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Bentley Systems announced winners of its 2026 Year in Infrastructure Awards on October 7, after an October 6–7 event in Singapore. The program recognized projects across 12 infrastructure disciplines, drawing more than 300 nominations from 53 countries. AI was prominent in Bentley’s account of the awards, but its announcement does not quantify how many winners used AI; the named projects instead show a range of digital delivery and lifecycle-data work.
What the 2026 awards recognized
Bentley says independent judges selected winners from more than 300 nominated projects representing 53 countries. The categories span 12 areas of infrastructure: bridges and tunnels; cities and facilities; construction; energy production; geospatial and reality modeling; project delivery; rail and transit; roads and highways; structural engineering; subsurface modeling and analysis; transmission and distribution; and water and wastewater. The awards recognize digital innovation using infrastructure engineering software, according to Bentley’s October 7 announcement.
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The announcement presents AI-enabled innovation and connected data across infrastructure lifecycles as major themes. That framing comes from Bentley, not an award-wide tally of technology use. One winner’s project title explicitly identifies AI-driven digital delivery, while other examples focus on tunnel design, port works and water-system operations.
Projects that illustrate the range
Renewable-energy delivery
APD Global’s Clean Energy Link-North: AI-Driven Digital Delivery for Renewables won in transmission and distribution. Its title directly foregrounds AI and digital delivery, making it the clearest named example of the release’s AI framing.
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Metro tunnel design
AYESA Engineering’s Porto Metro 3.0 illustrates the engineering-workflow side of the awards, with a tunnel design workflow rather than an AI-specific claim in the project name.
Port construction
Wills Bros’ Dublin Port project represents work in the construction and delivery landscape. Bentley’s announcement includes it among the examples demonstrating the breadth of the awards.
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Water operations and connected data
Evides’ water distribution operational digital twins at scale show the lifecycle-data theme in an operating utility context. Bentley also recognized 16 projects with Founders’ Honors; WSP Global’s iTwin AI Project Lifecycle Intelligence Platform received the Connected Data honor.
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AI is a prominent part of Bentley’s description of the 2026 cohort, and it appears explicitly in the names of at least the Clean Energy Link-North winner and WSP Global’s Connected Data honoree. However, the announcement does not state how many of the 12 category winners used AI or establish that AI defined most winning projects. The evidence supports describing AI as a headline theme in Bentley’s account—not as a measured majority characteristic of the winners.
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Bentley chief marketing officer Cate Lochead said finalists connected data across lifecycle phases and engineering disciplines and used AI to unlock new potential. She also described an open ecosystem as important to that approach. These are Bentley’s characterization of the award cohort and its platform, rather than an independent assessment of project outcomes.
2025 and 2026 announcements compared
| Measure | 2025 announcement | 2026 announcement |
|---|---|---|
| Nominated projects | Nearly 250 | More than 300 |
| Countries represented | 47 | 53 |
| Award categories | 12 | 12 |
| Announcement and event timing | Winners announced October 17, 2025; event date and location not stated in the cited announcement | Winners announced October 7, 2026; event held October 6–7 in Singapore |
| Technology themes | Bentley described connected data and AI as digital advancements transforming project delivery and asset performance | Bentley emphasized AI-enabled innovation and connected lifecycle data |
The 2025 figures and theme come from Bentley’s October 17, 2025 announcement. The higher nomination and country counts in 2026 are company-reported, but the two releases do not establish that participation rules or underlying participation were identical. They therefore show a difference between the announcements, not necessarily a like-for-like year-over-year growth trend.
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Program context
In a separate March 2026 announcement, Bentley said more than 5,500 projects had participated in the awards program over two decades. That is Bentley’s cumulative program figure, not an independently audited count. The announcement also framed the awards around innovative uses of infrastructure engineering software.
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