The Kingspan MICROHOME 2026 invites architects and designers to pause and reconsider what is truly essential. In a world of constant expansion — of cities, technologies, and ambitions — this competition asks a simple question: Can less be more?

Buildner’s Unbuilt Award 2026, celebrating its third edition, honors the boundless creativity and visionary spirit of architecture. The competition shines a spotlight on the significance of unrealized designs, celebrating bold ideas and imaginative visions that, even without being built, capture the essence of innovation and exploration. It offers a global stage for architects and designers to showcase their most daring concepts, challenge conventional thinking, and inspire the future of the built environment.

The UIA World Congress of Architects 2026 Barcelona (UIA2026BCN) launches the UIA International Emerging Workshop, the Congress's special format designed for students and young practitioners to engage in a real-time laboratory led by twelve recognised emerging architectural practices.

Calling all architects, urbanists, engineers, artists, and makers to design dignified, affordable, and aspirational inclusionary housing in Cape Town. This competition invites you to reimagine four underutilized public sites, currently government parking lots, as vibrant places to live. You will be challenged to integrate affordability and location, respond to spatial inequality, and develop real-world solutions that could shape Cape Town’s housing future. This is your opportunity to shape the city, reclaim public land, and design homes that bring people closer to opportunity, dignity, and belonging.

Architecture at Zero is a design competition for decarbonization, equity, and resilience, open to students and professionals worldwide. It serves to engage the fields of architecture, design, engineering and planning in the pursuit of sustainable design.

Introduction

MAUNSELL FORTS : Future Living on Water, UNITED KINGDOM

For over half a century, the American suburban home has been more than just a building—it has been a cultural symbol, a promise, and at times a problem. Once imagined as the embodiment of comfort and stability, it now often represents excess, isolation, and environmental strain. How can this archetype be redefined for a century marked by climate urgency, economic pressure, and shifting social values? What does the "American home" mean today, and what should it mean tomorrow?

A HOUSE FOR ENRIC MIRALLES

The sauna has always been more than a room of heat. It is a place of stillness, where the body slows, the breath deepens, and the mind begins to loosen. Architecture has the power to enrich this ritual — to frame silence, to choreograph the movement between warmth and air, to turn a simple act of sweating into a profound experience of presence. But what else belongs in this rhythm? How might architecture extend the ritual of renewal beyond the sauna itself?

The Architect's Chair Competition offers architects and designers an exciting opportunity to showcase their creativity by designing a signature chair that embodies their unique architectural vision. Inspired by the tradition of renowned architects creating custom furniture as an extension of their work, this competition challenges participants to distill their design philosophy into a single, iconic piece.

Every place carries a story — not just of its past, but of its present values and future possibilities. Architecture can give form to those stories, offering a way to express culture, ideas, and identity without relying on words. A pavilion, in its simplicity and scale, is an ideal format for this kind of expression. It invites reflection, exploration, and dialogue. It is not about size or permanence, but about clarity of thought and the power of a spatial idea.

Volume Zero invites each one of you to participate in the 28th edition of our architectural competitions and the 6th edition of Tiny House Architecture Competition. This year's Tiny House aims to celebrate individuality, reimagine sustainability and to exalt simple, innovative yet resourceful living. The Tiny House Movement is also a platform that not only explores the avenues of 'mobile' or 'Off the Grid' Living spaces but also the freedom and independence they would offer. Come be a part of this movement; join a new wave of habitat designers! - https://bit.ly/4nQ8Kag

Future Climate Future Home Design Competition - AUDRC

A "CATHEDRAL OF SOCIALISM"

The stair is one of the most elemental and enduring components of architecture. It is a structure in motion—a connector of levels, a sculptural form, a spatial sequence, and a symbol of ascent, descent, and transition. It guides the body and engages the mind. It is at once practical and poetic.

Light is one of the most important factors when designing homes, and the use of natural light is vital in creating a space that feels both comfortable, inviting and practical. It could be said that lighting is a form of language that architects can use to communicate emotions in the spaces and structures they design.

THE 6TH ORDER

Choose a site–used, abandoned, or forgotten–anywhere in the world, and give it a new purpose!

This year there are 100 years since Rudolf Steiner died. His relevance, for us, didn't diminish. He was a brilliant non-architect who built better than many architects. How to explain it ?

This year there are 100 years since Robert Rauschenberg was born. Should we celebrate the centennials of "avant-garde" artists ? Even more so, of a Neo-Dadaist artist ? Isn't such a celebration a little too bourgeois ?

The House of No Waste Competition (HØW) calls upon aspiring young architects, landscape architects, building and structural engineers, planners, builders, material and environmental scientists, product designers, and built environment professionals to engage in a global competition that tackles pressing issues of the circular economy and waste management in the built environment. The competition is organised by the United Nations University-FLORES, to mark the 50th anniversary of the UNU. Its Institute for Integrated Management of Material Fluxes and Resources (UNU-FLORES) is marking the anniversary with the launch of the HØW initiative, of which the competition is a central element.

Premise
With rising sea levels and intensifying climate events, coastal populations worldwide face unprecedented displacement, creating a new generation of climate migrants. Traditional land-based refugee solutions are often temporary, resource-intensive, and fail to provide long-term dignity or stability. This competition challenges architects and designers to radically rethink humanitarian architecture by proposing a new paradigm: a buoyant, self-reliant community. The Floating Refugee Village is envisioned not as a temporary camp, but as a permanent, adaptable, and thriving habitat that harmonizes with its aquatic environment, offering a resilient future for those displaced by our changing planet.

On 10 July, the Estonian Centre for Architecture announced the international curatorial competition to find a leading curatorial team for the eighth edition of the Tallinn Architecture Biennale TAB 2026. Founded in 2011, the Tallinn Architecture Biennale is Estonia`s foremost international festival dedicated to architecture and built environment with the opening week of the biennale taking place from 9th to 13th September 2026.