prix ​​de rome architecture 2026

The Prix de Rome Architecture is organized every four years by the Creative Industries Fund NL on behalf of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. With this competition, the Fund NL aims to identify, encourage, and support promising architects, urban planners, landscape architects, and other spatial designers in their professional development and visibility. At the same time, the Fund NL aims to contribute to innovation within the field and fuel the debate on the role of architecture and spatial design in society.

The theme of the Prix de Rome Architecture 2026 is Terminal Velocity. The jury sees a tension between the promise of architecture—to offer a better life through good design—and its reality. As the world it helped shape grows beyond its grasp, the cumbersome practice of architecture seems to be falling behind. How can architecture once again fulfill its promise? To what end? And for whom?

The Prix de Rome Architecture calls for a rethinking of architectural intelligence. This is emphatically not about pursuing speed, novelty, or optics , but about the intersection between the speculative and the situated, between ideas and their ecological, technological, social, and material realities.