Archifoto European Awards of Architectural Photography 2026

Competition Brief

Archifoto 2026 is the European Awards of Architectural Photography, organised jointly by La Chambre (Strasbourg) and the European House of Architecture Upper Rhine (Maison européenne de l’architecture Rhin supérieur). First launched in 2010, the competition runs every two years in connection with the Les Journées européennes de l’architecture festival. The 2026 edition carries the theme “Architecture and Landscape”, inviting photographers to explore the relationship between the built environment and its surrounding landscape through a submitted series of five photographs.

Participation is open to adults from the 27 EU member states plus Norway, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Turkey, Armenia, Georgia, Ukraine, England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Minors are not eligible. The competition is not open to persons with legal ties to the organising institutions or their partners.

Intent

The brief frames landscape not as a purely aesthetic category but as a complex term encompassing political, social, environmental, and cultural realities. In the face of climatic, demographic, and ecological change, landscape is positioned as a strategic framework for thinking about cities and territories. The competition asks how photographers can capture the relationship between architecture and landscape, reveal complementarities and tensions, and demonstrate the capacity of both to influence people and places, without resorting to visual clichés.

Purpose

Five winning photographers are selected by the jury. Their works are produced in agreed formats and exhibited at La Chambre in Strasbourg, inaugurated in September 2026 during the Journées européennes de l’architecture. The exhibition subsequently circulates as a touring show. An additional selection of 5 to 10 photographers may be chosen whose images are presented by projection during the exhibition period and published on the Archifoto website without financial compensation, with the authors’ agreement. The long-term ambition of the competition is to build an original photographic corpus documenting the complexity of contemporary architecture and urban landscape as seen by those who inhabit it.

Requirements

Each participant submits a single series of five photographs forming a coherent whole, accompanied by a presentation text of maximum 1,000 characters explaining the photographic approach. Only one submission per person is accepted. Images must be in JPEG format, minimum size 13 x 18 cm at 300 DPI, maximum file size 4 MB per image. Files are submitted via a WeTransfer link provided during registration. Registration is completed through the online form on La Chambre’s website. Winners grant La Chambre and the European House of Architecture reproduction and representation rights for non-commercial purposes including the touring exhibition, press and multimedia communication, a potential catalogue, and the Archifoto photographic archive. Photographs remain the property of their authors.

Jury

The jury will be composed of German, French, and Swiss personalities including representatives of the organising institutions, public and private partners, independent photographers, and architects. Jury member names will be published on the competition website at a later date. The jury’s decision is communicated to participants by email in June 2026, with winners announced publicly at the opening of the exhibition in September 2026.

Registration Fees

A flat €10 registration fee applies to all participants. Registration is non-refundable once payment is confirmed. Payment is processed via PayPal through the online registration form.

Prizes and Rewards

The €500 per winner is a rights transfer fee (cession de droits), not a prize in the conventional sense. It compensates authors for granting reproduction and representation rights for non-commercial use. Photographs remain the property of their authors.

Key Dates

✦ ArchUp Competition Review

Archifoto is a well-established biennial photography competition with sixteen years of operation and a clear institutional grounding in two respected cultural organisations in the Upper Rhine region. The €10 entry fee is minimal, the theme is genuinely open to interpretation, and the exhibition pathway from Strasbourg to a touring show gives selected works real cultural visibility beyond a single venue. The €500 rights transfer fee for winners is transparently framed as compensation for non-commercial reproduction rights rather than a prize, which is an honest and legally considered approach. The jury is drawn from French, German, and Swiss professionals relevant to the Upper Rhine cross-border cultural context, though names are not yet published for 2026. The geographic eligibility restriction to specific European and neighbouring countries is worth confirming before registering, particularly for photographers based outside the listed countries. For photographers working at the intersection of architectural and landscape photography, this is a credible biennial competition with genuine exhibition outcomes and a thematic brief that rewards interpretive depth over visual convention.

Final Thoughts

Archifoto 2026 is a €10 entry biennial European competition for architectural photography themed around Architecture and Landscape, with five selected photographers receiving €500 each and their work exhibited at La Chambre in Strasbourg from September 2026. Submissions close 1 June 2026 at la-chambre.org/autres-regards/archifoto. Contact programmation@la-chambre.org for enquiries.

Registration Deadline

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