Pritzker Prize Winners: A Guide to Architecture’s Highest Honour

Photography by William Mulvihill

Pritzker Prize winners are the architects judged to have made the most significant contribution to the built environment, the recipients of what is often called the Nobel of architecture. Awarded every year since 1979, the prize has twice gone to the Portuguese masters behind Lebond, Álvaro Siza and Eduardo Souto de Moura.

What is the Pritzker Prize?

The Pritzker Architecture Prize is the field’s highest international honour, given annually to a living architect for a body of work of lasting value. It was founded in 1979 by Jay and Cindy Pritzker through their family’s Hyatt Foundation, and the first laureate was the American architect Philip Johnson. Each winner receives a grant and a bronze medallion, and the announcement is followed closely as a barometer of where architecture is heading.

Every Pritzker Prize winner, 1979 to 2026

From Philip Johnson in 1979 to the present, the prize has honoured a single living architect almost every year. The complete list of laureates is below.

How Pritzker winners are chosen

Each year an international jury, made up of architects, critics, scholars and past laureates, selects a single living architect whose built work shows talent, vision and commitment sustained over time. The prize rewards a body of work rather than one famous building, which is why laureates range from designers of grand civic monuments to architects working quietly with modest budgets and local materials. In recent years the jury has leaned toward social purpose and restraint over spectacle, a shift that says as much about architecture’s priorities as about any individual winner. The announcement each spring is read worldwide as a signal of where the discipline believes its future lies.

The Pritzker winners behind Lebond

Two names on that list are central to this brand. Álvaro Siza, the 1992 laureate, is celebrated for a sculptural poetic modernism, while Eduardo Souto de Moura, the 2011 laureate, refined that language into a cooler, Miesian restraint. Both belong to the Porto School, and both have translated their architecture into Swiss titanium for Lebond, making the brand a rare meeting point between Pritzker-level design and the wrist.

Why the Pritzker matters beyond architecture

The prize matters because it sets the terms of what good architecture means in a given decade, and those terms ripple outward into design at every scale. The same values the jury rewards, proportion, restraint, honest material and a sensitivity to context, are exactly the ones an architect brings to a watch dial. Seeing them celebrated at the scale of a museum or a stadium makes their appearance on the wrist feel less like novelty and more like continuity. Explore how that thinking looks in titanium across the Lebond collection and meet the brand’s architects.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Pritzker Prize?

The Pritzker Architecture Prize is the highest international honour in architecture, awarded each year since 1979 to a living architect for a significant body of work. It is run by the Hyatt Foundation and is often called the Nobel of architecture.

Who was the first Pritzker Prize winner?

The first Pritzker Prize winner was the American architect Philip Johnson, in 1979, the year the prize was founded by Jay and Cindy Pritzker.

Who is the most recent Pritzker Prize winner?

The 2026 Pritzker Prize was awarded to the Chilean architect Smiljan Radić. Recent laureates also include Liu Jiakun (2025), Riken Yamamoto (2024) and David Chipperfield (2023).

Which Pritzker winners designed watches for Lebond?

Two Portuguese Pritzker laureates design for Lebond: Álvaro Siza (1992) and Eduardo Souto de Moura (2011), each with a watch made in Swiss titanium.