The Stirling Prize 2026 shortlist named six buildings, all in England, and on 15 October 2026 the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) gave its 30th-anniversary prize to the outsider: Lion Green Road, 157 homes in Coulsdon, south London, by Mary Duggan Architects with RUFF Architects. It beat a family house in Epping Forest, a 1970s theatre reborn as an arts centre, a commercial cube with a new public square at Paddington, and two Cambridge college projects.
Key takeaways
- The winner is Lion Green Road. RIBA named the Coulsdon housing scheme at Old Billingsgate, London, on the evening of 15 October 2026. Bookmaker William Hill had it last of the six, at 6/1.
- Six contenders, published by RIBA on 16 July 2026: A House at Fairmead (Sergison Bates), BEAM (Bennetts Associates), Lion Green Road (Mary Duggan Architects with RUFF Architects), Paddington Square (Renzo Piano Building Workshop with Adamson Associates), Pembroke Mill Lane (Haworth Tompkins) and River Wing, Clare College (Witherford Watson Mann).
- Retrofit and heritage dominated the list. Three of the six rework existing or listed buildings. Two are all-electric or gas-free.
- The favourites lost. William Hill first made River Wing the favourite; by 12 October Pembroke Mill Lane had become the clear 2/1 favourite.
- Not everyone was impressed by the list. The Architects' Journal called it "head-in the-sand": high quality, but low risk and centred on south-east England.
Stirling Prize 2026 winner: Lion Green Road
Updated 15 October 2026. RIBA's award page now lists Lion Green Road as the Stirling Prize 2026 winner. The scheme was designed by Mary Duggan Architects, delivered with RUFF Architects and commissioned by Brick by Brick, the development company Croydon Council set up. The result was announced at a ceremony at Old Billingsgate on the evening of 15 October and reported that night by ArchDaily, the Architects' Journal and Building Design. It is the first time Mary Duggan's practice has been shortlisted, according to Building Design.
It was the long shot. On 12 October, the AJ reported that William Hill had made Pembroke Mill Lane its clear 2/1 favourite, with River Wing drifting to 3/1 and Lion Green Road out at 6/1, last of the six.
What the jury rewarded
The five blocks stand on a former council car park whose ground falls by 8 m. Instead of levelling the site, the architects rotated each 13-sided brick pavilion to follow the slope and frame its own views. Every flat is dual-aspect, and balconies are angled so that neighbours do not look into each other's homes, which lets the blocks sit closer together. Three brick colours and a projecting bond give the facades a soft, pixelated texture, according to the RIBA citation. Landscape by Planit-IE threads public paths, play areas, allotments and retained trees between the blocks. The jury citation quoted by Wallpaper* also notes the need to protect a neighbouring scheduled monument linked to the historic Surrey Iron Railway. ArchDaily puts the population at 635 residents.
At a time when we urgently need to deliver more homes, Lion Green Road shows that density can be achieved without compromising the quality of the places we create.
It is the fourth housing scheme to win in the prize's 30 years, after Accordia in Cambridge (2008), Goldsmith Street in Norwich (2019) and last year's Appleby Blue Almshouse, according to Dezeen. Housing has now won two years running.
A win that outlived its developer
The building's back story is part of the argument. The AJ reports that Brick by Brick was wound down before the job was finished, so the council completed it. The development, renamed Red Clover Gardens, was later sold to Regen Capital for £38 million. The council kept a long lease on the 85 affordable rented homes and sublets them to a housing association. Rob Wilson, the AJ's architecture editor, whose paper had criticised the shortlist as low-risk, called the result an "impressive and worthy" winner and compared its twisting plans to early post-war housing.
The Journal backed BEAM, but said Lion Green Road deserved more attention than its odds suggested. The jury has made the stronger point. In a year of college courts and a commercial cube, it chose ordinary suburban homes on a difficult site. It also proved that design quality can survive the collapse of the public developer that commissioned it. That is the case the Journal makes for missing middle housing, and the one the studio's own missing middle project tests at a smaller scale. The open question is whether councils can still commission this kind of housing without a Brick by Brick of their own.
