Architizer in Paris: Vision Awards Winners to Be Revealed at Inaugural In-Person Celebration
This year, for the first time in the program’s history, Architizer Vision Awards winners will be announced live and in-person at RELEASE [AEC] — an industry-wide gathering focused on technology and innovation in architecture. The event takes place on October 20, 2026, at the Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie in Paris, and will run from a morning welcome reception all the way through to a late-evening networking party. As a Vision Awards finalist or winner, you’ll be invited to attend the full day — and if your work stands out, you may be asked to speak as part of the event.
The venue itself warrants attention for anyone 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 — designed by Bernard Tschumi following an influential 1982 competition — is one of the defining texts of deconstructivist architecture. Tschumi’s proposal, with its grid of red follies, its superimposed systems of points, lines and surfaces, and its deliberate rejection of any single organizing narrative, remains a landmark of late 20th-century design thinking studied in architecture schools worldwide.
For an opportunity to join us in Paris this fall, start your entry today and complete it before the Main Entry Deadline at midnight PT on May 22, 2026:
This is your moment to step out from behind the screen and onto the stage! Read on for more details on what to look forward to at this exciting event.
What RELEASE [AEC] Is (and Why You Want to Be There)
Release [AEC] 2025. Photo by Philippe Servent
The format puts that ambition into practice. The day comprises keynote sessions, live demonstrations from innovators across the AEC landscape, hands-on workshops and extensive networking; it is structured to encourage actual exchange between designers and the companies building the tools that will define the next decade of the built environment. The 2025 inaugural edition, held in Paris, drew an engaged professional audience and set a tone that feels genuinely different from the standard conference circuit.
The vision is articulated in RELEASE [AEC] ’s manifesto: as technological innovations rapidly reshape the AEC sector in real time, this kind of gathering is more than necessary. That worldview aligns closely with what the Vision Awards has always recognized in its own way — that architecture’s future is being shaped in the studios, screens and minds of the people imagining what it could be. The partnership, in that sense, is a natural one.
What Being a Finalist or Winner Gets You
The Vision Awards celebration will follow in the footsteps of Architizer’s notable industry gatherings, including recent events in New York, Paris and multiple cities across China. Photos by Alex Bonnemaison (top right), Zack DeZon (top and bottom left)
For the 2026 Vision Awards, reaching the finalist stage carries a new dimension of meaning. Finalists and winners will be invited to attend the full RELEASE [AEC] program — a day of keynotes, demonstrations and conversations at one of Europe’s great institutions of science and culture. Winners will be announced live, on stage, in a room full of the people for whom this work matters most: fellow architects, technologists, visualizers, photographers, filmmakers and the clients and collaborators who commission and champion their work.
Select finalists and winners will also be invited 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 definition, already interested in the intersection of architecture and innovation.
Beyond the ceremony itself, the RELEASE [AEC] partnership extends the Vision Awards’ reach into the AEC technology community in a meaningful way. This is an audience that understands, perhaps better than most, how much the tools of visualization, conceptual design and architectural communication shape the buildings that eventually get built.
How to Get There
The venue for Release [AEC] this year is the Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie in Paris’ verdant Parc de la Villette
The path is straightforward: Enter the Vision Awards, make the shortlist and come to Paris.
The 2026 program is open across four category groups — Architectural Concept, Architectural Rendering & Drawing, Architectural Photography & Video and Architectural Visionary — with more than 70 accolades available. Whether you work at a global firm or independently, whether your medium is computational rendering or hand-drawing, whether you shoot buildings or make films about the people behind them, there is a category for your work.
Entries are accepted from studios, individual practitioners, and students worldwide. In each category, both a Jurors’ Choice and an Editors’ Choice Award are available — and entrants can opt in to the Best of the Year Awards for additional recognition across the program’s six major creative disciplines.
The Main Entry Deadline is on May 22. Meanwhile, the program’s Final Entry Deadline closes on June 26th. Winners are announced in Paris in October.
Start your entry, find your category, and give your work the stage it deserves.
Enter the 2026 Architizer Vision Awards at visionawards.architizer.com. Learn more about RELEASE [AEC] at release-aec.com.
Top image shared with the permission of Cité des sciences et de l’Industrie in Paris.
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