Melbourne Metro Tunnel wins National Infrastructure Award

We’re delighted to share that the Metro Tunnel Project in Melbourne has been awarded Project of the Year at this year’s National Infrastructure Awards, presented by Infrastructure Partnerships Australia. 

The annual National Infrastructure Awards celebrate significant achievements in the delivery of major infrastructure across Australia and New Zealand, and the coveted Project of the Year Award recognises a major, transformational infrastructure project that has been exceptional across all phases of delivery. 

The prestigious award symbolises the importance of the Metro Tunnel Project on the lives of Victorians, commended by the judges for it’s profound and lasting impact.

Nine kilometres of twin rail tunnels are accompanied by five new metro stations – Arden, Parkville, State Library, Town Hall and Anzac – doubling the size of the city’s underground rail.

In doing so, the project has transformed the way people move around Melbourne, improving access to major landmarks and destinations across the city. 

With the opening of the five new stations, Melbourne has gained a series of civic landmarks and meeting places that combine space and natural light to create calm, intuitive journeys for passengers.

The five new metro stations were designed by an international collaboration between RSHP, Hassell and WW+P, part of the Cross Yarra Partnership Design Construction (CYP D&C) consortium led by Lendlease, John Holland and Bouygues Construction. 

The line-wide architecture celebrates civil engineering and scale, revealing the structure and function of the stations as part of the passenger experience.

Each station expresses the character and colours of its surrounding neighbourhood, through materials such as brick, bluestone, timber and glass, and through connections to new parks, public spaces and bicycle facilities at street level.

Barangaroo South in Sydney was also a finalist in the Government Partnerships Excellence category, praised as an outstanding mixed-use scheme delivered through successful and sustained collaboration between Government-owned land and policy with private development capability.

The transformative Metro Tunnel Project has also been shortlisted in four categories of the Australian Institute of Architecture’s National Architecture Awards and the Public Design category at the 2026 Australian Interior Design Awards.