The Stirling Prize 2026 shortlist at a glance
| Building | Architect | Place | Type | Size (GIA) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A House at Fairmead | Sergison Bates architects | High Beach, Epping Forest, Essex | Family house | 381 m² |
| BEAM | Bennetts Associates | Hertford | Arts venue (retrofit and extension) | 3,312 m² |
| Lion Green Road | Mary Duggan Architects with RUFF Architects | Coulsdon, Croydon, London | 157 homes | 12,260 m² |
| Paddington Square | Renzo Piano Building Workshop with Adamson Associates | Paddington, London | Offices, shops, public square, Tube entrance | 63,617 m² |
| Pembroke, Mill Lane | Haworth Tompkins | Cambridge | College expansion (6 retrofitted, 6 new buildings) | 7,275 m² |
| River Wing, Clare College | Witherford Watson Mann Architects | Cambridge | Café and circulation in a Grade I court | 818 m² |
Floor areas are gross internal areas from the RIBA award pages.
What is the Stirling Prize?
The RIBA Stirling Prize, first awarded in 1996 and named after the architect James Stirling, goes to the architect of the building judged "the most significant of the year for the evolution of architecture and the built environment". The shortlist is drawn from the year's RIBA National Award winners, 32 in 2026. This year's jury is chaired by RIBA President Chris Williamson. With him are Stephanie Macdonald of 6a architects, Tracy Meller of RSHP, Dr Julie Godefroy of CIBSE, Will Gompertz of Sir John Soane's Museum, and Catherine Winfield of Autodesk, the prize's sponsor.
This year's shortlist shows us what architecture can achieve when creativity, purpose and public value come together.
The six buildings
A House at Fairmead, Epping Forest — Sergison Bates
A private family house of 381 m² at High Beach, built with 650 mm insulating clay-block walls and a living room 4.5 m high. It is heated by a ground-source heat pump, with solar panels and battery storage. The RIBA East jury chair, Julian de Metz, praised proportions that are "measured, humane and uplifting". It is the shortlist's quietest building, and a reminder that a single house can still carry an argument about material and climate.
BEAM, Hertford — Bennetts Associates
East Hertfordshire District Council's £30 million transformation of the 1970s Hertford Theatre on the River Lea. It reworks the auditorium to seat more people within the same volume and adds an extension in cross-laminated timber. The building is all-electric and a pilot for the UK Net Zero Carbon Buildings Standard. De Metz called it "an exemplar of contemporary civic retrofit".
Lion Green Road, Coulsdon — Mary Duggan Architects with RUFF Architects
The housing entry: 157 homes for Croydon's developer Brick by Brick, split equally between affordable and private tenures. They are arranged in five 13-sided "prismatic" blocks of four to seven storeys across an 8 m change in level. The pinwheel plans give every flat windows on two sides, and the landscape comes first. Mary Duggan Architects is the only first-time nominee on the list, and the scheme was also shortlisted for RIBA's Neave Brown Award for Housing, which went to Rowan Court on the same night. It is the strongest argument on the list that density can be generous. That is the same case the Journal makes for missing middle housing in Los Angeles, at a larger scale.
Paddington Square, London — Renzo Piano Building Workshop with Adamson Associates
An 18-storey, roughly cubic office building above a new Bakerloo line ticket hall, completed in 2024, with 32,500 m² of offices and a public piazza of 5,450 m² where a narrow road used to lead to the station. The London jury chair, Amir Sanei, called it "a transformative piece of urban infrastructure". The Architects' Journal was blunter, calling it the shortlist's "biggest eyebrow-raiser". Its architect, Renzo Piano, won the Pritzker Prize in 1998; in Switzerland his 1997 museum is now being extended, as the Fondation Beyeler expansion by Peter Zumthor opens.
Pembroke, Mill Lane, Cambridge — Haworth Tompkins
Pembroke College's largest expansion since the 14th century mixes six retrofitted buildings with six new ones in Cambridge's historic core. It provides 96 en-suite student rooms, uses no gas and is heated by air-source heat pumps. It was named RIBA East Building of the Year in May 2026. De Metz called it "a robust and thoughtful piece of city-making".
River Wing, Clare College, Cambridge — Witherford Watson Mann Architects
The first major addition to Clare's Grade I-listed Old Court since the 1780s: a 68-seat café and new circulation, built in a laminated oak frame on Purbeck stone floors. A new bridge was built to bring the prefabricated timber on site. In de Metz's words, the architects "have woven this contemporary structure into the existing building, evolving it rather than contrasting against it."
Retrofit, heritage and one big square
Read together, the Stirling Prize 2026 shortlist makes a clear argument. BEAM, Pembroke and River Wing all work with buildings that already exist, and the fabric they keep is carbon already spent. The same logic drives this autumn's biggest American conversion, the Thompson Center redesign in Chicago. Fairmead and Lion Green Road put the weight on how homes are made and arranged. Paddington Square is the outlier, a large commercial building justified by the public space it creates.
