11 architecture projects set to shape the world in 2026
By Oscar Holland, CNN
(CNN) — For American architecture, 2025 may be remembered for the deaths of icons Frank Gehry, Robert A. M. Stern and Ricardo Scofidio, a mastermind of New York’s High Line. More likely, however, it will go down as a year dominated by Donald Trump — his preference for classicism and disdain for brutalism; his controversial demolition of the White House’s East Wing; his clashes with the designer of the ballroom replacing it; and his administration’s move to exclude architecture from its list of “professional” degrees.
Much of this has brought the presidency into direct conflict with the industry’s largest professional body, the American Institute of Architects (AIA). It perhaps came as no surprise that, amid the threat of national navel-gazing, the organization announced that it is awarding this year’s prestigious AIA Gold Medal to a non-American, Japan’s Shigeru Ban, for the first time this decade.
Globally, there has been lots to celebrate. China’s Liu Jiakun won the Pritzker Prize, the “Nobel of architecture,” for his understated academic and cultural buildings. A social housing development in London and a humble concrete church in Spain’s Canary Islands meanwhile beat out flashier competition to win two of the profession’s other biggest prizes.
But 2026 may be shaped by bigger, blockbuster buildings. Among them are long-awaited museums, record-breaking skyscrapers and a soaring Catholic basilica almost 150 years in the making. Here are 11 of architecture projects — in the US and beyond — set to become the year’s most talked-about:
Sagrada Familia, Barcelona, Spain
Some 144 years after it broke ground, the world’s longest-running construction project is nearing completion. Well, in a sense.
Work on Sagrada Familia’s sculptures, decorative detailing and proposed main staircase will likely stretch into the 2030s. But this year should see the 564-foot-tall Tower of Jesus of Christ, the basilica’s 18th and final spire (the 17 shorter ones are dedicated to the 12 apostles, four Evangelists and the Virgin Mary), finished in time for the centenary of architect Antoni Gaudí’s death in June.
Gaudí only lived to see the first tower completed. The sheer complexity and decorative intricacy of his design, a surreal marriage of Gothic, Art Nouveau and nature-inspired forms, is partly behind the mind-boggling construction timeline. But funding shortfalls, bureaucratic hurdles and the Covid-19 pandemic all contributed, too.
Perhaps the greatest challenge was the destruction of Gaudí’s drawings and plaster models in 1936, when his workshop was set on fire amid the Spanish Civil War. Whether he would have approved of the church’s final form — which is the best estimation of his plans by subsequent generations of architects — will never be known. Though he probably wouldn’t have minded the wait. “My client is in no hurry,” Gaudí famously once said. He was, of course, referring to God.
520 Fifth Avenue, New York, USA
New York’s taste in skyscrapers is changing. The era of sleek glass facades is making way for grander, brawnier towers that nod to America’s architectural past. For evidence of this shift, look no further than the brooding silhouettes of the city’s two newest “supertalls”: JPMorgan Chase’s muscular, steel-heavy headquarters at 270 Park Avenue and the shadowy Brooklyn Tower, its crowned neo-Art Deco form clad in bronze and dark stone.
The skyline’s next major addition, 520 Fifth Avenue, looks to the Beaux-Arts style that flourished in America’s Gilded Age. Topping out at 1,002 feet, the tower’s terracotta arches evoke a bygone era, with the “rhythm” of the ones located on street level informed directly by the tower’s 135-year-old Palazzo style neighbor, the Century Association. Architects Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF) also cite the arched Grand Central Terminal and New York Public Library as inspirations — as well as the stepped cityscapes envisaged by Hugh Ferriss, whose moody illustrations heavily influenced Batman’s Gotham City.
New York may feel a world away from the White House’s push for a neoclassical revival (or to “Make Federal Architecture Beautiful Again,” as Donald Trump’s executive order put it), but the city’s growing deference for history could be another side of the same coin.
Winter Olympic Village, Milan, Italy
For a few weeks in February, this 11.5-acre site in southeast Milan will house thousands of athletes participating in the 2026 Winter Games. But the important question surrounding Olympic villages, like Olympic stadiums, is: What happens next? The recent history of the Games, both summer and winter, features a trail of wasteful temporary housing or long-term residences that were difficult to sell (Rio de Janeiro), poorly maintained (Athens) or out of reach for low-income families (London).
In Milan, Italy’s most expensive rental market, architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) has designed an Olympic Village that can convert into an affordable 1,700-bed student residence within months of the closing ceremony. Helpfully, many athletes’ facilities — spaces for socializing, recreation and fitness — are needed by students, too. In fact, there’s so much overlap that Italian real estate developer Coima promises to have it ready in time for the fall 2026 semester.
The project also presented an opportunity for urban regeneration. In addition to designing six new buildings, the architects restored two historic structures on the site, a former rail yard. And while the “village” moniker suggests a walled-off community, SOM considers this to be a “porous urban block” connected to the surrounding Porta Romana district via public pathways and green spaces. Future Olympic legacy planners will be watching with interest.
Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
The recent death of Frank Gehry, one of contemporary architecture’s greats, gives altogether new meaning to the opening of the Guggenheim’s long-awaited Abu Dhabi outpost. It was among several projects underway at the time of his passing (including Forma, a pair of stacked condominium skyscrapers in his Toronto birthplace), though this museum will surely be considered his swansong.
A seemingly chaotic heap of curved and angular forms, varying in size, shape and texture, this is Gehry at his most playful. Yet, the design is not entirely self-referential: Its covered courtyards were inspired by those found across the Middle East, while the architect’s cone-shaped volumes nod — albeit abstractly — to “barjeel,” the traditional wind towers used across the region to passively cool buildings.
Nonetheless, Guggenheim Abu Dhabi also owes a debt of gratitude to its Bilbao predecessor, a building considered by many to be Gehry’s magnum opus. The emirate’s leadership will also be hoping for a repeat of the architect’s so-called “Bilbao Effect” — a term now used any time an iconic museum puts a city on the map by attracting attention, tourism and investment — on Abu Dhabi’s Saadiyat Island.
Whether Gehry’s death (or persistent construction delays) sets back the expected 2026 opening remains to be seen. When asked by CNN, a Guggenheim spokesperson simply said, “We look forward to announcing the official opening date in the future.”
Tour F, Abidjan, Ivory Coast
Africa is set to welcome its new tallest building: The 1,381-foot Tour F (or Tower F) in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. Designed by Lebanese Ivorian architect Pierre Fakhoury, the 64-story skyscraper will surpass the current record-holder, Egypt’s Iconic Tower, by less than 100 feet.
This sixth tower in Abidjan’s administrative district (after Tours A through E, which were all open by the early 1980s), Tour F been part of the city’s urban development plans for more than 50 years. Ivory Coast has, however, experienced significant political upheaval in those decades, including civil wars in 2002 and 2010. So, while the angled planes of the building’s glass facade are intended to evoke a stylized African mask, the tower’s symbolism runs much deeper than that.
Whether a “supertall” high-rise is even necessary in a city whose population density is about a quarter that of New York’s is a legitimate question. But skyscrapers are not just about floor space. This one may project a message of stability to investors and the outside world.
Transformative urban development projects are being planned across Abidjan, including a rapid transit system opening in 2028. A forthcoming 1,000-kilometer-long (621-mile) highway connecting Ivory Coast to Nigeria (via the capitals of Ghana, Benin and Togo) meanwhile speaks to the economic potential of West Africa’s “Abidjan–Lagos Corridor.”
Shanghai Grand Opera House, Shanghai, China
There’s nothing like a showpiece opera house to mark your city out as architecturally sophisticated. Just ask Sydney, Australia. In the last two decades, Guangzhou, Hangzhou and Harbin have joined the list of Chinese cities commissioning renowned designers to oversee their opera venues. Now it’s Shanghai’s turn.
The task falls to Snøhetta, a Norwegian architecture practice that has become something of a specialist in the field since opening a celebrated opera house in its home country’s capital, Oslo, in 2008 (the firm also has forthcoming venues in Busan, South Korea; Diriyah, Saudi Arabia and Düsseldorf, Germany). In fact, the Shanghai Grand Opera House’s design shares several key features with its Oslo cousin: a riverside location, an abundance of clean white surfaces and a flat profile that appears to emerge gently from the ground beneath.
The iconic feature here, however, is a gravity-defying spiral staircase. It transports visitors to a huge rooftop plaza that (again, like Oslo’s) is open to the general public. The ammonite-like staircase also serves a wider aesthetic function, sitting at the center of a radial plan that seems to unfold around it like a fan.
Upon opening, the venue’s three performance spaces — including a 2,000-seat main auditorium — will offer opera in both Western and Chinese traditions.
Obama Presidential Center, Chicago, USA
Regardless of design, a center dedicated to Barack Obama in Chicago’s South Side was always going to get political. The former president’s opponents have already taken aim at the project’s soaring cost, the exclusion of a customary research library for unclassified archival documents (Obama’s presidential records are being digitized) and the decision to let the Obama Foundation, not the National Archives and Records Administration, run operations.
The fact the Obama Presidential Center is anchored by a 225-foot-tall, obelisk-like marble tower — which some are nicknamed the “Obamalisk” — has provided further ammunition, with Republican senator Ted Cruz recently referring to it as the “Death Star.”
The New York-based architects behind the project, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, were an obvious choice. They were commissioned to co-design the US Embassy in Mexico City during the Obama era; Joe Biden later appointed Tsien to chair the Commission of Fine Arts, the federal agency charged with advising the president on design. (She stepped down from the post earlier this year, shortly before Donald Trump fired the commission’s remaining six members.)
According to a design statement from the pair’s architecture firm, the showpiece museum tower “echoes movement upward from the grassroots,” its four faces intended to represent four hands coming together. The facade also features words from a speech that Obama gave to mark the 50th anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery marches, the grassroots civil rights protests that helped secure African Americans’ right to vote through the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
But there is much else to be found across the nearly 20-acre Jackson Park site, including a fruit and vegetable garden, a wetland walk, an auditorium and a branch of the Chicago Public Library. The center is also collaborating with major artists including Chicago-born Theaster Gates, who is creating a large-scale collage frieze about Black life using archival images from Ebony and Jet magazines.
