RIBA announces best British buildings for 2026

The Royal Institute of British Architects has announced 32 winners of the National Awards 2026, with the majority located in London.

Featured among the 32 winners announced by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) are a rammed-earth house, a London university campus and a cottage in the Scottish Highlands.

The annual RIBA National Awards was established in 1966 and aims to celebrate the UK’s best architecture projects, and give insight into the country’s architectural design and social trends.

This year’s winning projects highlight conservation and retrofit projects, alongside arts and cultural spaces, and contemporary housing developments.

“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,” said RIBA Awards group chair Neil Gillespie.

“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.”

Most of the winning projects are in England, with the majority located in London.

A new-build cottage by Baillie Baillie Architects in Plockton is the only project located in Scotland. A farmstead-turned-family home in Wales and riverside home in Northern Ireland also feature on the list.

Among the London-based projects is the transformation of Paddington Square led by Renzo Piano Building Workshop, a new dance theatre for Sadler’s Wells by O’Donnell + Tuomey and an expansive university building for UCL by Stanton Williams.

Elsewhere in England, a rammed earth house by Tuckey Design Studio in Wiltshire was named a winner, alongside an education and wellbeing hub by Okra set within an orchard in Hertfordshire.

Two contemporary additions to the York Minster cathedral in Yorkshire completed by Tonkin Liu also made the list.

The winners of the RIBA National Awards are eligible to be considered for the shortlist of the prestigious Stirling Prize, which will be announced on 16 July.

Last year, the Stirling Prize was awarded to a “hopeful and imaginative” social housing complex in London, and in 2024 London’s Elizabeth Line.

The full list of RIBA National Awards winners is below:

East
› A House at Fairmead, High Beach, Epping Forest by Sergison Bates Architects
› BEAM by Bennetts Associates
› Pembroke by Mill Lane, by Haworth Tompkins
› River Wing by Clare College, Cambridge, by Witherford Watson Mann Architects
› The Apple House by Okra

London
› Arding & Hobbs by Stiff+Trevillion
› Canada Water Plot K1 by Morris+Company with White Ink
› Harold Moody Health Centre by Morris+Company
› Highbury House & Studio by Maich Swift Architects
› Lion Green Road by Mary Duggan Architects with RUFF Architects
› Norton Folgate by Allford Hall Monaghan Morris, Stanton Williams by Morris + Co, DSDHA and East
› Paddington Square by Renzo Piano Building Workshop in collaboration with Adamson Associates
› Plashet Road by Levitt Bernstein
› Sadler’s Wells East by O’Donnell + Tuomey
› Smart’s Place by David Kohn Architects
› Space House by Squire & Partners, Atelier Ten, Pell Frischmann by Donald Insall Associates, Gustafson Porter + Bowman, Gardiner & Theobald and BAM
› The Brentford Project – Phase 1 by Allford Hall Monaghan Morris, Howells and Maccreanor Lavington
› The Featherstone Building by Morris+Company
› The Tannery by Coffey Architects
› UCL East by Marshgate by Stanton Williams
› UCL One Pool Street by Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands
› Urban Nature Project by Natural History Museum by Feilden Fowles

Northern Ireland
› Tollymore by McGonigle McGrath

Scotland
› Iorram by Baillie Baillie Architects

Wales
› Pantybara by Rural Office

South
› Plant by Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios with Grant Associates by Twelve Architects and Studio Knight Stokoe

South East
› The Richard Cairns Building, Brighton College by KRFT Architecture studio & Nicholas Hare Architects

South West
› Bristol Beacon by Levitt Bernstein
› Rammed Earth House by Tuckey Design Studio

West Midlands
› Kepax Footbridge by Moxon Architects and Jacobs

Yorkshire
› Heritage Quad: York Minster Centre of Excellence by Tonkin Liu Architects
› Technology Hub: York Minster Centre of Excellence by Tonkin Liu Architects

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