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The Grand Paris Express L18 Viaduct in Saclay, France, won the 2026 ACI Excellence in Concrete Construction Awards’ Overall Excellence honor and first place in Bridges. The American Concrete Institute recognized 18 projects across eight categories, from major transportation infrastructure to restoration, decorative concrete and buildings.
What is the 2026 ACI Overall Excellence project?
The Grand Paris Express L18 Viaduct is both the Bridges category’s first-place project and the program’s 2026 Overall Excellence winner. ACI describes the work as part of a metro network of approximately 200 km of lines, including a 6.6 km elevated viaduct built with 1,680 precast segments.
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The bridge combines low-carbon, high-performance prestressed concrete with self-consolidating concrete and precast segmental construction. Those methods address several demands at once: structural performance, efficient assembly of a long elevated structure and lower-carbon material choices. ACI’s award recognizes the project’s overall achievement, rather than treating one construction method as the sole reason for the honor.
Which projects won in each category?
ACI’s 2026 awards recognize first- and second-place projects and, in some categories, an honorable mention. The list below follows the category placements in ACI’s announcement and Past Winners archive.
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Bridges
- Overall Excellence and first place: Grand Paris Express L18 Viaduct — Saclay, Essonne, France. Its low-carbon, high-performance prestressed concrete, self-consolidating concrete and precast segments support an elevated metro route.
- Second place: Gordie Howe International Bridge — Windsor, Ontario, Canada. This cable-stayed crossing connects Windsor and Detroit and provides six traffic lanes and a toll-free multi-use path. ACI identifies it as a 2.5 km crossing delivered through a 5.7 billion CAD public-private partnership.
- Honorable mention: Post Street Bridge Replacement — Spokane, Washington, United States. The project rehabilitated a historic concrete spandrel-arch bridge and added a new superstructure.
Low-Rise Structures
- First place: Smart Innovation Ecosystem NOVARE — Koto-ku, Tokyo, Japan. Its features include low-carbon and zero-shrink concrete, 3D-printed concrete, unreinforced shells and precast concrete-steel hybrid construction.
- Second place: Aramco Corporate Academy — Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. The academy combines reinforced and green concrete, post-tensioning and energy-efficient design.
- Honorable mention: Gran Acuario Mazatlán “Mar de Cortés” — Mazatlán, Mexico. Pigmented cast-in-place sandwich walls contribute to the aquarium’s durability and thermal performance.
Mid-Rise Structures
- First place: Aramco Stadium — Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia. The 47,000-seat stadium combines large cast-in-place pours with more than 10,900 precast elements.
- Second place: Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Temple — Ayodhya, India. Its steel-free foundation is designed for a 1,000-year service life; the project also uses supplementary cementitious materials and temperature-controlled self-consolidating concrete.
High-Rise Structures
- First place: Wasl Tower — Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The 302 m tower has a twisting form and a ceramic façade of approximately 35,000 m².
- Second place: Houston Methodist Hospital Brockman Centennial Tower — Houston, Texas, United States. The 26-story inpatient facility required close coordination within the Texas Medical Center.
Decorative Concrete
- First place: The Ocean Sentinels (MOUA) Australia — near Townsville, Queensland, Australia. Eight reinforced-concrete sculptures are installed approximately 5 m below sea level at the Great Barrier Reef.
- Second place: Place des Montréalaises — Montréal, Quebec, Canada. Its signature feature is a dramatic sloped concrete plane made with white pigmented concrete and metakaolin.
Flatwork
- First place: NovusCrete: Pioneering Seawater Concrete Construction — Tabuk Region, Saudi Arabia. The project uses seawater-based concrete in a constructed wetland and wastewater-treatment system with a stated treatment capacity of 150 m³ per day.
- Second place: LAX/Metro Transit Connector — Los Angeles, California, United States. Approximately 256,680 ft² of architectural concrete paving includes luminous white concrete with recycled mirror, glass and mother-of-pearl aggregates.
Repair and Restoration
- First place: Kunstsilo — Kristiansand, Norway. Two clusters of 1930s reinforced-concrete silos were rehabilitated as a modern art museum.
- Second place: Low Battery Seawall — Charleston, South Carolina, United States. Nearly a mile of historic waterfront infrastructure was strengthened with cast-in-place concrete, shotcrete, micropiles and corrosion-resistant glass-fiber-reinforced polymer reinforcement.
Infrastructure
- First place: King Salman International Complex for Maritime Industries and Services — Ras Al-Khair, Saudi Arabia. The 1,125-hectare complex includes dry docks, piers and quay structures.
- Second place: Sydney Metro Martin Place Integrated Station Development — Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. The development brings together an underground metro station, commercial towers, heritage elements and retail spaces.
What do the 2026 winners show about concrete construction?
The projects are not a single ranking of interchangeable structures. Their different purposes call for different measures of achievement: a viaduct must meet transportation and structural demands; a seawall must contend with a marine environment; and a historic silo conversion must adapt existing concrete for a new use. The award categories make those distinctions visible.
Across the winners, ACI’s descriptions point to several recurring themes: constructability at scale, durability, material efficiency and coordination across complex projects. Low-carbon concrete appears in projects such as the L18 Viaduct and NOVARE; seawater-based concrete is central to NovusCrete; and the Low Battery Seawall uses corrosion-resistant reinforcement. Other projects show concrete’s role in architectural expression, from Place des Montréalaises’ sloped plane to Wasl Tower’s twisting form.
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The geographic range is also broad. The winning projects are located in Europe, North America, Asia, Australia and the Middle East. More than 30 industry experts participated in judging, according to ACI, and the awards recognize innovation, complexity, achievement and the value concrete provides as a material.
When were the winners announced?
The winners were recognized at the ACI Concrete Convention on October 12, 2026. ACI says the ceremony was livestreamed on its YouTube channel, and project information is available through ACIExcellence.org.
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Frequently Asked Questions
When is the next ACI Excellence in Concrete Construction Awards entry deadline?
ACI’s current program page lists April 1, 2027, as the next entry deadline. It also lists October 25, 2027, for the next awards gala.
Can a project win in more than one ACI award category?
Yes. The Grand Paris Express L18 Viaduct received first place in Bridges and the program’s Overall Excellence honor in 2026. ACI’s awards recognize category achievement as well as an overall standout project.
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How many categories are included in the ACI Excellence in Concrete Construction Awards program?
The broader program page lists nine categories, including Nonmetallic Building Materials. The 2026 announcement records winners in eight categories; Nonmetallic Building Materials is not among that year’s listed winner categories.
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