You’re invited to join the 2026 Winter Stations Photo Contest! Head down to Woodbine Beach February 16-March 30, 2026, to participate!
Winter Stations 2026 Photo Contest
February 16, 2026 – March 30, 2026
Woodbine Beach, East Toronto
FREE to Participate
Winter Stations 2026 will officially be unveiled on Monday February 16th, 2026, down on Woodbine Beach. This year marks the 12th year of the international Winter Stations design competition held annually in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Every winter, participants are tasked with designing temporary winter art installations which incorporate existing lifeguard stations down Kew and Woodbine beaches. While Toronto beaches are not typically as well visited in the colder seasons, Winter Stations has continually captured the imagination of the city, making our east end winter beach a hot-spot destination to visit!
This year’s exhibition will showcase five winning designs in total, with two of them being student designs from Toronto Metropolitan University and the University of Waterloo (scroll down to learn more about the 5 stations)! East End Arts has been a proud community supporter of these public art installations, and we are inviting you to go view them in person and participate in our collaborative photo contest when you do!
ABOUT PHOTO CONTEST
Presented by Winter Stations (and the team at RAW), East End Arts, and The Beach BIA, the Winter Stations 2026 Photo Contest invites community members to take a photo or photos with this year’s Winter Stations installations and post them on Instagram with the hashtag, #WinterStations2026!
For participating in the contest, TWO lucky participants will receive some very cool prizes:
- First place will receive Winter Stations merch valued at $50, and a $70 gift card to local Beach BIA restaurant.
- Second place will receive Winter Stations merch valued at $20, and a $70 gift card to a local Beach BIA restaurant!
To qualify as a winner of our contest, you must be following @winter.stations, @eastendartsto, and @makewaves.to on Instagram! The winner will be chosen by the end of April and announced on social media! We hope to see you on the Beach this winter!
Winter Stations 2026 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.
To learn more about the Winter Stations Competition and jury process, please go HERE.
The 2026 Installations
#1: 
Embrace, Will Cuthbert (Canada)
Two shapes emerge from frozen ground. At first, shimmering slivers against the sand. They move as you do, looming silhouettes against the sun. Colossal hands, reaching out. To hold the horizon. To present the day.
An invitation to behold and to be held. Welcome their embrace. Change your point of view.
Gain a vibrant new perspective. A prismatic reflection of the warmth and light of the day.
#2: Specularia, Tornado Soup: Andrew Clark
(USA)
Five framed openings facing the lake offer a glimpse into a blend of reality and deception. One of the openings reveals the truth, while the others show mirages, pieces of the surroundings, stripped of context, confusing distance and direction. Through periscope-like mirrors, set at 45-degree angles, those who pass through experience the ground, the sky, the boardwalk, and themselves before finally seeing the true image ahead of them: the lifeguard chair and the lake.
Each opening is cut to familiar digital proportions. The visual ratios of 9:16, 1:1, 2:3, and 4:5 suggest a fabrication akin to the deception of the virtual world, yet here these ratios frame physical realities like air, water, light, and oneself.
From a distance, the pale blue walls and repetitive red frames appear as a fractured mirage of the lifeguard chair and lake beyond. The structure blurs between object and atmosphere. Learn more HERE.
#3: Chimera, Denys Horodnyak & Enzo Zak Lux
(Germany & Ukraine)
Chimera engages with the notion of mirage through a twofold perspective. On a material level, it offers a direct, tangible interpretation of illusion, employing fisheye mirrors as aesthetic modules that distort perception. On a sensory and conceptual level, it serves as a dialectical reflection on the fragmentation of physical and digital realities, exposing the delicate imbalance between control and security – two cornerstones that define modernity.
From a distance, the installation blends seamlessly with its surroundings, dissolving into space through a cascade of mirrored repetitions. Moving closer – the illusion unravels, revealing the framework that sustains it. In this encounter, the viewer meets their own reflection multiplied and displaced, a shifting constellation of selves that provokes an uneasy awareness of being observed. The viewing platform becomes a temporary sanctuary – a cocoon of quiet detachment – from which the gaze can wander freely into the open expanse beyond.
#4: Crest, University of Waterloo School of Architecture and the Department of Architectural Engineering (Canada)
Crest emerges from the sand and snow of the Toronto Beaches as a sweeping wave positioned moments before break. From afar, the installation resembles a mere pile of driftwood washed up on the beach. As one approaches, the geometry of the wave gradually reveals itself. The waffled plywood form acts as an illusion where individual pieces appear and disappear with different directions of arrival, merging with the landscape beyond.
The cantilever of the wave envelops and invites visitors to gather, sharing a moment to pause and take in the vast Lake Ontario coastline. Like the fleeting moment of a wave crashing onto shore, the installation serves as a reminder that reality is finite, and fulfillment is found in being present.
#5: Glaciate, Toronto Metropolitan University Department of Architectural Science in collaboration with Ming Chuan University School of Design (Canada & Taiwan)
The lifeguard stand has become the fixed marker of the Winter Stations competition: an element that survives each annual installation, anchoring every design to Woodbine Beach. A series of vertical polycarbonate panels, filled with water from the lake nearby, creates a set of ice lenses that glaciate the stand. As the lake water freezes and thaws, the panels cycle through phases of transparency, translucency, and full opacity. The stand is never wholly visible or wholly concealed; instead, it appears through fragments, outlines, and momentary flashes of red. This collage of visual clarity creates a celebratory mirage of the lifeguard externally, and a mirage of Woodbine Beach from within.