Property’s Biggest Names Set the Bar for 2026 Urban Leader Awards

Rob and Andrew Gray started Graya with a single toolbelt in 2012. Last October the brothers collected Young Developer of the Year with a $1-billion pipeline behind them. It was their second Urban Leader Award in two years.

Julian Sammut was 27 when his name was called. The Sammut Group chief operating officer had helped turn a boutique family builder into a national developer with a $1 billion pipeline of its own.

Ross Pelligra took the night's biggest award. The Pelligra chairman won Developer of the Year for a career spent turning under-used sites into employment hubs and community assets across industrial, logistics, hospitality and health.

Winners are shaping the national agenda. Housing Australia chief executive Scott Langford won Government Leadership while leading delivery of more than 13,700 social and affordable homes through the first wave of the Housing Australia Future Fund.

Others are carrying entire companies through the hardest market in a generation. Decode Group chief executive Divya Mehta won the Women's Leadership category with a $1.4-billion pipeline and a 200-strong team. BESIX Watpac chief executive Mark Baker won Construction after steering the builder to a record $3.5 billion order book.

And some have quietly shaped the country's skylines for decades. Blight Rayner Architecture director Michael Rayner AM won Architecture and Design for a body of work including 111 Eagle Street, and the Kurilpa and Kangaroo Point bridges, while Urbis's Kate Meyrick took Valuation and Advisory for a career that covers from Sydney Olympic Park to Google's Moffett Park in Silicon Valley.

Fourteen categories. Fourteen stories like these.

What winning actually delivers

The trophy is the least of it.

Each winner and finalist was revealed to more than 80,000 property professionals through The Urban Developer, with editorial coverage across the program. The award went to the person, not the organisation and that recognition travels with them through every role, board seat and appointment that follows.

Then there was the room itself: a sold-out gala where many of the industry's most influential developers, executives and city shapers spent an evening in the same conversation.

The 2026 field is still open

This year the program has grown to 18 categories and the gala has moved to the Four Seasons Sydney on Thursday, October 22.

Fourteen names were read out last year. Eighteen will be read out this year. None are yet decided. Your name could be among them.

Nominations close Friday, September 11. If that list should have your name on it, or someone on your team belongs there, this is the moment.

Start your submission now.

Gala: Thursday, October 22 2026 | Four Seasons Sydney