Winter Stations is an international design competition held annually in Toronto, Canada. Since 2015, we’ve invited artists, architects, designers, and students to reimagine lifeguard stations as interactive public art installations on the city’s snowy beaches. This year we’re asking for public art proposals for the exhibition ‘Mirage’, exploring the boundary of what is seen and what is real in the age of AI.

Winter Stations is open to everyone, everywhere, with no fee to enter. Winning proposals are selected by a blind jury of Toronto’s leading voices in art, design, architecture, and urbanism, and built for a six-week exhibition on the shorelines of Lake Ontario.

The winning artist/teams will be awarded an honorarium of $2,000 (CAD). The number of winning proposals built is funding-dependent, though as in previous years, Winter Stations aims to build four to six installations.

2026 Exhibition 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?

For Winter Stations 2026, artists, designers, and architects are invited to tickle the boundary between what is seen and what is real. The Stations should transform the shoreline into a place where illusion becomes architecture, offering glimpses of uncanny possibilities. Participants might also consider what imaginative public infrastructures could prompt people to set aside their devices and gather in shared reality.

Evaluation Criteria:

Creative Vision & Response (30%)

Design Concept (30%)

Design Feasibility (40%)

Proposals should adhere to the following criteria:

$5,000.00 CAD for materials

$10,000.00 CAD for labour

Proposals must be structurally independent of the lifeguard stands, suitable for both a sandy beach environment and a flat urban surface and designed to withstand Toronto’s winter weather.

Winners will be announced in early January and unveiled to the public on Family Day Weekend (February 16, 2026), remaining on view until March 30, 2026.

For more information on submissions guidelines and to submit your design, please visit winterstations.com

Submissions open until November 3, 2025, at 11:59 p.m. EST.