2026 European Public Space Prize

The European Prize for Urban Public Space is a biennial competition organised with the aim of recognising and making known all kinds of works to create, recover and improve public spaces in European cities.

BACKGROUND

The European Prize for Urban Public Space is an initiative of the CCCB (Center for Contemporary Culture of Barcelona ) which, since 2000 and on a biennial basis, recognizes the best interventions in the creation and transformation of public spaces in European cities.

The Prize has an honorary nature, is awarded jointly to the authors and promoters of works carried out in the 46 countries that make up the Council of Europe and gives the maximum dissemination to the selected works through the network of European collaborators and partners.

The Prize offers a unique perspective on European cities and aims to become a benchmark for discussing the challenges of urban public space, in collaboration with experts and architectural, academic and cultural institutions from all over the European territory.

Throughout its 26-year history and 12 editions, 2,800 works have been submitted to the Prize. A selection of the best 413 works from all editions is published on the project's website (www.publicspace.org). (www.publicspace.org).

PUBLIC AND URBAN SPACE

The European Prize for Urban Public Space centres on European cities, which despite their diversity, share some common historical elements, such as a human scale, a compact design and a mixed-use character. In this idea of the European city, public space plays a key role in collective encounters, imbued with political, economic and social values that are inseparable from a physical design that admits them and makes them possible. In this way, the Prize, as an observatory for the quality of public spaces, also becomes a project that generates attention and reflection on the quality of life and the democratic quality in European cities.

Cities in Europe are facing challenges and transformations that affect urban areas around the world. From this perspective, the Prize presents a specific look that draws on our most immediate reality to a debate on the future of cities that is global, and that, in a progressively urbanized world, is gaining more and more importance every day. Reflecting on European cities means looking at concrete solutions that are being implemented today in Europe to respond to the global challenges of the urban future.

Today, the climate emergency has transformed global agendas; it has added more challenges to the current social problems facing our cities, and it has become a central vector for urban thinking. Issues such as mobility, inequalities, migration, and climate emergencies present challenges for which there are still no clear answers and which have a direct impact on urban design and public space, due to their clearly social or public function. Additionally, the impact of technological transformations also intervenes directly in our urban realities.

The Prize aims to reflect the centrality of these issues and to become an observatory for best practices that will allow us to imagine possible solutions for a future in which cities will play a key role in defining how society evolves. It is a unique prize in Europe, as it promotes spaces that is both public (open and universally accessible) and urban.

OBJECT OF THE PRIZE: 13TH EDITION (2026)

The CCCB is launching a new call for the European Prize for Urban Public Space with the aim of acknowledging interventions in public space carried out between 2021 and 2025.

The competition is open, free, and will take place in two rounds.

In the first round, the jury will select 25 works to be published on the archive of the Prize website and in the 2026 Prize catalogue. From the 25 works selected in the first round, 5 finalists will move on to the second round. In the second round of the competition, the jury will evaluate the finalist works. Finally, the jury will designate a winner..

ADVISORY COMMITTEE

The Award has an institutional network around Europe that aims to consolidate the project throughout the territory and to guarantee recognition of the most outstanding interventions in public space

The institutions that form part of the Advisory Committee for this year’s edition are:
Arc en rêve (Bordeaux), ArkDes (Stockholm), Architekturzentrum Wien (Vienna),  Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine (Paris), CIVA (Brussels), Deutsches Architekturmuseum (Frankfurt), Eesti Arhitektuurimuuseum (Tallinn),   Kortárs Építészeti Központ (Budapest),  Muzej za Arhitekturo in Oblikovanje(Ljubljana) and The Architecture Foundation (London).

JURY

The Jury for this year’s Prize consists of eminent professionals from all over Europe, namely:

President: Eva Prats, architect (Barcelona)

Members:
Angelika Fitz, architect, director of the Architekturzentrum Wien
Monika Konrad, architect and urban planner
Inês Lobo, architect and curator
Bas Smets, architect and landscape designer
Philip Ursprung, architectural historian

Secretary: Lluís Ortega, architect (Barcelona)

The Jury will consider only those interventions that comply with the terms and conditions established herein and can also declare the award null and void. The secretary will assist the Jury and will take the minutes for the sessions during the voting proceedings.

EVALUATION CRITERIA

The Jury will evaluate proposals that best respond to the emerging challenges of public space and will take into account the importance of each urban transformation in its specific context and with its impact on community life, from the cultural, social, and environmental perspectives.

