About the IALD Awards

The IALD International Lighting Design Awards, the longest-running international lighting design awards program, is the highest honor in the profession. It recognizes work that reaches new heights and represents aesthetic and technical achievement excellence.

Since its establishment in 1983, the IALD Awards program has supported the mission and vision of the Association: raising the profile of the lighting design profession and demonstrating the visible success of that community.

The 2025 IALD Awards: Call for Entries

The 2025 Call for Entries Handbook provides all the information on the IALD Awards submission process, including project eligibility, the requirements for submitted images and video, required materials release forms for that media, and best practices for submitting a project entry. Please download and review it thoroughly; it will answer most program questions.

Program Entry Dates and Fees

Project Eligibility

This is an awards program for architectural lighting design. Those credited for a project’s lighting design must be lighting designers by profession, and awards will be granted only to the team or teams that explicitly performed the architectural lighting design for the submitted project. (The individual entering the project need not be part of the credited design team(s) but must be an approved representative.)

Members of the awards judging panel and other members of their firms or offices may submit entries with the express understanding that the judge will discreetly recuse themselves from scoring those projects.

The project must be a permanent architectural lighting design solution whose construction was completed on or after 1 January 2023. To be considered permanent, projects must be intended to be in place for at least two (2) years as of the date they are submitted. The IALD encourages the submission of lighting design projects of all sizes.

A project previously submitted for the 2024 IALD Awards cycle may be resubmitted if it (1) did not previously win an award and ( 2 ) adheres to the completion date and permanence requirements described above.

Need Help?

If you have inquiries on the Awards program or rules, contact the IALD staff.

If you need technical help with an entry, please click the blue chat bubble at the bottom right or contact the support team.