The winners of the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Awards, one of Europe’s most important recognitions for contemporary architecture, have been announced in Oulu, European Capital of Culture 2026.
The main award went to the Charleroi Palais des Expositions in Belgium, designed by AgwA and architecten jan de vylder inge vinck, while the Emerging Architecture prize was awarded to Temporary Spaces for Slovenian National Theatre Drama by Vidic Grohar Arhitekti.
Selected from 410 nominated works and a shortlist of seven finalists, the winning projects clearly point to a central direction in contemporary practice: working with the existing, transforming the constraints and resources of abandoned or underused spaces into design opportunities.
The Charleroi project intervenes in a large 1950s modernist complex, reconfiguring it without demolition. The volume is opened and hollowed out, becoming a sequence of covered public spaces that redefine the relationship between building and city. More than a new object, it is an act of urban reactivation: through precise interventions, the project creates a continuous, permeable, and accessible landscape capable of reactivating a previously closed infrastructure. The jury praised this “intelligent and precise transformation,” highlighting the project’s ability to work with what already exists while unlocking new spatial and social possibilities without replacement.
In Ljubljana, the emerging category winner turns a temporary condition into an active cultural device, converting an industrial complex into a temporary home for the national theatre. Performance spaces, foyers, and services are inserted into existing structures through light, reversible solutions based on modular elements and reusable materials, forming a flexible system designed to evolve over time. The jury emphasized its ability to turn temporariness into a lasting architectural statement, redefining the relationship between permanence and reuse through precise, low-cost interventions.
The 2026 edition of the EUmies Awards highlights a clear direction in contemporary European practice: an architecture that understands design as a process of transformation, repair, and reappropriation, moving away from spectacle-driven gestures and the logic of star architects.
The announcement took place on April 16, 2026, at Aalto Siilo, an industrial structure designed in 1931 by Alvar Aalto, now a landmark in the city of Oulu. The official award ceremony will be held on May 11–12 at the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion in Barcelona, as part of the EUmies Awards Days, which will include conferences, talks, and an exhibition dedicated to the selected projects.