The 31st United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP31) will be hosted by Türkiye in Antalya during November 2026. Adopting an implementation-oriented approach for this year’s COP process, our COP31 Presidency has determined our core principles as dialogue, consensus, and action. Dialogue will strengthen participation and help build trust among the parties. Consensus will ensure the adoption of outcomes and respect country-specific circumstances. Action will enable the transformation of commitments into concrete, balanced, and actionable outputs.
Due to the deepening impacts of climate change, there is a profound need for multilateral cooperation and concrete actions. In this context, building upon the goal of being implementation-oriented, a “Sustainable Building Competition” will be organized in cooperation with the Republic of Türkiye Ministry of Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in order to reward good practices and encourage new ones in the field of sustainability within the construction sector. Through this event, we aim to encourage energy-efficient, low-carbon, climate-resilient, eco-friendly, and sustainable construction practices, to make good practice examples visible, and to contribute to their global dissemination. With the proliferation of sustainable green buildings, planned sustainability targets will begin to transform into concrete actions and actionable outputs.
The competition is open to the participation of public and private sector projects from around the world that meet green building criteria; projects within the typologies of residential, office, commercial, accommodation, and public service buildings will be evaluated. In addition to completed and operational buildings, structures that are still in the project phase will also be eligible to apply. Following evaluations by an expert commission, awards will be presented to projects in the categories of facility management, sustainable design, green building, and energy conservation. In this organization where international projects designed according to green building criteria will compete, the projects deemed worthy of an award will be specially exhibited in Antalya during COP31, and the awards will be presented to the winning projects by high-level official representatives at a ceremony to be held.
Applications for the competition have begun to be received via the digital platform at https://yesint.csb.gov.tr/. Building owners, managers, or facility operators, architects, and contractors authorized with the official permission of the building owner/manager who wish to make a difference in the sector and contribute to a sustainable future can upload their applications along with project details to the system via yesint.csb.gov.tr/ until October 15, 2026. Detailed information regarding the competition can be accessed on the same website.
In this context, in order to ensure that the competition is held with broader participation and contributes to achieving global targets on climate action, we would be highly pleased to cooperate with your organization during the promotional processes of the competition. To increase the international visibility of the said competition and to encourage qualified project applications from different countries, promotional brochures for the competition, prepared in six different languages, are shared with your organization in the annex. The competition has also been announced on the official COP31 LinkedIn account, which you can access via the attached link. We respectfully request that you distribute the attached promotional brochures to the stakeholders within your organization’s global network. We firmly believe that your contribution will significantly enhance the international impact and success of this initiative.
Please accept the assurances of our highest consideration.
Please follow the link below to apply for the competition. https://yesint.csb.gov.tr/