Barcelona prepares for the UIA 2026 International Architecture Congress

The event will begin with an official reception in the Saló de Cent, one of the most symbolic spaces in the city hall. It will be more than a ceremonial welcome: Barcelona wants to use the congress to strengthen its role as a city laboratory, capable of thinking about its future through architecture and urban planning.

The mayor, Jaume Collboni, has highlighted the work of the Col·legi d’Arquitectes de Catalunya and the UIA in bringing this gathering back to the city. Barcelona already hosted a historic edition three decades ago, and is now doing so again at a time marked by very different challenges.

Housing, heat, mobility, the transformation of the coastline and the need to create more liveable spaces run through much of the urban agenda. The congress therefore comes at a particularly sensitive moment for a city debating how to grow without losing quality of life.

One of the main focal points will be Besòs. The opening will take place around the Tres Xemeneies, an industrial icon that Barcelona and Sant Adrià want to turn into a key part of the metropolitan area’s next phase. The message is clear: the urban future is no longer being shaped solely in the centre, but also on the fringes that for years were marked by infrastructure, industry and inequality.

The transformation of Besòs forms part of a broader vision for 2035. Barcelona is working on projects such as the new Montjuïc, la Sagrera, la Marina and the renewal of the coastline, developments that may change the relationship between neighbourhoods, transport, housing, economic activity and green spaces.

Collboni has advocated the need to combine technology and humanism in urban solutions. The underlying idea is that architecture should not be limited to designing buildings, but should help answer very specific questions: where people will live, how they will get around, how they will protect themselves from the heat and which spaces they will share.

In this debate, the Tres Xemeneies carry an obvious symbolic weight. For decades they defined the industrial skyline of the Besòs coastline. Now they are being presented as a possible setting for new uses linked to the sustainable economy, culture, innovation and reflection on urban life.

The presence of architects and urban planners from around the world will give international visibility to projects that directly affect everyday life in Barcelona. Behind the grand concepts are issues close to home: better-connected neighbourhoods, cooler streets, useful facilities and a less fragmented metropolis.

The congress will not solve the city’s problems on its own, but it can accelerate important conversations. Barcelona comes to this event with a question on the table: how to remain a desirable city without becoming an impossible city for those who live in it.

For a few days, the Saló de Cent, Besòs and other urban spaces will serve as a showcase and an arena for debate. Architecture will look to Barcelona, but Barcelona will also have to look at itself: at its neighbourhoods, its limits and the way it wants to live in the coming decades.