Premju Emanuele Luigi Galizia 2026

Awards

Kamra tal-Periti and the Planning Authority have launched the fifth edition of Premju Emanuele Luigi Galizia. First established in 2018, the award is now organised jointly by both entities, bolstering its prestige as a unified national platform for the sector. This partnership brings public institutions and the profession together to recognise design quality, planning insight, and technical expertise across the built environment, providing a platform for Periti to showcase work that addresses contemporary challenges with professional rigour.

An independent jury of international peers, led by local professionals, will assess all submissions, providing professional recognition and promoting a wider public understanding of high-quality design.

Premju Galizia continues to advocate for professionalism, resourcefulness, and the cultural value of the professions within the built environment. The programme supports projects that view spatial quality as a lasting civic contribution rather than a matter of aesthetic style.

While the 2025 edition used the historical legacy of Galizia to evaluate the direction of the profession, the 2026 edition focuses directly on accountability and execution on the ground. The categories are aligned with the current spatial, environmental, and social realities of the Maltese Islands.

Core Categories

Adaptive Reuse Award

This award honours projects that transform historic buildings with care and clarity – where conservation and sustainability is not a backdrop but an active design process. Projects must demonstrate promote the reuse of the original structure with limited waste generation, sensitivity to the architectural language of the original structure, and meaningful integration of new uses, systems, and materials. Attention to custom elements, detail resolution, re-use of materials, and spatial continuity is central.

Entry Criteria: Eligible projects must be built works completed in Malta between January 2021 and June 2026. The intervention must involve a building that had been constructed on or prior to 1988. Submissions should demonstrate a clear sustainability and conservation strategy with attention to architectural legibility and respectful adaptation. Projects must show how the building is adapted to new functions that are more relevant to contemporary society, while respecting the building’s original character and identity.

Public Projects Award

For public-sector or state-funded projects that reflect architectural responsibility and public value. Whether small or large in scale, this award celebrates civic clarity, design integrity, and contribution to collective experience, —evoking the standards of Galizia’s legacy.

Entry Criteria: Eligible projects include buildings or spaces commissioned or delivered by public entities, completed in Malta between January 2021 and June 2026. Submissions must demonstrate spatial clarity, architectural quality, and public value. Projects should reflect design integrity, material robustness, and civic purpose. Evaluation will consider how the project contributes to community access, experience, and long-term relevance.

Open Space Design Award

Celebrating green, open, or public spaces that resist provide respite from urban density overdevelopment and offer places for rest, gathering, and ecological diversity. These are interventions that serve Maltese towns and urban edge conditions with generosity, simplicity, and civic intelligence.

Entry Criteria: Open to completed public open spaces such as parks, gardens, piazzas, or urban greening interventions, delivered between January 2021 and June 2026. Projects must demonstrate thoughtful spatial composition, ecological value, and community utility. Submissions should show care in layout, planting strategy, surface materials, and long-term maintenance. Tactical or temporary interventions may be eligible if documented evidence of impact exists.

Multi-Unit Residential Design Award

This award platforms excellence in the development of multi-dwelling housing in the context of rapid urban densification by seeking to create a well-crafted and integrated addition to our urban environment that is capable of responding to its context while providing a high-quality living space for its occupants, setting a benchmark for mass housing in Malta.

Entry Criteria: Eligible projects include apartment blocks or multi-unit housing completed in Malta between January 2021 and June 2026. Submissions should reflect high standards in contextual design, residential amenity, sustainable features, and a high-quality, functional unit-layout. Projects must demonstrate how they contribute positively to the surrounding urban context and provide liveable, dignified housing through material, spatial, and environmental design.

Single Dwelling Design Award

Honouring Malta’s evolving domestic architectural identity, from villas and terraced houses to conversions of historic townhouses. This award focuses on spatial invention, materiality, tactility, and how architecture shapes everyday living through structure, detail, and tone. The project must demonstrate excellence in responding to its context, while providing an exceptionally designed interior space for its building occupants.

Entry Criteria: Open to completed single-family homes, including new builds or deep renovations, realised between January 2021 and June 2026. Submissions must demonstrate architectural inventiveness, spatial clarity, and coherence across interior and exterior spaces. Judging will consider material choices, detail resolution, and how the project interprets or advances Malta’s domestic architectural identity.

Workplace Design Award

Recognising high-quality workspaces – from offices to studios to factories—designed for wellbeing, focus, and adaptability. This category rewards clarity in function, comfort in atmosphere, and excellence in spatial and material design.

Entry Criteria: This category is open to offices, co-working spaces, factories, studios, or other work-related environments completed between January 2021 and June 2026. Submissions should show excellence in layout, ergonomics, and environmental quality—daylight, ventilation, acoustics. Entries must reflect thoughtful integration of furniture, materials, and systems that support well-being, productivity, and adaptability.

