The world’s best new architecture and interiors have been named as the 2026 World Architecture Festival (WAF) shortlist, celebrating outstanding completed buildings, interiors and landscape designs from around the globe alongside visionary future architectural projects.
This year’s shortlist features 416 projects across categories ranging from Creative Re-Use, Housing and Education to Hotel, Health, Sports and Culture.
Selected from more than 630 entries, the 2026 shortlist celebrates a wide range of groundbreaking architectural and design achievements from established firms and emerging studios alike.
The list brings together entries from some of the world’s leading practices, including Foster + Partners, Snøhetta, Herzog & de Meuron, Coldefy, Grimshaw, Sanjay Puri Architects, Perkins&Will and Woods Bagot, alongside an exciting new generation of emerging studios.
Within the shortlist, practices from the USA are the most highly represented, with China, India, the UK and Australia also placing in the top 10.
This year’s 205 shortlisted completed buildings span an impressive range of typologies, from an immersive tropical clubhouse in Vietnam to a landmark fish market in Sydney and a 1.2-acre oceanfront park in Florida.
The 48 shortlisted interiors include an off-grid private wildlife sanctuary and guest lodge in South Africa and a design-led rooftop bar in Bangkok, while the 12 shortlisted landscapes feature a clubhouse in Vietnam designed as a living organism and an ecological landmark in the Philippines that showcases the structural material qualities of bamboo.
Among the 151 shortlisted future projects are a climate-responsive home in Mumbai and an ambitious vision for a children’s hospital in Texas.
This year’s judging panel comprises 164 experts representing 37 countries, including Peter Cook, Founder at Peter Cook Studio Crablab, Kai-Uwe Bergmann, Partner at BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group), Olga Bolshanina, Senior Partner at Herzog & de Meuron, and Cazú Zegers, Director and Founder at Cazú Zegers Architecture.
Still to come, the winners of this year’s WAFX Awards, which celebrate architecture that tackles major world issues, will be announced on Monday 20 July on WAF social media channels, with the Special Prizes announcements following on Monday 27 July.
All finalists on the shortlist will present their projects within their categories at WAF 2026, taking place at the Broward County Convention Center in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, from 18 to 20 November.
On the final day, category winners from across all 43 categories will go on to present to the Super Jury, competing for the titles of World Building, Landscape, Future Project and Interior Project of the Year.
The overall winners of this year’s Special Prizes, including WAFX, will also be announced live from the festival.
WAF programme director Paul Finch commented on the strength of this year’s entries, stating: “WAF continues to thrive with more than 630 entries to the Awards programme this year, despite global challenges.
“As ever, the combination of major practices and smaller firms, perhaps entering WAF for the first time, is refreshing, and the shortlisting judges were impressed by the design standards of the selected entries.
“We have also shortlisted designs for a host of special prizes, which will make for a stimulating set of presentations to our international judges in Fort Lauderdale this November.”
Full project details, including image highlights from the shortlist and the complete list of WAF Judges for 2026, are available here.