HTA claims top prize at Architect of the Year Awards 2026

The winners of the Architect of the Year Awards 2026 were announced tonight at a ceremony held next to St Paul’s Cathedral in London, where 19 practices and individuals shared 21 awards celebrating the best in UK architecture.

HTA received the top honour, the Gold Award, selected from the winners of the other categories.

The practice also won Housing Architect of the Year and Regenerative Design Architect of the Year, confirming its continuing influence across the sector.

The Lifetime Achievement Award went to Alan Stanton and Paul Williams, recognising their long-standing partnership and ongoing contribution to British architecture.

The Young Architect of the Year Award was presented to Unknown Works, highlighting the practice’s ambitious and innovative approach, and the impressive range of projects in its submission.

The winning practices included RCKa, which won the Digital Design Innovation and Optimisation Award and Industry/Manufacturing Partner of the Year in conjunction with Rollalong.

Stiff + Trevillion took Office Architect of the Year, while Haworth Tompkins received Public Building Architect of the Year. FaulknerBrowns was named Retail and Leisure Architect of the Year and Publica took the Public Realm and Placemaking Architect of the Year title.

The awards took place at Convene Sancroft on Paternoster Square and were hosted by TV and radio personality Colin Murray, with judging chaired by Ben Flatman, Building Design’s contributing editor, and Thomas Lane, group technical editor. They said the awards reflected “the creativity and resilience of the architectural profession”. 

In its second year, the UK Design Capital of the Year award, recognising civic leadership and design ambition at city scale was handed to Bradford. The Yorkshire city was named the winner, selected from a shortlist that included York, Cardiff and Plymouth.

Judges praised Bradford’s “strategic ambition”, saying it “took what was best conceptually from the original 2003 Alsop masterplan and turned it into something more grounded, simple and elegant with architecture appropriate to the context”. 

The Architect of the Year Awards, organised by Building Design, are the only architectural awards in the UK that recognise achievement across a body of work rather than a single project.