Built Heritage Conservation Award

This award honours projects that display technical excellence in the execution of conservation projects in Malta’s built heritage by demonstrating meticulous historical research related to the building, the construction technology and materials employed in its construction, its social, cultural and environmental context over time, and the deliberate selection of the appropriate conservation methodologies to restore and preserve the building into the future. Projects may include contemporary interventions in the historic fabric that complement and enhance the visitor experience without overpowering the historical and architectural value of the heritage site.

Entry Criteria: Eligible projects must be built works completed in Malta between January 2021 and June 2026. The intervention must involve a formally scheduled or historically significant building. Submissions should demonstrate a clear conservation strategy with attention to architectural legibility, sensitive introduction of contemporary technical systems, while rendering the building broadly accessible to all.

Hospitality Design Award

Celebrating projects in Malta’s growing tourism landscape – from hotels to restaurants and wellness spaces. These are projects that shape the visitor experience through spatial richness, materiality, detailing, and atmosphere. Whether heritage-based or newly built, hospitality is understood as spatial storytelling.

Entry Criteria: Open to completed projects in the domains of accommodation, dining, and wellness, delivered between January 2021 and June 2026. Projects may be new builds, adaptive reuse and/or high-quality interiors. Submissions must demonstrate design quality across spatial planning, guest comfort, atmosphere, and material tactility. Interior design and furniture integration are central to evaluation. Entries should clearly present how spatial design elevates the hospitality experience.

Special Categories

Emerging Practice Award

This category is intended to give recognition to the younger members of the profession, by awarding their body of work, ethos and organisational capacity.

Entry Criteria: Eligible participants must be fully qualified Periti, whether individual or registered partnerships, who have been practising for not more than 10 years on the deadline of the award entries, or practices where 51% or more of principals have been practising for not more than 10 years on the deadline for submission of entries. Nominees submitting an entry for the Emerging Practice Award should include a comprehensive portfolio of projects.

Unbuilt Projects Award

This award celebrates unrealised projects that reflect strong architectural or spatial thinking. These may include conceptual projects including, but not limited to, non-commissioned design studies, or competition entries that were not implemented. The emphasis is on conceptual clarity, design resolution, and relevance to Malta’s built context and challenges. Whether constrained by circumstance or intentionally speculative, these projects stand as valuable contributions to the development of our built environment.

Entry Criteria: Eligible entries must be design projects developed between January 2021 and June 2026. Submissions should clearly outline the project’s intention, context, and process, supported by drawings, visualisations, and a concise rationale. Evaluation will focus on the completeness of architectural thought, the clarity of spatial strategy, and the project’s potential civic or cultural impact, even in its unbuilt state.

President's Student Medal

Architectural Design Medal

This category acknowledges excellence in the academic formation of Malta’s future architects, recognising projects that demonstrate the highest standards of environmental and social sustainability, while displaying excellent design and presentation skills.

Entry Criteria: Submissions are open for any student project formally presented for review at a recognised architectural school in the past five years by a permanent resident of Malta or a Maltese national studying abroad.

Engineering Design Medal

This category acknowledges excellence in the academic formation of Malta’s future civil engineers, recognising projects that demonstrate the highest standards of environmental and social sustainability, while displaying excellent design and presentation skills.

Entry Criteria: Submissions are open for any student project formally presented for review at a recognised engineering school in the past five years by a permanent resident of Malta or a Maltese national studying abroad.

Hand Drawing Excellence Medal

This category celebrates the enduring artistry of analogue drafting in architectural and engineering education, honouring student-authored conceptual sketches, drawings, or abstract explorations through the adept control of the pen or pencil, and techniques such as line-weight, shading, and perspective to create depth and meaning.

Entry Criteria: Submissions are open for any student hand-drawings formally presented for review at a recognised architectural or engineering school in the past two years by a permanent resident of Malta or a Maltese national studying abroad. To be eligible, drawing must be primarily made by hand, even if subsequently scanned and digitally touched up or integrated into a broader presentation board.

Computer-Aided Drawing Excellence Medal

This category celebrates the contemporary artistry behind the expert use of digital tools including CAD, parametric and rendering software, and the use of AI, in conveying a sharp and meaningful rendition of an architectural concept or abstraction.

Role Model Categories

Galizia Leadership Award

Celebrating individuals, firms, or institutions who exemplify leadership and advocate for the Periti community resulting in significant impact and the advancement of the profession and / or shaping of the built environment in Malta. The award recognises achievements in areas such as design innovation, sustainable practices, cultural preservation, community engagement, and professional advocacy. The award seeks to inspire future generations, by promoting a culture of leadership, innovation, and responsibility towards the built environment in Malta. By honouring exemplary leadership, the award aims to elevate the discourse on our built environment and its transformative role in shaping sustainable, inclusive, and culturally rich communities in Malta and beyond.

Entry Criteria: This category is open to any individual, or organisation, not necessarily warrant-holders. Submissions, via nomination, must include a portfolio of work that demonstrates the far-reaching and consistent impact of the architectural leader in the period spanning: 1st January, 2021and 30th June, 2026.

