The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) has announced the winners of its 2025 Award of Excellence competition, a robust slate of built and unbuilt projects from around the world that respond to current global challenges and demonstrate the vital role of tall buildings in the 21st century. (View the full list of winning projects here.)

Spanning 20 countries and more than 20 categories, this year’s winners exemplify creative and technical leadership across the gamut of sustainable vertical urbanism. From carbon-negative towers to adaptive reuse strategies that extend the life of existing structures by decades, the 2025 awardees are unified by an evolution of values: growth as well as stewardship, height and impact.

“This year’s cohort demonstrates not only technical sophistication and design ingenuity but also an ability to respond to the circumstances shaping the world right now—from regional issues and economic challenges to the accelerating climate crisis,” according to Javier Quintana de Uña, CEO of CTBUH. “These projects prove that tall buildings and the vertical urbanism they engender can instigate better quality of life, ecological resilience and urban equity simultaneously. That’s the direction our industry must move in.”

In categories such as Best Tall Building, Innovation and Urban Habitat, this year’s winners emphasize reuse, low-carbon materials, equitable housing and integrated infrastructure. Submitting companies were also asked to share data on the carbon and material usage in their projects—part of the CTBUH 2025 Awards Carbon Pilot Program—which attempts to consolidate embodied carbon data from across the globe and serve as a benchmark for sustainable development practices. Several projects introduce hybrid programmatic models, blurring the line between public and private realms and prioritizing circularity from the outset.

“Vertical urbanism isn’t just about going taller—it’s about rethinking how height intersects with livability, connectivity and the relationship of tall buildings with the street,” said James Parakh, Urban Design Manager at the City of Toronto Planning Division and a juror in the Urban Habitat category. “This year’s submissions illustrate how tall buildings can do more than dominate skylines—they can animate streets, enliven their contexts and shape cohesive, healthy neighborhoods. The most compelling projects treat the base, the tower and the spaces between towers as a continuous urban experience. That kind of holistic thinking can benefit cities, improve livability and create vibrant places where people thrive.”

CTBUH’s call for entries drew its broadest global participation yet, with submissions from firms working in cities as diverse as Brisbane, Göteborg, New Cairo, Tokyo and Toronto, among many others. Each submission was evaluated by multidisciplinary juries comprising leaders in architecture, engineering, planning, construction and real estate development. The selection criteria prioritized performance—environmental, cultural and operational—over prestige or aesthetics alone. Awardees will present their work during the CTBUH 2025 International Conference, themed From the Ground Up: Tall Buildings and City-Making, taking place 6–9 October in Toronto, where they’ll vie for “best in category” recognition. Results will be announced during the conference’s prestigious award ceremony and dinner.

Now in its 22nd year, the CTBUH awards program can enhance the reputation and marketability of the companies responsible for selected projects.

“Receiving the CTBUH Award of Excellence for One Za’abeel has been a defining moment—both personally and for our entire team,” expressed Dr. Mohamed Hegazy, Director of Property & Buildings Construction Supervision in the Middle East at WSP. The project was named overall winner in the Best Tall Building, Middle East & Africa category in the 2024 competition.

“As professionals leading complex projects, we navigate diverse challenges while aligning stakeholder interests. We're proud of the industry-leading engineering that made this achievement possible—advancing standards and integrating it seamlessly with the community—which marks a meaningful evolution in the architectural landscape,” continued Hegazy. “The award showcased our work on the global stage, inspiring new conversations about what’s possible when visionary thinking, purposeful execution and ambition converge to raise the bar and pave the way for the next generation of transformative structures.”

“Our awards have always spotlighted excellence, but in 2025 excellence looks different,” added Quintana de Uña. “We’re now measuring success not by spectacle but by a building’s capacity to support life—human and otherwise—for generations to come.”

For more information on the CTBUH awards program, including jury members by category and all prior Award of Excellence winners, visit awards.ctbuh.org.