kiril
August, 2026
Buildathon 2026 is officially underway, bringing together student teams from around the world for a global design challenge focused on digital collaboration, sustainability and data-driven design.
Following the opening briefing sessions, this year’s competition brief has now been revealed and teams are getting to work.
The Buildathon 2026 challenge
This year, participants have been challenged to design a Learning and Innovation Hub on a site of their choice – whether on their own campus, within a local urban area, on a brownfield or regeneration site, or another location meaningful to their community.
But the challenge goes beyond designing a building.
Buildathon 2026 is an outcome-based BIM challenge, asking teams to use Autodesk Forma Site Design and Autodesk Revit to explore their ideas and demonstrate how performance data informs the development of their design.
Teams will consider factors including natural daylight, photovoltaic potential, climate-responsive massing, occupant comfort and operational energy demand, using analysis to justify the decisions behind their final proposal.
Buildathon participants
Review the competition brief here: Buildathon 2026_competition brief.pdf
Recording: https://youtu.be/JpkFtXq13Uw
From data to design
Throughout the challenge, teams will develop and evaluate their concepts, looking at environmental factors including sun, daylight, wind, noise and solar energy.
The judging criteria place a strong emphasis not only on the final proposal, but also on the thinking behind it – from site analysis and spatial planning to environmental performance, iteration and data-driven decision making.
With the brief now revealed, the challenge is on.
We look forward to seeing how teams around the world respond to the Buildathon 2026 brief and turn performance data, collaboration and creative thinking into their final designs.