Mies van der Rohe Award 2026

Preview: written before the show opened

One photo on the museum's page shows a small theatre foyer hung with curtains made for shading agricultural glasshouses. It comes from this year's emerging-architect winner in Ljubljana, where 1960s industrial halls in Litostroj became a temporary home for the Slovenian National Theatre Drama in ten months, built mostly from recycled and reusable materials.

That is the thread of the whole show: the 40 projects shortlisted for the EUmies Awards 2026, the EU prize for contemporary architecture, back in Milan for the first time in ten years. Each one is told through photographs, videos, models and pictograms, and most are about making something new out of a building that already stands. The museum holding them is itself a converted industrial building, so you can check its work on the way in.

You are looking at buildings through models and pictures, not walking through them. The show page's ticket link leads to the museum's standard ticket: €15, €12 reduced, cards only. Closed Fridays.