The World’s Most Beautiful Passenger Stations 2025: Where Business Travel Meets Inspired Design
The Prix Versailles has revealed the seven projects selected for inclusion on the World’s Most Beautiful Passenger Stations List 2025, recognising a series of newly inaugurated stations that exemplify outstanding architectural ambition and cultural significance.
This announcement will be of particular interest to UK-based business travellers, many of whom rely on efficient and inspiring transport hubs as gateways to their journeys. Beautifully designed railway stations are not just functional spaces - they enhance the travel experience, provide comfort and connectivity, and symbolise progress in sustainable urban mobility.
Jérôme Gouadain, Secretary General of the Prix Versailles, highlighted the importance of these remarkable achievements, stating that:
“Excellence lends itself to recognition and humility, and is a necessary quality in this day and age, when there is such a need to extend the harmony manifested in these new passenger stations across entire continents.
The commitment and the technical and aesthetic prowess demanded by these structures are the highest possible tribute to the building community.Already a part of this century’s heritage, this infrastructure is revitalising the role that we as a society attribute to mobility. At each site, beauty is given concrete form, like a lung breathing new life into the city, a shared symbolic territory in the service of its inhabitants.”
On 4 December, at UNESCO Headquarters, three of the seven listed stations received further recognition, earning the World Titles - Prix Versailles, Interior or Exterior.
These awards celebrate “intelligent sustainability”, a principle in which culture both serves and transcends environmental considerations, encouraging architecture that respects and uplifts its surroundings.
Paul Baker, Sales Director of Global Travel Management, welcomed the announcement, saying that:
“Business travel often begins and ends at transport hubs - and when those stations are designed with beauty, functionality and sustainability in mind, it enhances the experience for travellers. Initiatives such as the Prix Versailles highlight how thoughtful design can make business travel more enjoyable, efficient and environmentally responsible for UK-based travellers.”
The Prix Versailles awards, supported by UNESCO and other international institutions, recognise architecture that contributes to a more harmonious relationship between culture and the environment. Each station on the 2025 list represents a celebration of mobility, sustainability and civic pride, offering a glimpse into how the world’s transport architecture continues to evolve.
The World's Most Beautiful Stations List 2025
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The World's Most Beautiful Stations List 2025 -
Gadigal Station Sydney, Australia
Gadigal, named after the Aboriginal people who were the original custodians of this part of Sydney, reflects the city’s forward-looking ambition as the home of Australia’s first metro system. Situated 25 metres beneath the skyscrapers, the station — designed by Foster + Partners in collaboration with Cox Architecture — embodies cutting-edge modernity.
Each entrance features a striking installation, The Underneath, a ceramic artwork inspired by early railway tunnels. Its vivid colours and flowing forms mirror the movement of passengers and evoke the area’s geological layers.
Gadigal Station represents a new era in sustainable urban travel, combining advanced design with environmental awareness and making public transport an appealing, human-centred choice.
Pics: Prix Versailles/Aaron Hargreaves, Prix Versailles/Brett Broadman, Prix Versailles/Sydney Metro
Mons Station Mons, Belgium
Mons Station is the centrepiece of a major urban renewal project that has transformed nearby roads into pedestrian squares, linking the city centre directly to the station without the need to cross any streets. Designed by Santiago Calatrava, the structure’s light, sweeping steel form creates a cathedral-like passageway stretching 165 metres, connecting the city’s historic core with the growing Grands Prés district.
The vast gallery beneath its suspended canopy evokes Brussels’ Galerie de la Reine, symbolising both cultural vitality and commercial energy in a modern, multimodal transport hub. Fully enclosed and insulated, the station maintains comfort throughout the seasons, with a skylight at its apex providing natural ventilation during warmer months.
Pics: Prix Versailles/Santiago Calatrava LLC
Baiyun Station Guangzhou, China
Despite serving 24 high-speed rail lines, six metro lines and three bus terminals, Baiyun Station feels remarkably light and open, thanks to the vision of architects Nikken Sekkei. Where once there was only unused airspace, the team has created an elegant structure housing shops and offices - now a defining landmark of the Baiyun business district.
