The 2026 World Architecture Festival (WAF) shortlist contains this year’s best international architecture and interiors, selected by a judging panel of 164 experts representing 37 countries. Celebrating the most outstanding new completed buildings, interiors, and landscape designs from around the world and visionary future architectural projects, the shortlist sets the stage for the festival’s second event in the USA.
Finalists will present their projects live to an international panel of esteemed judges at WAF 2026, which will take place at the Broward County Convention Center in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., November 18-20. WAF features the world’s largest live-judged architecture awards, complemented by keynote talks, an exhibition, and various fringe events including architecture tours, networking opportunities, and workshops.
The 2026 WAF shortlist features 416 projects across categories ranging from best Creative Re-Use, Housing,, and Education to best Hotel, Health, Sports and Culture. Selected from over 630 entries, this year’s shortlist celebrates incredible groundbreaking architectural and design achievements from world-leading practices including Foster + Partners, Snøhetta, Herzog & de Meuron, Coldefy, Grimshaw, Sanjay Puri Architects, Perkins&Will, and Woods Bagot alongside work from an exciting new generation of emerging studios..
The full WAF shortlist awards can be viewed here.
All finalists on the shortlist will present their projects within their categories during the first two days of the festival. On the final day, category winners from all 43 categories will present to the Super Jury to compete for 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.
“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,” said WAF Program Director Paul Finch. “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.”
About World Architecture Festival (WAF)
The World Architecture Festival (WAF) is where the world architecture community meets to celebrate, learn, exchange, and be inspired. Every year, WAF hosts the world’s biggest live-judged architecture awards program. It celebrates design achievements through presentations by architects to high-profile delegates and international judging panels.
 shortlist contains this year’s best international architecture and interiors, selected by a judging panel of 164 experts representing 37 countries.){kind=link}