Central Bank of Iraq, Baghdad, Iraq
The Central Bank of Iraq’s new headquarters represents a bittersweet homecoming for Zaha Hadid. It is the late British-Iraqi architect’s only realized building in Baghdad, the city in which she was born and raised (before leaving to attend European boarding schools in the 1960s). But while Hadid oversaw the design, originally unveiled in 2011, her untimely death five years later meant she did not even live to see it break ground, let alone open.
The tower represents an important moment for Iraq, too. Once closely controlled by dictator Saddam Hussein, the bank’s turbulent recent history mirrors that of the country itself. Just hours before the US began bombing Iraq in 2003, Husain and his family stole around $1 billion in what has been described as the largest bank heist of all time. The institution has since been subject of ongoing debates over its role and independence in reconstruction-era Iraq.
With an exoskeleton blossoming out from a narrow base like a champagne flute, the 558-foot tower is a striking addition to Baghdad’s distinctly low-rise skyline — albeit one that has been rapidly transformed by a recent construction boom. According to Hadid’s firm ZHA, which has remained prolific since her death, the company’s Instagram notifications are now full of young Iraqis proudly posting photos and videos of the tower while tagging Hadid’s name.
Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, Los Angeles, USA
If any building can be forgiven for resembling a spaceship come to land, it should be the one housing George Lucas’ new museum.
The “Star Wars” creator’s $1-billion ode to visual storytelling opens its doors in September, more than a decade after he first floated plans for an institution dedicated to “narrative art.” For seven of those years, Angelenos have watched Chinese architect Ma Yansong’s futuristic vision slowly come to life, its curved, elongated form appearing to levitate over its 11-acre site in South LA’s Exposition Park.
While Ma’s design feels otherworldly, his philosophy is fundamentally rooted in nature. The MAD Architects founder’s career-long crusade against straight lines and right angles is rooted in the idea that box-shaped buildings make cities feel “artificial,” he once told CNN. His vision for a “Shanshui city” — designs drawing inspiration from traditional Chinese shanshui (literally “mountain and water”) landscape paintings — can be found across China, and his firm has recently completed buildings in Europe and North America, too.
But with more 100,000 square feet of exhibition space, this is, by far, the most significant building completed by any Chinese-born architect on American soil (excluding the late I.M. Pei, who was born in Guangzhou but became a naturalized US citizen early in his career).
Melbourne Metro Tunnel, Melbourne, Australia
Billed as the largest overhaul of Melbourne’s rail network in 40 years, Metro Tunnel is a major feat of engineering. Costing 13.48 billion Australian dollars ($8.9 billion), the 10-year project connects numerous existing subway lines via two parallel 5.6-mile tunnels running deep — at points, more than 130 feet so — below the city center. After November’s soft launch, February marks the “Big Switch,” when operators add 1,000 more weekly services and the tunnels are fully integrated into the wider network.
The new stretch of rail is served by five much-needed downtown underground stations. They were named from over 50,000 suggestions submitted by members of the public, including Anzac, an acronym for the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, whose bravery in battle is honored with a national remembrance day each April. Architecturally speaking, they are intended to forge visual connections with the streets above. For those closer to the surface, this means vast entranceways and skylights that bathe their concourses in light. Deeper ones, meanwhile, possess a more cavernous (or “cathedral-like,” as the architects put it) quality.
The stations were a collaboration between three architecture firms, including Australian practice Hassell. In a statement, Hassell’s principal, Mark Loughnan, said each was designed to “celebrate the joy and efficiency of travel.” This may be a stretch for most Melburnian commuters, but they should certainly ease the transport demands facing a city that, in 2023, overtook Sydney as Australia’s most populous.
OPPO Chang An R&D Center, Dongguan, China
From ancient Greek temples to medieval churches, where the money flows, architectural innovation often follows. In the 2020s, this means, among other places, the Chinese tech industry. Giants like Alibaba, Tencent and Xiaomi have all splashed out on big-name Western architects to mastermind their sprawling campuses and high-rise headquarters in recent years.
Smartphone manufacturer Oppo is also on a building spree. Around the turn of the decade, the electronics company commissioned a series of major facilities, all featuring motifs of circularity and interconnectivity: A research office, often dubbed the “Infinity Loop” (by in-demand Danish architect Bjarke Ingels); a futuristic Shenzhen headquarters comprising four conjoined, pebble-like towers (by Zaha Hadid Architects); and a huge R&D center envisaged as a series of interconnected circles (by US architects Kohn Pedersen Fox).
The latter, located in the southern city of Dongguan, is expected to be the first to complete. Set across 115 acres, it is also the most staggering in scale. The project comprises 10 structures — seven of which are towers containing residences and serviced apartments for the 6,000 employees the campus will eventually accommodate. Despite spanning five city blocks and stretching across several major roads, the development’s many facilities (including a college, preschool, exhibition space and retail) can all be accessed without stepping foot outside the campus.
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