Article
What the 2026 entries say about design in the Gulf
More signage, more Arabic type commissioning, fewer imported systems.
2 min read
Article · May 28, 2026
Across 372 shortlisted projects the clearest shift is commissioning: more studios are having Arabic type drawn for a project rather than adapting a family that was never meant to carry it.
A regional award, judged regionally
The programme exists because work made in Amman, Cairo, Riyadh, Dubai and Casablanca was being measured against criteria written somewhere else, for a market with different constraints, different scripts and different production.
That does not mean a softer standard. It means the standard is written where the work is made, and that a jury reading an entry knows what a two-week print turnaround or a bilingual signage brief actually costs.
An archive, not a season
Every edition stays addressable after its year closes. A finalist from an earlier cycle keeps their page, their groups and their count, because a reference that disappears when the next cycle opens is not a reference.
That is the part the region was missing: not another prize, but a record designers can point at years later when they are asked what good work here looked like.
Read this next
The criteria, the tiers and the six phases are set out in full under Awards. If a point here matters to an entry you are preparing, that is the page that governs it - this one only explains it.
