On 1 June 2026, the Prix Versailles presented the sixteen nominated restaurants of its twelfth edition at UNESCO in Paris. They come from thirteen countries, from Nobu One Za’abeel a hundred metres above Dubai and Le Fou in Vienna to Amura in Cape Town. In December 2026, the jury will choose three final World Titles from among them.
In Dubai, a restaurant floats a hundred metres above the city. Nobu One Za’abeel sits on a glass bridge linking two high-rise towers, and beneath the guest’s table there is nothing but the depth between the buildings. A few hours’ flight away, on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast, Escā Playa grows out of the sand as though wind and tides had drawn its walls. In Helsinki, the guests of Finlandia Bistro sit on chairs Alvar Aalto designed more than fifty years ago, in a hall he built himself. Three restaurants, three answers to the same question, how a place becomes a room. The first takes the height of the city and turns the skyline into a companion. The second draws the materials of a landscape so far inside that the walls read as a continuation of the coast or the mountain slope. The third moves into an architecture that was already there and lays its own layer over it, one that carries the older work forward.
What the Prix Versailles 2026 Honours
These three answers come together in the selection that the Prix Versailles presented on 1 June 2026 at UNESCO in Paris, opening its twelfth edition, across sixteen addresses. Three of them will carry an additional World Title at the end of the year, in the categories Prix Versailles, Interior and Exterior. Until then, the sixteen stand side by side and show how differently a laid table can speak of the place where it stands.
UNESCO has hosted the Prix Versailles every year since 2015. The jury measures a work by its architecture, by the materials it is built from, by its light, by the choreography between staff and guest, and by its effect on its ecological, social and cultural surroundings. Intelligent sustainability is the name the organisation gives this ambition, a way of building that serves shared life because it comes from its place and adds something to it. The architect Matteo Thun pursues the same conviction in his Hospitecture, where architecture becomes medicine. Secretary General Jérôme Gouadain described this year’s selection as a reflection of the world’s culinary heritage. “Architecture serves this diversity and is at the same time inspired by it,” he said. The nominated restaurants, he noted, present an interior in harmony with their surroundings and their menu, in rooms where the art of hospitality meets the art of the unforgettable moment.
In the Height of the City
Five of the sixteen nominated restaurants take the height of the city as their material, from a glass bridge over Dubai to a single Hong Kong tower that holds three of them, and each turns the skyline into part of the room. A hundred metres above the ground, on the glass Sky Concourse between the two towers of the One Za’abeel complex in Dubai, Nobu One Za’abeel stands at the head of the list. The Rockwell Group assembled the room from high ceilings and crossing geometries and laid in a lighting system that runs from the bar to the private dining room. By day the view reaches across the whole skyline; by night, DJs and the cocktail list take over. On the plates is the cooking Nobu Matsuhisa has stood for over decades, Japanese tradition in conversation with the flavours of South America.
In Hong Kong this approach reaches its densest form. Three of the four addresses the city brings to the list share the same skyscraper, The Henderson by Zaha Hadid Architects in Central. At the very top sits Peridot, which Studio Paolo Ferrari fitted with more than twenty thousand handcrafted lights and a green grand piano. A floor below, Akira Back, for which AB Concept set soft lines and slender wooden posts beneath a sculptural ceiling. Higher up, Hana no Kumo, a kappou restaurant with twenty-four seats, designed by Hirsch Bedner Associates for chef Ogawa Masaru. Three restaurants in one tower, each with a voice of its own. How far a Hong Kong kitchen can take local material shows in Roganic Hong Kong and its interior of typhoon wood and oyster shells.
Out of the Landscape
Five of the nominated restaurants draw their materials, colours and climate from the landscape that surrounds them, a coast, a vineyard, a mountain slope, so that the walls read as a continuation of the place outside. On Egypt’s Mediterranean coast, the Cairo architect Mohamed Badie shaped Escā Playa as though wind, sun and tides had guided his hand. Mineral coatings and coral structures let the restaurant grow out of the sand, and the coast runs on across the walls until inside and outside are barely to be told apart.
In Cape Town, where the Indian and Atlantic oceans meet, Tristan du Plessis developed Amura out of the biodiversity of that very coast. Chef Ángel León, long known in Spain as the chef of the sea, leads through a menu that carries the flavours of Cape Town into a Mediterranean reading. North of Pune lies Rosso at Hotel Irada, on a working vineyard of 270,000 square metres, set within sixteen square kilometres of protected forest. Green marble and turned wooden columns bring India and the Mediterranean together in the same room.
Le Fou in Vienna follows the same idea by other means. The interior architect Theresa Obermoser designed for Alexander Schrack’s restaurant a sequence of rooms that flow into one another, in silk, mohair velvet, natural stone and patinated metal. The main room in rust and terracotta forms the core, a golden salon and a leopard-print private area lead towards the theatrical, and the choice of fabrics and their longevity hold the whole together. In Gstaad, Jakob Sprenger and Antonia Crespí translate the alpine building tradition for Monti into a contemporary form of warm wood, woven bronze room dividers modelled on basketry, and benches in mohair.
Three Approaches, One Measure
Sixteen restaurants, thirteen countries, three answers to the same question. The landscape gives its materials and its climate, the city its height and its skyline, the existing building its history. Each of the nominated restaurants makes its own statement out of its surroundings, and together they carry forward the idea UNESCO calls intelligent sustainability, spaces that improve shared life because they come from their place and work with it. Which three will carry the final World Titles at the end of the year, the jury decides in December 2026.
