The architecture and design industry is no longer debating whether sustainability matters. The more urgent question is how quickly, intelligently and ambitiously the profession can move from aspiration to measurable progress.
This is where the 2026 METROPOLIS Planet Positive Awards come in.
Now open for entries, the Planet Positive Awards honor excellence in sustainable, healthy and equitable design across the built environment. Organized by METROPOLIS, one of Architizer’s sister platforms and one of the most trusted voices in design media, the program recognizes the projects, products, firms and individuals making meaningful progress towards a more resilient future.
The Final Entry Deadline is June 26, 2026. Hit the button below to get started on your submission and use code Architizer26 to receive $25 off your submission!
Enter the Planet Positive Awards
With more than 50 categories spanning architecture, interiors, landscape, infrastructure, products, research, material innovation, decarbonization, health and wellness, and social impact, the awards offer a national platform for work that is not only well designed, but deeply consequential.
“We want to celebrate the incredible progress that design professionals are making, every year, to transform the built environment and bring into harmony with nature and communities,” says Avinash Rajagopal, Editor in Chief of METROPOLIS. “This work is more challenging in some sectors than others, so we want to applaud every milestone and innovation that makes a positive impact in the world.”
Why Planet Positive Design Matters Now
NBCUniversal Campus Project by LEVER Architecture, 2025 Planet Positive Awards Winner in the Workplace category.
For architects, designers, manufacturers and clients, the language of sustainability has become both more sophisticated and more demanding. Carbon, circularity, resilience, material health, adaptive reuse, community engagement and equity are no longer peripheral concerns; they are shaping briefs, budgets, specifications and long-term value.
The Planet Positive Awards recognize this shift with unusual breadth. Rather than celebrating sustainability as a single aesthetic or metric, the program acknowledges the many scales at which progress happens: a healthcare building that improves patient outcomes, a workplace interior that reduces embodied carbon, a landscape project designed for resilience, a material system advancing circularity, a firm transforming its portfolio from the inside out.
This is an awards program for the complex, incremental and often technically demanding work of changing the industry — the research, procurement decisions, design strategies, collaborations and leadership that make better buildings possible.
A Simpler Way to Showcase Your Work
Sunstyle by CertainTeed, 2025 Planet Positive Award Winner in the Architectural Systems category.
For 2026, METROPOLIS has streamlined the submission process to make the awards more accessible to a wider range of entrants.
This year, project award applications do not need to be certified in order to enter. This opens the door for outstanding work that demonstrates measurable progress, even when formal certification is not part of the project’s story.
For Innovation Award submissions, entrants may provide existing documentation, such as a press release, report, case study or other written material. The aim is to reduce unnecessary friction and allow strong work to be evaluated on its merits.
Every submission will be reviewed by METROPOLIS editors before being evaluated by a jury of expert practitioners and noted client-side decision-makers. This editorial review process is a valuable part of the program, reflecting METROPOLIS’s broader role in the design industry: not only identifying strong work, but helping articulate why it matters.
What Winners Receive
Catalunya Media City Three Chimneys / Tres Xemeneies by Marvel+GDSB, 2025 Planet Positive Award Winner in the Unbuilt Project category.
Winners of the 2026 Planet Positive Awards will receive a robust package of editorial, print, digital, social and event-based recognition.
Winning work will be published in the November/December 2026 Annual Sustainability Issue of METROPOLIS, reaching an engaged readership of more than 52,000 readers.
Winners will also be celebrated at the METROPOLIS Planet Positive Awards Ceremony on September 30, 2026, hosted by Avinash Rajagopal at The Center for Architecture and Design in San Francisco. The ceremony will be broadcast nationally on DESIGNTV, while winners will also be showcased across METROPOLIS’s digital ecosystem and social channels, reaching more than 200,000 highly engaged followers.
Additional benefits include invitations to select METROPOLIS events across the United States and a custom Planet Positive Awards trophy recognizing leadership in sustainable design and innovation.
A Platform for Real Progress
Mayo Clinic Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Building by HDR, 2025 Planet Positive Award Winner in the Healthcare category.
Recent honorees demonstrate the range and ambition of the program. The Mayo Clinic Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Building by HDR was recognized as last year’s Healthcare project winner. HOK was named 2025 Planet Positive Firm of the Year for its portfolio-wide commitment to sustainability, while Interface’s “All In” commitment won the Corporate Sustainability Initiative category.
Together, these examples show the awards’ central proposition: planet-positive design is not one thing. It is a field of action that includes buildings, interiors, products, materials, research, education, leadership and organizational change.
For firms and manufacturers working to reduce impact, improve health outcomes, advance equity or rethink the material basis of construction, the Planet Positive Awards offer a powerful opportunity to have that work recognized by one of design media’s most respected editorial platforms.
Enter before the Final Entry Deadline on June 26, 2026, and don’t forget to use code Architizer26 to receive $25 off your submission:
Enter the Planet Positive Awards
Top image: NBCUniversal Campus Project by LEVER Architecture, 2025 Planet Positive Awards Winner in the Workplace category.