A circular, multi-level pedestrian walkway links the platforms with nearby commercial and office areas, interwoven with gardens to form a vertical urban park that brings the community together. Drawing on Guangzhou’s traditional arcades, the design floods the space with natural light, giving the station a distinctive identity that is both grand and inviting - a true feat of inspired architecture.
Pics: Prix Versailles/Yang Min/mintwow
Saint-Denis - Pleyel Station Saint-Denis, France
Situated at the junction of three municipalities, this landmark Grand Paris Express station was created in an area long defined by urban separation. Although a structure already spanned the 48 tracks serving Paris’s Gare du Nord, Kengo Kuma & Associates faced the challenge of uniting divided neighbourhoods through coherent design.
Rising 35 metres high, the station’s distinctive draped form allows natural light to reach platforms 28 metres below ground, symbolising openness and connection. As architect Kengo Kuma explains, “The place is the product of nature and time.” In contrast to conventional stations built from steel and concrete, the vast atrium is clad entirely in wood - a “magical material” that brings warmth and humanity to the space.
In a nod to time and heritage, more than 100 sculptures inspired by Palaeolithic depictions of women will adorn the atrium, linking this modern masterpiece to a continuum of art and civilisation spanning thousands of years.
Pics: Prix Versailles/Kengo Kuma & Associates/Éric Garault/Société des grands projets
Villejuif - Gustave Roussy Station Villejuif, France
Dominique Perrault’s design celebrates metal in all its expressions - stainless steel that is smooth, perforated, polished or satin-finished, shifting through tones of grey to bronze. At the heart of a broad pedestrian plaza, an open pavilion crowned with a striking glass roof dissolves the boundary between inside and out.
Beneath it lies a vast, 70-metre-wide cylinder that channels air and light deep underground, illuminating the platforms some 50 metres below. The play of reflections and filtered light creates a dynamic, ever-changing atmosphere within one of France’s deepest stations.
Perrault describes this as an “architectonics of the link”, harmonising the station’s vertical descent with the city’s horizontal flow. Rather than imposing a monumental façade, the design uses open space as a material, with sweeping escalators choreographing the movement of passengers.
Pics: Prix Versailles/Dominique Perrault Architecture/Michel Denancé/Société des grands projets
KAFD Station Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
At the turn of the millennium, Riyadh - then a city of four million - lacked a public transport network. Today, KAFD Station stands at the heart of the capital’s financial district, anchoring a 176-kilometre system of 85 stations: the world’s longest driverless metro network.
Designed by Zaha Hadid Architects, the station seamlessly bridges tradition and innovation. Its façade evokes the wind-shaped patterns of desert sand, while the flowing waves of its spine are the result of advanced digital modelling. Every element of the structure was shaped by analysing the projected movement of trains, vehicles and pedestrians, translating traffic flow into architectural form.
The result is a building reminiscent of a stylised desert rose - elegant and fluid - softening the rigid geometry of the surrounding towers and symbolising Riyadh’s transformation into a connected, forward-looking metropolis.
Pics: Prix Versailles/Hufton + Crow
Qasr Al Hokm Station Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Designed by Snøhetta, Qasr Al Hokm Station takes the form of a vast urban plaza, crowned by an inverted conical canopy that marks a turning point in Riyadh’s urban evolution. Acting like a periscope, the canopy’s reflective basin channels daylight and street activity from above into the underground spaces below.
This clever interplay of light and reflection creates a vivid connection between the concourse and the cityscape, bringing the energy of the streets deep into the station. By day, sunlight floods the interior; by night, the station’s illumination glows softly onto the canopy’s surface.
Inside, the walls are finished with adobe render, paying homage to the traditional Najdi architectural style. At the heart of the atrium, a lush garden flourishes unexpectedly underground - a serene oasis that transforms the transit experience into something both natural and inspiring.
Pics: Prix Versailles/Royal Commission for Riyadh City
Source: Prix Versailles press release, 3 November 2025.
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