Drawing of the Year Awards 2026

Competition Brief

The Drawing of the Year Awards 2026 is an annual international open call for creative imagery, drawings, and visual representations across architecture, art, and design within the built environment. Organized by Archisource, a UK-based creative platform with a documented history running back to at least 2019, the awards are free to enter and open to anyone globally regardless of skill level or professional background.

The awards operate in partnership with HP, Intel, D5 Render, and Affinity, who collectively contribute the £100,000 GBP worth of prizes in hardware, software licences, and creative equipment. Top works are exhibited at London Creates, a major creative exhibition held annually at The Truman Brewery in east London, with editions also touring to Sydney and New York.

Intent

The Drawing of the Year Awards celebrate the ability to translate complex ideas into compelling visual form — specifically how visual representations shape understanding and imagination of the built environment. This is not a competition for completed buildings or design proposals. It is a competition for drawings, images, and visual representations that communicate architectural ideas, narratives, or spatial concepts.

The awards take an explicit position on AI: submissions may use AI as an assistive tool to support research, ideation, development, or refinement, but human creative authorship must remain the dominant element. AI as a primary generative tool is not accepted, and any use of AI must be declared during submission.

Purpose

Selected works are exhibited at London Creates 2026 at The Truman Brewery (16–26 July 2026) and at touring editions in Sydney and New York. Top 250 submissions receive 180-day D5 PRO licences. Winners receive physical prizes worth up to £100,000 combined including HP ZBook workstations, HP Z2 Tower, HP Fury 16, HP Series 5 Pro Monitor, Huion pen displays and tablets, AIAIAI headphones, Anglepoise lighting, Winsor and Newton art materials, LEUCHTTURM1917 notebooks and sketchbooks, QWSTION bags, Thames and Hudson books, and D5 Render assets. A £3,000 GBP cash prize pool supplements the hardware and product prizes. Works are also published internationally across Archisource channels and in the Ideas Pocketbook 2026.

Requirements

All submitted works must relate to the built environment. There are no restrictions on medium — works can include digital renders, hand-drawn sketches, collages, paintings, section drawings, isometrics, or any other form of visual representation. All submitted works are entered into all six main award categories simultaneously. Entries may be individual or collaborative. No professional qualifications are required. All entries must declare any use of AI.

Six main Award categories evaluate works by typology. Each is judged on: originality of approach, style and/or content; use of media; aesthetic qualities; ability to represent and communicate intent or narrative; extent of impact and proposition.

Medal categories additionally recognise standout works for specific attributes including Student, Practitioner, Collaborative, Creativity, Impact, and Narrative — each judged by a unique panel of creative voices.

Jury

The 2025 judging panel included:

Narinder Sagoo MBE — Senior Partner, Foster + Partners. Known internationally for his architectural drawing and visual communication practice.
Jim Heverin — Director, Zaha Hadid Architects.
Sam Hudson — Hayes Davidson, one of the UK’s leading architectural visualisation studios.
Will Jefferies — Associate, RSHP (Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners).
Eliza Grosvenor — London Festival of Architecture.
Mansel Haynes — Archisource.
Emily Glynn — Archisource.

The full 2026 panel will be announced shortly. The format draws from practices in architecture, visualisation, and cultural programming.

Registration Fees

Category	Fee
All participants — professionals, students, international	Free

Prizes and Rewards

Award Level	Cash Prize	Additional Benefits
Main Award Winners	Share of £3,000 GBP cash pool	HP ZBook workstations, HP monitors, Huion pen displays and tablets, AIAIAI headphones, Anglepoise lighting, art materials, bags, books, D5 Render assets and more. Exhibition at London Creates. International publication.
Top 250 Submissions	None	180-day D5 PRO licence. Exhibition at London Creates (16–26 July 2026, The Truman Brewery). Publication in Ideas Pocketbook 2026 and across Archisource channels.
Medal Category Winners	Not specified	Recognition across Student, Practitioner, Collaborative, Creativity, Impact, and Narrative medal categories. Exhibition and publication.

Key Dates

Milestone	Date
Submission Deadline	31 May 2026
London Creates Exhibition	16–26 July 2026, The Truman Brewery, London
Global Touring Editions	Sydney and New York (dates TBC)

✦ ArchUp Competition Review

The Drawing of the Year Awards occupy a distinctive niche: they are a free-to-enter international competition specifically for architectural drawing and visual representation rather than for built or design proposals. This makes them directly relevant to students, visualisers, and practitioners who invest significantly in the craft of drawing and image-making but rarely find awards that specifically recognize it. The prize structure is genuinely unusual — £100,000 worth of high-quality creative hardware including HP ZBook workstations, Huion pen displays, Anglepoise lighting, and D5 Render licences makes the tangible prize value for winners more practical and directly applicable to creative practice than cash alone. The 180-day D5 PRO licence for the top 250 submissions is a meaningful benefit at scale that rewards a large number of participants. The exhibition at London Creates, held at The Truman Brewery in Brick Lane with touring editions to Sydney and New York, gives selected works a genuine public audience and physical presence in major international design capitals. The 2025 jury included Narinder Sagoo MBE of Foster + Partners, Jim Heverin of Zaha Hadid Architects, Sam Hudson of Hayes Davidson, and Will Jefferies of RSHP — a credible set of practitioners with genuine expertise in architectural representation. The winners archive dating to 2019 demonstrates continuity. The explicit AI policy — human authorship must dominate, AI is an assistive tool only, all use must be declared — represents a considered and increasingly important position for a drawing-focused award. The only limitation is that the winners announcement date is not published, and the prizes beyond hardware and licences are not broken down by individual award level with full transparency. For students, graduates, visualisers, and practitioners who produce high-quality architectural imagery, this is one of the most directly relevant and practically rewarding free competitions available globally.

Final Thoughts

The Drawing of the Year Awards take seriously something that most architectural competitions ignore entirely: the craft of drawing and visual representation as a discipline in its own right. The free entry, the meaningful hardware prizes, the top-250 D5 licence benefit, and the London Creates exhibition make this one of the strongest value propositions in the open competition space for image-makers and visualisers working in the built environment.

The submission deadline of 31 May 2026 gives participants adequate time from the current date. The medium is entirely open — from hand-drawn ink sketches to photorealistic renders — meaning the barrier is exclusively one of quality and originality rather than technical toolset. For architecture students and emerging practitioners building their visual portfolio, the Student Medal category provides a specific recognition pathway.