Three of this year’s finalists, the New Sydney Fish Market, the Adelaide Aquatic Centre and The Forest at the University of Tasmania, have been shortlisted for the World Architecture Festival, which opens in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on 18 November, four weeks to the day after we announce our 2026 winners in Sydney.
They are among 20 Australian projects on a festival shortlist of 416, drawn from more than 630 entries, and in each of them timber is doing structural work. The Fish Market, a finalist in our Commercial Building category, sits on Blackwattle Bay beneath what its entry describes as Australia’s largest engineered timber roof, a canopy of 594 glulam beams spanning 20,000 square metres and storing more than 1,000 tonnes of biogenic carbon.
The Adelaide Aquatic Centre, a finalist in our new Sports and Recreation category, carries 324 cubic metres of glulam and 108 cubic metres of cross-laminated timber, with beams up to 37 metres long, supplied full length, spanning the aquatic halls without a column. The Forest, a finalist in both Public Building and Sustainability, retained 60 per cent of the structures already on its site, framed what was new in Tasmanian Oak, and cut upfront carbon by 40 per cent before a single new material was specified.
Two of the three are also in contention at the National Architecture Awards, which will be announced in Brisbane on 29 October, eight days after our gala, with the Fish Market shortlisted for Commercial Architecture and The Forest for both Educational Architecture and Sustainable Architecture.
None of that is a coincidence of the calendar.
Projects recognised here have gone on to win nationally and internationally in each of the past three years, which is why we think of these awards as the place a timber project is launched onto the world stage.
In 2023, Boola Katitjin at Murdoch University won our People’s Choice and Engineered Wood Product awards and, within a month, was named Engineers Australia’s national Project of the Year and won the festival’s Higher Education and Research category, the category The Forest is shortlisted in this year. In 2024, Bates Smart’s Embassy of Australia in Washington won our overall prize and then the Jørn Utzon Award for International Architecture. Last year, three weeks after our Melbourne gala, Searle x Waldron’s Northern Memorial Park Depot, our Commercial Building winner, took the Harry Seidler Award for Commercial Architecture, on the same night our Grand Prix winner, Archer Office’s Boot Factory, received a national commendation.
Kyle Low, who is organising this year’s program, says being seen here helps.
“There is a crowding effect, even if it is just familiarity,” Low said. “People see a project because of its place in the Timber Design Awards, and that creates a foundation for it to go and win other awards too.”
Why we only look back three years
To enter, a project must have been completed within the last three years, and Low says the rule exists because the industry is moving quickly.
“A building’s design is going to be somewhat static for 50 years, so it could rightly win a design award a decade from now,” he said. “The rate of change we have observed in our industry over the last 15 to 20 years means we are really trying to make sure the new stuff is known quickly. There is definitely an element of broadcasting the cutting edge.”
We also hear about projects early, often from the companies that supplied the timber.
“We hear through the grapevine from people who are passionate about timber, often suppliers who supply timber to multiple jobs,” Low said. “We ask them what their favourite projects of the last year are, and then we encourage them to enter. In that sense, we do have projects on the radar probably earlier than other design awards.”
The three-year rule applies to every category, which means a house, a fit out or a single piece of joinery is judged while it is still new, on the same terms as a harbourfront market. That is the part we would ask people to hold on to as the gala approaches. This year’s field runs from a second-year furniture maker to buildings you have walked past, and furniture and joinery entries have reached their highest level in the program’s history.
More than 80 per cent of tickets to this year’s dinner have now been sold, for a night that brings foresters, engineers, architects, builders, fabricators and interior designers into one room once a year.
The 2026 winners will be announced across 13 categories on Wednesday 21 October in the Harbourside Room at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, looking out over the bridge and the Opera House, where we celebrate timber projects of every scale.