The criticism is about range. Fran Williams in the Architects' Journal wrote: "There is plenty of quality here. But remarkably little risk." She pointed out that the list is concentrated in London and the south-east and dominated by previously shortlisted practices. Of Paddington she asked: "Is it really one of Britain's six best buildings, or simply one of Britain's most expensive planning negotiations?"
Stirling Prize 2026 predictions
On the day the shortlist was published, William Hill made River Wing the early favourite. Its own page quotes the odds as 2/1 in one place and 5/2 in another. Pembroke and Paddington Square were next at 3/1, Fairmead and BEAM at 4/1, and Lion Green Road the outsider at 5/1. A River Wing win would make Witherford Watson Mann back-to-back winners, a feat only Zaha Hadid and WilkinsonEyre have managed. It would also make the practice only the second three-time winner, after Foster + Partners.
The Journal's view: on the jury's own criterion, the evolution of architecture and the built environment, BEAM makes the strongest case. It is an ordinary civic building, a 1970s theatre most towns have an equivalent of, turned into a model for net-zero retrofit. Lion Green Road deserves more attention than its odds suggest. More prizes and results are in the Journal's Awards section.
The other RIBA awards on 15 October 2026
RIBA presented its special awards at the same ceremony. The winners, as reported by Building Design and Dezeen:
| Award | Winner | Architect |
|---|---|---|
| Neave Brown Award for Housing | Rowan Court, Seven Sisters, London | Satish Jassal Architects |
| Reinvention Award | Oru Sutton, a co-working space in a former department store | Samuel Chisholm Studio with Takero Shimazaki Architects |
| Client of the Year | York Minster (the client), for the Heritage Quad and Technology Hub | Tonkin Liu |
| Conservation Award and Stephen Lawrence Prize | The Buttermarket, an arts hub in Cornwall | Architectural Thread |
The public vote for the favourite Stirling winner of the past 30 years went to the Elizabeth Line by Grimshaw, the 2024 winner, according to RIBA's Stirling Prize page.
FAQ
What is the Stirling Prize?
The RIBA Stirling Prize is the Royal Institute of British Architects' annual award for the UK's most significant new building, first given in 1996. The shortlist is drawn from that year's RIBA National Award winners.
Who won the Stirling Prize 2025?
Witherford Watson Mann won the 2025 Stirling Prize for Appleby Blue Almshouse in Southwark, London: 59 apartments for older people, built for United St Saviour's Charity.
Who won the Stirling Prize 2026?
The Stirling Prize 2026 was won by Lion Green Road in Coulsdon, Croydon, by Mary Duggan Architects with RUFF Architects. The Stirling Prize 2026 winner was announced on 15 October 2026 at Old Billingsgate in London, three months after the shortlist was published on 16 July.
Sources
- The UK's best new buildings – 2026 Stirling Prize shortlist revealedRIBA
- RIBA Stirling PrizeRIBA
- UK Awards 2026 regional winnersRIBA
- RIBA unveils Stirling Prize 2026 shortlistDezeen
- RIBA Reveals the Shortlist for the 2026 Stirling PrizeArchDaily
- The AJ’s verdict on the 2026 RIBA Stirling Prize shortlistThe Architects' Journal
- 2026 RIBA Stirling Prize shortlistArchitecture Today
- Clare College’s new River Wing early favourite for 2026 RIBA Stirling PrizeWilliam Hill
- Appleby Blue Almshouse wins the 2025 RIBA Stirling PrizeArchitecture Today
- Bennetts Associates completes £30m theatre revamp in HertfordBuilding Design
- UK’s best new housing - RIBA announces Neave Brown Award for Housing shortlistRIBA
- Renzo Piano — 1998 laureateThe Pritzker Architecture Prize
- Lion Green RoadRIBA
- Council-built long shot wins 2026 RIBA Stirling PrizeThe Architects' Journal
- ‘Impressive and worthy’: the AJ’s verdict on the 2026 RIBA Stirling Prize winnerThe Architects' Journal
- RIBA Stirling Prize 2026: bookies name new favouriteThe Architects' Journal
- Mary Duggan Architects’ Lion Green Road named winner of 2026 Stirling PrizeBuilding Design
- Lion Green Road by Mary Duggan Architects and RUFFARCHITECTS Wins RIBA Stirling Prize 2026ArchDaily
- Who is the RIBA Stirling Prize 2026 winner? We reveal allWallpaper*
- "Welcoming and inclusive" London housing wins RIBA Stirling Prize 2026Dezeen
