UK’s best architecture honored at 2026 RIBA National Awards

The Royal Institute of British Architects has unveiled the winners of the RIBA National Awards 2026. For this edition, 32 projects were chosen to “recognise the best of UK architecture and provide insight into the country's design and social trends.”

“This year’s winners, while practicing in increasingly challenging times, illustrate how architects working with and for ambitious and enlightened clients can continue to create places and spaces of quality and value,” RIBA Awards Group Chair Neil Gillespie said about the projects. “Across a spectrum of scales, functions and locations, through a diversity of approach from the repair and re-use of existing buildings to new build, these architects and their design teams have placed people and place at the heart of their work.”

The shortlist for the RIBA Stirling Prize, described as celebrating the UK’s best new building, will be chosen from the 32 National Award winners later this month. In the meantime, the RIBA National Awards 2026 winners are as follows:

• A house at Fairmead, High Beach, Epping Forest by Sergison Bates architects (Essex) 
• Arding & Hobbs by Stiff+Trevillion (London) 
• BEAM by Bennetts Associates  (Hertford) 
• Bristol Beacon by Levitt Bernstein  (Bristol)

• Canada Water Plot K1 by Morris+Company with White Ink  (London) 
• Harold Moody Health Centre by Morris+Company (London) 
• Heritage Quad: York Minster Centre of Excellence by Tonkin Liu Architects  (York) 
• Highbury House and Studio by Maich Swift Architects (London)

• Iorram by Baillie Baillie Architects (Plockton) 
• Kepax Footbridge by Moxon Architects and Jacobs (Engineering) (Worcester) 
• Lion Green Road by Mary Duggan Architects (Design) with RUFF Architects (Delivery) (London) 
• Norton Folgate by Allford Hall Monaghan Morris, Stanton Williams by Morris + Co, DSDHA and East (London)

• Paddington Square by Renzo Piano Building Workshop (Paris) in collaboration with Adamson Associates (London)
• Pantybara by Rural Office (Carmarthenshire) 
• Pembroke by Mill Lane, Haworth Tompkins (Cambridge) 
• Plant by Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios with Grant Associates by Twelve Architects and Studio Knight Stokoe  (Basingstoke)

• Plashet Road by Newham, Levitt Bernstein (London) 
• Rammed Earth House by Tuckey Design Studio (Wiltshire) 
• River Wing by Clare College, Cambridge, Witherford Watson Mann Architects (Cambridge) 
• Sadler's Wells East by O'Donnell + Tuomey (London)

• Smart's Place by David Kohn Architects (London) 
• Space House by Squire and Partners, Atelier Ten, Pell Frischmann by Donald Insall Associates, Gustafson Porter + Bowman, Gardiner and Theobald and BAM (London) 
• Technology Hub: York Minster Centre of Excellence by Tonkin Liu Architects (York) 
• The Apple House by Okra  (Hertfordshire)

• The Brentford Project - Phase 1 by Allford Hall Monaghan Morris, Howells and Maccreanor Lavington (London) 
• The Featherstone Building by Morris+Company (London) 
• The Richard Cairns Building, Brighton College by KRFT Architecture studio & Nicholas Hare Architects (Brighton) 
• The Tannery by Coffey Architects (London)

• Tollymore by McGonigle McGrath (County Down) 
• UCL East by Marshgate, Stanton Williams (London)
• UCL One Pool Street by Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands (London) 
• Urban Nature Project by Natural History Museum, Feilden Fowles (London)