold Medal awarded to Níall McLaughlin.