Forensic Architecture (FA) received the 2026 Golden Nica for their project, A Cartography of Genocide: Israel’s Conduct in Gaza Since October 2023. As part of the Negotiating Humanity exhibition at Lentos Kunstmuseum, FA presented their research in Gaza alongside other award-winning works from Prix Ars Electronica and the S+T+ARTS Prize.

Since the start of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza in October 2023, Forensic Architecture (FA) has collected vast amounts of data related to attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure by the Israeli military, painstakingly documenting the near-total destruction of the conditions of life in Gaza. Their team has collected, verified and analyzed thousands of videos showing individual incidents of atrocities.
An interactive cartographic database and accompanying text report outline the ways in which Israel’s military operations have entailed widespread civilian harm, and identify patterns which indicate a systematic and organized campaign to destroy life, the conditions necessary for life and life-sustaining infrastructure. The web-based cartographic platform is an iterative, live interface which is continually updated. Filtering and cross-referencing functions allow users to explore trends within datasets, illuminating patterns across datasets and relationships between individual incidents.

Vital stories are revealed through this research. Evacuation orders issued by the Israeli military have resulted in the repeated large-scale displacement of the Palestinian population across Gaza, often to areas which are insufficiently prepared to sustain the lives of hundreds of thousands of displaced people, and which, despite being designated as “safe”, have subsequently come under military attack. Israel’s attempts to criminalize and kill medical staff and destroy their sites of operation has made both seeking and providing medical care in Gaza an unprecedentedly dangerous venture, driving further displacement. Meanwhile, the “ceasefire” of October 2025 is, in practice, a ceasefire in name only, as the project reveals the continued systematic destruction of neighborhoods, camps and cities, along with continued attacks on Palestinian civilians.

Reports derived from the platform have been submitted numerous times in support of the South African legal team currently bringing a generational genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice in the Hague, while the platform and its findings have also been repeatedly cited by UN Special Rapporteurs and other major international bodies.