An international architectural competition will be held for the new campus of the University of Oulu
The competition was announced on Tuesday, 3 February 2026 at the main event of the 150th anniversary of the Finnish Architectural Competitions organised by SAFA at Finlandia Hall, Helsinki.
The task is to design a new campus for the University of Oulu, including both university facilities and student accommodation. The new campus will be located in the Kontinkangas district of Oulu, Finland, next to Oulu University Hospital. The campus is planned to have approximately 80,000 square metres of floor space for the university needs and approximately 30,000 square metres for student housing, which is approximately 600–1,000 residential places. Additionally, a campus hotel of approximately 10,000 floor square metres will be built for primary use by the university hospital and secondary use by the university.
We have ambitious goals to create a campus of outstanding architectural quality for the university that Oulu and Finnish architecture can be proud of. The University of Oulu has a long history of educating Finnish architects and other construction professionals, and this competition represents a remarkable opportunity for us to bring the very best expertise and ideas into the development of our university," says Janne Pihlajaniemi, Professor of Architecture at the University of Oulu.
The Foundation for Student Housing, which celebrates its 55th anniversary this year, will bring student housing to the new campus.
"It is a matter of the heart for PSOAS to offer students affordable and high-quality housing in Oulu. Student housing is an essential part of a functional and vibrant campus, a sense of community and the cityscape as a whole," says Ville Isoherranen, CEO of PSOAS.
The competition is organised in cooperation with the City of Oulu, the the Wellbeing Services County of North Ostrobothnia (Pohde) and the Finnish Association of Architects SAFA.
The competition starts in May
The architectural competition will be organised in two stages. The first phase will be held in May–August 2026 and the second in January–April 2027. The competition framework and programme will be defined during the spring and will be published in May 2026 when the competition opens. The winner will be announced in June 2027.
In November 2025, the Board of Directors of the University of Oulu decided to proceed with the further development of a scenario under which the university’s education and research activities in Oulu will be gradually consolidated onto a new campus to be built in Kontinkangas. The aim of this change is to achieve savings in property costs, allowing as large a share of the university’s funding as possible to be directed towards research and education. At present, the University of Oulu’s operations are concentrated two campuses located in Linnanmaa and Kontinkangas, but the university community has expressed a wish to bring all activities together on a single campus.