Lifetime Achievement Award

Recognising significant and outstanding contributions to the Perit profession over a distinguished career, this award celebrates individuals whose work has made a consistent and lasting impact on the profession and on the Islands’ built environment discourse. This award honours Periti whose distinguished careers have left a profound impact on the profession, showcasing innovation, leadership, and enduring influence.

Entry Criteria: Nomination

President's Award

The Presidential Award is the highest honour in the field, recognising excellence in design innovation, environmental responsibility, social inclusivity, and cultural significance.

Entry Criteria: Selected by the jury from the winners of the core categories. No submissions will be accepted for the President’s Award.

Eligibility & Entry Conditions

Project Type & Timeline

Eligible entries include new builds, renovations, alterations, or extensions completed in the Maltese Islands. Projects must be fully completed by 30 June 2026 and fall within the completion window of 1 January 2021 – 30 June 2026. Incomplete projects will not be considered.

Who Can Apply

Core categories are open to Periti or practices authorised in Malta, interior designers and architectural students.

Previously shortlisted and winning projects are not eligible.

Previously submitted but projects that did not reach the final stages in previous editions may be resubmitted to be reconsidered by the new jury, subject to full compliance with 2026 regulations.

Nomination-Only Awards

The Galizia Leadership Award and Lifetime Achievement Award are by nomination only.

No submissions are accepted for the President’s Award.

Awards Discretion

Kamra tal-Periti and the Planning Authority reserve the right not to award a category if no entry meets the standard.

Team Recognition

Awards are granted to the entire project team, as their contribution is essential to the project and thus to the entire team as listed in the submission organigram. If any eligible professional is excluded from the submission, the project may be disqualified.

Submission Requirements

Each project-category combination requires:

Completed online application form
Submission of complete Project Team details
Submission of Jury Slide Deck and Media Files
Acceptance of 2026 T&Rs
Payment of €200 submission fee

See more detail here

Award Process

Stage 1: Submissions

Applications need to be submitted to Kamra tal-Periti by 18th September 2026, at 23.59 hrs.

Submission requirements per category are available in the application form found at

www.premjugalizia.org/submit

Stage 2: Online Presentations & Shortlisting

An eligibility committee appointed by the organising committee of Premju Galizia will review each submission received to ensure eligibility with the administrative criteria.

Administrative Criteria

Submitted entries will initially be assessed to verify compliance with the submission requirements including submission of application form, uploading of all submission file requirements, payment of participation fee, valid planning permission (if applicable), date of completion, acceptance of award conditions;
The committee will verify compliance with category profile.

Any entries that do not fulfil the administrative criteria will be automatically disqualified.

Online Presentations

The organising committee will appoint a jury composed of five international members and lead by local representatives appointed by the organising committee.

All valid submissions shall present their submission in front the aforementioned jury during online presentations held between the 28th and 30th September 2026. Following the online presentations, the jury will shortlist a minimum of three entries per category to be presented during the live presentation for a final assessment.

The finalists in each category will be required to prepare a poster about their entry as per guidelines to be supplied by organising committee. Said poster shall be included in the public exhibition.

Stage 3: Final Judging & Awards

The selected finalists for each category will deliver public presentations of their projects to the juries, between 13th & 14th September 2026.

Physical models, samples and/or any other physical materials supporting the projects may be displayed by the finalists on presentations day during their dedicated presentation slot, however they will not be perused by judges in their determinations.

The winners of each category will be announced during the Awards Ceremony. The President’s Award for the Best Project of the year, will be awarded to the project’s category winner considered by the jury to be the most deserving project on the basis of the New European Bauhaus initiative’s three principles and the Davos Baukultur Quality System’s eight criteria.

The organising committee of Premju Galizia reserves the right NOT to award any category should the jury conclude that none of the submissions meet the required standard.

All submissions will be given a complimentary ticket to attend the Awards Ceremony and Gala Night on 17th October, 2026 (for a maximum of two tickets per shortlisted application). Any additional tickets for the final Awards ceremony, shall be purchased from Kamra tal-Periti.

Timeline

Opening of nominations

27th July, 2026

Announcement of jury

3rd August, 2026

Closing of Submissions

18th September, 2026 at 2359hrs

Online Presentations

28th – 30th September, 2026

Announcement of Finalists

2nd October, 2026

Public exhibition [St George’s Square, Valletta]

12-17th October, 2026

Live Presentations [Manoel Theatre, Valletta]

13th – 14th October, 2026

Awards ceremony [Grandmaster’s Palace, Valletta]

17th October, 2026

International Recognition

Mies van der Rohe Awards

Selected winners of Premju Galizia are eligible for nomination to the biennial European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Awards, one of Europe’s most prominent architecture prizes.

The Kamra tal-Periti is invited by Fundació Mies van der Rohe every two years to nominate five Maltese project to participate in EUmies. The Council of the Kamra tal-Periti selects its nominees from among the winners and special commendation recipients of recent editions of Premju Galizia who would be eligible.