Winter Stations

Winter Stations, the international design competition, is back to animate Toronto’s Beaches with design during the winter months.

Winter Stations is a single-stage international design competition held annually. Participants are tasked with designing temporary winter art installations which incorporate existing lifeguard towers spaced strategically across the city’s Kew and Woodbine beaches. The structures (not in use in the wintertime) are considered visual anchor points for the installations.

2026 — Theme: Mirage

A mirage is a shimmer at the edge of reality, appearing real only to dissolve when approached. The present moment feels much the same, bent and distorted by the rise of digital silos and artificial intelligence, where the truth we seek is always shifting.

A promise and a trick, desire and deception, a mirage is a vision of what we long for most in a state of absence—water in a desert, fire in the cold. What longings define our time, and in what forms do they take?

2026 Winners

• Embrace – Will Cuthbert (Canada)
• Crest – University of Waterloo School of Architecture and the Department of Architectural Engineering (Canada)
• Specularia – Tornado Soup: Andrew Clark (USA)
• Chimera – Denys Horodnyak & Enzo Zak Lux (Germany & Ukraine)
• Glaciate – Toronto Metropolitan University Department of Architectural Science in collaboration with Ming Chuan University School of Design
  (Canada & Taiwan)

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Who is it for?

All ages

Just show up! No tickets are required.

Date: February 16 to March 30, 2026

Event runs all day.

Venue & Address

Woodbine Beach, 1675 Lake Shore Blvd E, Toronto

Wheelchair accessible