French Design Awards 2026 Season 2

Competition Brief

The French Design Awards is an international annual design competition organized by the International Awards Associate (IAA), a private awards group that runs over 34 award programs globally. The competition is open to professionals, students, firms, freelancers, and hobbyists across nine design disciplines, including architectural design, interior design, landscape design, product design, packaging design, fashion design, conceptual design, user experience (UX) design, and user interface (UI) design.

The 2026 cycle is divided into two seasons. Season 1 results have already been announced. Season 2 entries are currently open, with the early bird period running until April 14, 2026. Submissions must be for work produced after January 1, 2021.

Intent

The competition does not operate around a single theme or brief. Instead, participants submit completed or conceptual work within one of the defined categories and are evaluated against other entries in that same category. There is no site, no program, and no client. The competition functions as a recognition platform rather than a design research or procurement exercise.

For participants in the architectural design and landscape categories, the entry brief asks for a 350-word synopsis, JPEG images, and optionally a video or audio URL. Evaluation is blind, removing all entrant information before judging.

Purpose

The stated purpose is recognition and visibility. Winners receive certificates, badges, press release templates, a dedicated profile page on the competition website for five years, and potential features on the media partner platform Muse.World. The top scorer in each category receives the title of “Design of the Year” and is eligible to purchase the physical Maia statuette.

The competition does not involve any built commission, exhibition slot, or city-facing outcome. It is structured primarily as a credentialing and marketing tool for design professionals and firms, particularly those seeking international award citations for use in architectural portfolios or business development.

Requirements

The competition is open to all backgrounds, nationalities, and career stages. Entries must be submitted online via the French Design Awards platform. Required materials include a written synopsis of approximately 350 words, flattened JPEG images under 4MB at 1,200px wide and 300dpi, and optionally a video or audio URL hosted on Vimeo, YouTube, or Youku. Work must have been produced within the last five years. Multiple entries and multiple category submissions are permitted, with additional fees applying.

Jury

The jury panel for 2026 is large, comprising over 50 international members drawn from architecture, interior design, product design, fashion, UX, branding, and engineering. The jury is open-call in structure: anyone can nominate themselves to be a juror through the competition website. Below are the featured jury members highlighted on the official website:

Qiwei Li (USA) — Co-Owner and Editor-in-Chief of ArchCollege, a global architecture media platform with 2.1 million followers; Co-Founder of APlace Design and Development; Adjunct Professor at Beijing Jiaotong University.
Anna Zhang (USA) — Fashion and graphic designer; Associate Designer at G-III Apparel Group for Calvin Klein and Donna Karan; presented work at New York Fashion Week.
Tiago Russo (Portugal) — CEO and Founder of Craft Design; background in luxury product and experience design; over 130 international design awards, including iF, Red Dot, and A’ Design.
Khaled Elnems (UAE) — Industrial product designer and R&D Innovations QC at PARSONS Infrastructure and Technology Group; serves on committees for international engineering invention exhibitions.
Artem Kropovinsky (USA) — Founder and Principal Designer of Arsight, a New York-based interior design studio specializing in residential and commercial projects.
Yang Fei (USA) — Founder and Director of Field Object Lab; Harvard GSD alumnus; previously a project designer at Kohn Pedersen Fox in New York.
Yafei Zhang (USA) — Associate Principal at Kohn Pedersen Fox; licensed architect in New Jersey; LEED AP; projects include Meta 50 Hudson Yards.
Xiyao Wang (USA) — Associate Principal at Kohn Pedersen Fox; Master of Architecture in Urban Design from Harvard University; specializes in parametric facade design for high-rise buildings.
Yingfan Zhang (China) — Co-founder and chief architect of Atelier Alter Architects; studied at Harvard GSD and Cooper Union under Raimund Abraham and Peter Eisenman.
Xudong Zhu (China) — Co-founder and Principal Designer at T.E.N; Master of Architecture in Urban Design from Harvard GSD; winner of the Plimpton-Poorvu Design Prize.
Benjamin Calleja (Spain) — CEO of Livit Design, described as the world’s largest restaurant design company; registered architect in multiple European countries, including Germany, France, Italy, the UK, and Spain.
Misak Terzibasiyan (Netherlands) — Founder and Principal Architect of UArchitects; studied at Eindhoven University of Technology.
Jeremy Smith (New Zealand) — Design Director of Irving Smith Architects; writes for Architecture New Zealand; has served as a judge in India, Singapore, Berlin, Amsterdam, and Lisbon.
Florian Seidl (Italy) — Design Manager at Lavazza; oversees corporate design across product lines; previously contributed to the Fiat 500 model range expansion.
Takbir Fatima (India) — Director of DesignAware in Dubai and Hyderabad; MArch from the AA School of Architecture; teaches at Boston Architectural College and CEPT University; listed in RIBA’s “100 Women: Architects in Practice.”
Jae Leong (Malaysia) — Judging Committee Chairperson of the International Awards Associate (IAA); oversees jury coordination across IAA programs.

