Winter Stations 2026

Winter Stations is an international design competition held annually in Toronto, Canada. Since 2015, we’ve invited artists, architects, designers, and students to reimagine lifeguard stations as interactive public art installations, transforming city beaches into an open-air exhibition each winter.

The winds and snow, the vastness of Lake Ontario, and the shoreline against Toronto’s skyline have captured imaginations worldwide to explore new visions of art in public space. The lifeguard stands (dormant in winter) serve as visual anchor points for each installation. Every year, the exhibition draws thousands of visitors, bringing creativity, community, and colour to the city’s Woodbine and Kew beaches in the coldest months.

Winter Stations is a competition open to everyone, everywhere, with no fee to enter. Winning proposals are selected by a blind jury of Toronto’s leading voices in art, design, architecture, and urbanism, and built for a six-week exhibition on the waterfront.

As a not-for-profit organization, the number of Stations we can produce each year is always funding dependent. As in previous years, we aim to Winter Stations to build 4-6 winning proposals.

2026 Theme: Mirage

A mirage is a shimmer at the edge of reality, appearing real only to dissolve when approached. The present moment feels much the same, bent and distorted by the rise of digital silos and artificial intelligence, where the truth we seek is always shifting.

A promise and a trick, desire and deception, a mirage is a vision of what we long for most in a state of absence—water in a desert, fire in the cold. What longings define our time, and in what forms do they take?

For Winter Stations 2026, artists, designers, and architects are invited to tickle the boundary between what is seen and what is real. The Stations should transform the shoreline into a place where illusion becomes architecture, offering glimpses of uncanny possibilities. Participants might also consider what imaginative public infrastructures could prompt people to set aside their devices and gather in shared reality.

Full competition and submission details can be found HERE.