The following criteria will be applied:

• Architectural and urban planning quality of the built area.
• Public ownership and/or clearly public vocation of the project.
• Multidisciplinary nature of the designing/promoting team including, in addition to architectural and urbanistic aspects, inclusion of various kinds of expertise and sensibilities with regard to public space.
• Explicitly urban nature of the intervention. The dimension of the work is not a factor that should be taken into account per se but projects located in large or medium-sized cities and towns or significant urban centres will be evaluated.
• Appropriateness in terms of civic functions required of urban space, both those pertaining to citizens’ use of the space and those related to the collective imaginary and preservation of historic memory.
• Innovative responses to climate conditions and contribution of environmental improvements with regard to mobility and sustainable use of resources.
• Capacity of works for reducing segregation of uses and the social inequalities that are present in the urban setting, and elimination of physical and/or symbolic barriers.
• Impact of works on city limits and their ability to foster harmonious relationships with peripheral areas and the most immediate natural environments.
• Capacity of works to generate debates on the limits of public space with regard to both formal and functional aspects of the relationship with adjoining spaces.
• Ability to strengthen urban resilience to climate change.
• Ability to restore and enhance the latent qualities of a place.

CONDITIONS FOR PARTICIPATION

Eligible to present for the Prize are works of creation, recovery, and improvement of public space, completed between 1 January 2021 and 31 December 2025 (both dates inclusive), and located in the geographical area of the Council of Europe at the time of submission, and which have not been submitted to previous editions of the Prize.

The list of countries that make up the Council of Europe can be consulted at this link: https:// www.coe.int/ca/web/about-us/our-member-states

Since some urban planning interventions have very long periods of implementation, a work may still be eligible for submission even if it has not been entirely finalized during the period indicated in cases where enough phases of the work have been completed to enable evaluation of the urban effects of the project in its totality.

Works can be presented for the Prize by authors or promoters with the clear understanding that both parties consent to the registration process and inclusion of their respective personal data.

REGISTRATION

The registration of works for both categories opens on 10 December 2026 at 12 noon (GMT +1) and closes on 26 February 2026 at 12 noon (GMT +1). Registration is to be completed exclusively online by means of an electronic form that is available on the Prize website: www.publicspace.org.

Once the registration form for a work has been completed and the registration code obtained, participants can modify or add to the form as often as they wish until the registration period ends. Participants who present more than one project must complete the online registration process for each one of the works.

Detailed instructions for registration will be found in the guide that will be available at the Prize website on 11 November 2025.

Submitting an entry for the Prize implies the participant’s acceptance of all the terms and conditions.

DOCUMENTATION

When registering, candidates for the Prize must supply the following information:

• Title of the work, in the original language and its translation into English.
• Technical file of the work.
• Credits: authors, promoters, collaborators
• A minimum of 10 and a maximum of 20 digital images (photographs, drawings and plans), in .jpg or .png format with a minimum length of 2,000 pixels on its long side and a maximum weight of 3MB per image, and the photographs' credits.
• A descriptive report in English divided into four chapters: previous state of work, aim of the intervention, description of the intervention and final evaluation. Each chapter should be between 800 and 1200 characters long (with spaces).

SELECTION PROCESS

1st round: selected works and finalists
july 2026

• Selected works: The Jury will evaluate all the entries registered and select the 25 most highly rated projects..
• Finalist works: The Jury will select 5 finalists from among the 25 selected works and these finalists will continue to the second round.

2nd round: Prize-winning works
october 2026

Only the five finalists selected in the first round will participate in this phase.

The Jury reserves the right to ask each finalist for additional information in order properly evaluate the works and select the winners.

The finalists will present their works to the Jury at a public event at the CCCB. The following day, the Jury will meet to consider the finalist works and vote on the winning work.

The results of the vote and the prize winner will be announced during the awards ceremony

The finalist works will be included in a publication on the 2026 Prize with contributions from the winner and the Jury members.

CALENDAR

• 10 December 2025 : Start of submissions at 12:00 (GMT+1)
• 26 February 2026 : Closing of submissions at 12:00 (GMT+1)
• 2-3 July 2026 : Jury meeting to select the shortlisted and finalist works
• 9 July 2026 : Announcement of the 25 shortlisted works
• 9 September 2026 : Announcement of the 5 finalist works
• 15-18 October 2026 : Presentation of the 5 finalist works at a public event at the CCCB. Final jury deliberation and award ceremony

INFORMATIONS & CONSULTATIONS

Read all the information on the official website.

For further information, please contact publicspace@cccb.org of the Center of Contemporary Culture of Barcelona (CCCB), at Montalegre, 5 (08001) Barcelona.