The full jury panel of 50+ members is available on the competition website. Jury membership is open to self-nomination, which is an atypical structure compared to invitation-only competition juries.

Registration Fees

Entry Type	Early Bird (20 Mar – 14 Apr 2026)	Regular (15 Apr – 20 May 2026)	Final (21 May – 26 Jun 2026)	Final Extension (27 Jun – 21 Jul 2026)
Professional 1st Entry	$209	$219	$239	$249
Additional Entry	$209	$219	$239	$249
Additional Category	$149	$159	$179	$189

All fees are non-refundable. A $30 annual administrative fee applies to all participants and covers printing, mailing, and data management.

Prizes and Rewards

Winning Level	Score Range	Monetary Prize	Key Benefits
Design of the Year	Highest score per category	None (Maia statuette eligible for purchase)	Statuette, press release, winner highlight page, newsletter, social media post, interview, profile page, certificate, badge
Platinum Winner	85 – 100 points	None	Newsletter, social media post, interview, profile page, press release, certificate, badge
Gold Winner	70 – 84 points	None	Interview, profile page, press release, certificate, badge
Silver Winner	50 – 69 points	None	Interview, profile page, press release, certificate, badge

There are no cash prizes at any level. All recognition is digital and promotional in nature.

Key Dates

Entry Period	Dates
Early Bird	20 March – 14 April 2026
Regular	15 April – 20 May 2026
Final	21 May – 26 June 2026
Final Extension	27 June – 21 July 2026
Results Announced	10 September 2026

✦ ArchUp Competition Review

The French Design Awards is organized by the International Awards Associate (IAA), a private commercial awards group that operates over 34 award programs simultaneously across design, photography, business, advertising, and hospitality. This structure places the competition firmly in the category of commercial recognition platforms rather than professionally curated design competitions. There are no cash prizes at any level; all rewards are digital and promotional. Entry fees start at $209 per submission with a mandatory $30 annual administrative fee, making it a revenue-generating model where participants pay for the possibility of a certificate and a profile page. The jury panel is large and internationally diverse, but its open self-nomination structure means jury quality varies significantly across disciplines. For the architectural design and urban design categories specifically, several jury members have credible academic and professional backgrounds, but the panel also includes members from unrelated fields such as advertising, systems engineering, and fashion PR. The practical benefit for participants is limited to portfolio citation and online visibility, with no built commission, exhibition, or peer-reviewed outcome attached.

Final Thoughts

The French Design Awards are a known entity within the commercial awards circuit. IAA has been running its network of award programs for several years and has accumulated a substantial number of entries from over 124 countries. It is not a fraudulent or obscure operation, but it is also not a professionally curated or editorially independent competition of the kind typically associated with architecture and design institution recognition.

For practitioners in the architecture and design fields, the primary question is whether the entry fee is justified by the recognition value. With no cash prize, no built outcome, and a jury structure that includes self-nominated members from adjacent and unrelated industries, the credentialing weight of a French Design Awards citation is limited compared to peer-reviewed or institutionally-backed programs.

It may have value for designers and firms looking to build an international award citation list for marketing purposes, particularly in markets where the IAA’s network of associated media platforms offers genuine reach. For those evaluating it as a serious professional benchmark, the fee-to-reward ratio and jury selection model warrant careful consideration before entering.