Aurelia Prize 2027
Aurelia Prize 2027 is an international design competition for architects, designers and engineers to develop technically rigorous visions for sustained human settlement on or around the Moon. The brief asks teams to connect everyday life, building systems and neighbourhood-scale infrastructure while accounting for gravity, radiation, dust, solar exposure, logistics, power and mass.
The advertised award is “up to” USD 100,000, shared by the winning team and paid over several stages. It is not a construction commission, and invitations to events, workshops or a possible research flight are opportunities rather than guaranteed cash compensation.
Competition overview
| Official title | Aurelia Prize 2027 |
|---|---|
| Organizer | Aurelia Institute, a Cambridge, Massachusetts organization working across space-habitat research, education and public programmes. |
| Competition type | Open international ideas and design competition; no implementation contract is announced. |
| Design question | How can lunar settlements expand access to space while supporting useful, comfortable and dignified homes, laboratories, factories and civic life across the Earth–Moon system? |
| Site | The lunar surface, lunar orbit, or a proposal spanning both. Entrants must define the chosen site and its environmental constraints. |
| Eligibility | Individuals and teams worldwide, age 18 or older. There is no maximum team size and only one entry is permitted per individual or team. |
| Language | English. |
| Entry fee | Free for currently enrolled undergraduate students with proof of status; USD 200 for all other entrants. |
| Registration | No separate registration deadline is stated; participation is completed through the online submission form. |
| Submission deadline | 15 January 2027, 23:59 UTC. |
| Prize | Up to USD 100,000 for the winning entry, shared among team members and disbursed in stages. |
| Results setting | Winner and finalists are scheduled to be announced at the Beyond the Cradle conference in April 2027. |
The lunar urbanism brief
The competition accepts surface bases, orbital stations, live-in rover fleets, energy infrastructure, mining outposts, civic spaces and other architectural concepts. The freedom of format is balanced by a technical requirement: proposals must identify assumptions and show that the concept does not violate known physical constraints.
Every entry must work through one site, three development phases and three scales. The phases are Year 1, Year 10 and Year 20, with population, pressurised volume, power and mass estimates for each. The scales cover the human or machine, the building or structure, and neighbourhood infrastructure, including both daily-life moments and system flows.
Submission requirements
| Primary visual | One hero image of the architectural concept. |
|---|---|
| Additional visuals | Up to six drawings, photographs, diagrams, collages, renders or lightly captioned boards. |
| Project text | Maximum 500 words explaining the proposal, its users, operation and contribution to lunar urbanism. |
| Research addendum | One page of citations acknowledging relevant prior work. |
| Technical framing | Site conditions, three time phases, three design scales, and explicit population, volume, power and mass estimates. |
| AI disclosure | Any use of artificial intelligence in the design process must be clearly identified. |
| Submission method | Online through the official competition form. |
Judging, rights and award conditions
| Criteria | Creativity, rigor, coherence, viability, presentation and purpose; each is scored from 0 to 5 and weighted equally. |
|---|---|
| Norman Foster | Architect and president of the Norman Foster Foundation; relevant to large-scale infrastructure and interdisciplinary design. |
| Victor Glover | NASA astronaut emeritus; relevant to crewed spaceflight and operational realities. |
| Paola Antonelli | MoMA senior curator of architecture and design and director of research and development. |
| Adrian Tchaikovsky | Science-fiction author; contributes speculative-system and narrative perspective. |
| Gui Trotti | Architect and industrial designer with academic work in space architecture and extreme environments. |
| Ariel Ekblaw | Founder and CEO of Aurelia Institute; works in space-habitat research and programme development. |
| Intellectual property | The organizer states that entrants retain ownership of their intellectual property. Submitted material may be used only to administer and promote the prize. |
| Further opportunities | Finalists are invited to present at the conference. Workshops, panels and a possible parabolic research flight are conditional invitations, not guaranteed awards. |
✦ ArchUp Competition Review
The competition has an unusually clear architectural question for a speculative brief. It asks entrants to connect human experience to power, mass, logistics and phased growth, which limits the usefulness of images that do not explain how a settlement could operate. The named jury also brings together architecture, spaceflight, design curation, extreme-environment practice and speculative narrative.
The principal limitation is the gap between a prize concept and implementation. No client, site-development mandate or construction pathway is announced, and the winning award is described as up to USD 100,000 paid in stages. For professional teams, the USD 200 fee and the research demands should therefore be assessed as the cost of a rigorous ideas competition, not as access to a commissioned lunar project.
Sources reviewed: the official Aurelia Institute competition page, eligibility and submission instructions, judging criteria, jury biographies and intellectual-property statement; accessed 28 October 2026.
Time remaining to submit
Online submissions close on 15 January 2027 at 23:59 UTC. No separate registration deadline is stated.
Official competition page
Read the complete official brief, eligibility rules, FAQ and submission form before paying a fee or preparing the entry.
