This year, for the very first time in the program’s history, Architizer Vision Awards winners will be announced live and in-person at RELEASE [AEC]– an industry-wide event concentrated on innovation and development in architecture. The occasion happens on October 20, 2026, at the Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie in Paris, and will range from a morning welcome reception all the method through to a late-evening networking party. As a Vision Awards finalist or winner, you’ll be invited to go to the full day– and if your work stands out, you might be asked to speak as part of the occasion.
The place itself warrants attention for anybody with an architectural education. The Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie sits within Parc de la Villette, the 55-hectare urban park in Paris’ 19th arrondissement whose masterplan– developed by Bernard Tschumi following a prominent 1982 competition– is one of the defining texts of deconstructivist architecture. Tschumi’s proposition, with its grid of red follies, its superimposed systems of points, lines and surfaces, and its intentional rejection of any single arranging story, stays a landmark of late 20th-century design believing studied in architecture schools worldwide.
For a chance to join us in Paris this fall, start your entry today and complete it before the Main Entry Due Date at midnight PT on Might 22, 2026:
Get In the Vision Awards
This is your minute to march from behind the screen and onto the stage! Continue reading for more details on what to anticipate at this interesting occasion.
What RELEASE [AEC] Is (and Why You Want to Be There)
Release [AEC] 2025. Image by Philippe Servent After its inauguration last year, RELEASE [AEC] has actually already established itself as one of the more distinctive events in the AEC calendar. Its facility is straightforward, but its aspiration is not: to offer the market a devoted annual space to reckon truthfully with where innovation is taking the AEC market– not through a basic exhibition, however through substantive conversation.
The format puts that ambition into practice. The day comprises keynote sessions, live presentations from innovators across the AEC landscape, hands-on workshops and extensive networking; it is structured to motivate actual exchange between designers and the business constructing the tools that will specify the next decade of the built environment. The 2025 inaugural edition, kept in Paris, drew an engaged professional audience and set a tone that feels genuinely different from the basic conference circuit.
The vision is articulated in RELEASE [AEC]’s manifesto: as technological innovations quickly improve the AEC sector in genuine time, this kind of gathering is more than essential. That worldview lines up carefully with what the Vision Awards has actually always recognized in its own way– that architecture’s future is being shaped in the studios, screens and minds of the people picturing what it could be. The collaboration, in that sense, is a natural one.
What Being a Finalist or Winner Gets You
The Vision Awards event will follow in the steps of Architizer’s noteworthy industry gatherings, including recent events in New york city, Paris and multiple cities across China. Photos by Alex Bonnemaison (leading right), Zack DeZon (top and bottom left)
For the 2026 Vision Awards, reaching the finalist stage carries a brand-new dimension of meaning. Finalists and winners will be invited to participate in the full RELEASE [AEC] program– a day of keynotes, presentations and conversations at one of Europe’s great institutions of science and culture. Winners will be revealed live, on stage, in a space filled with individuals for whom this work matters most: fellow designers, technologists, visualizers, photographers, filmmakers and the customers and collaborators who commission and champion their work.
Select finalists and winners will also be welcomed to speak as part of the day’s program– an opportunity to put their work and ideas in front of an international audience that is, by meaning, currently interested in the intersection of architecture and development.
Beyond the ceremony itself, the RELEASE [AEC] partnership extends the Vision Awards’ reach into the AEC technology neighborhood in a significant method. This is an audience that understands, maybe better than many, just how much the tools of visualization, conceptual design and architectural interaction shape the buildings that ultimately get developed.
How to Arrive
The place for Release [AEC] this year is the Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie in Paris’ verdant Parc de la Villette
The path is simple: Get in the Vision Awards, make the shortlist and come to Paris.
The 2026 program is open across four classification groups– Architectural Principle, Architectural Making & Drawing, Architectural Photography & Video and Architectural Visionary– with more than 70 honors readily available. Whether you operate at an international firm or independently, whether your medium is computational rendering or hand-drawing, whether you shoot structures or make movies about the people behind them, there is a category for your work.
Entries are accepted from studios, specific professionals, and students worldwide. In each classification, both a Jurors’ Option and an Editors’ Choice Award are available– and entrants can choose in to the Best of the Year Awards for extra recognition throughout the program’s 6 significant imaginative disciplines.
The Main Entry Deadline is on May 22. Meanwhile, the program’s Last Entry Due date closes on June 26th. Winners are revealed in Paris in October.
Start your entry, find your classification, and give your work the stage it deserves.
Go Into the Vision Awards
Get in the 2026 Architizer Vision Awards at visionawards.architizer.com. Learn more about RELEASE [AEC] at release-aec. com.
Top image shown the authorization of Cité des sciences et de l’Industrie in Paris.