Every year, CODAworx processes hundreds of Requests for Proposals (RFPs) and open calls for public art. This steady influx of commissions offers a unique vantage point on the current state of the industry. To provide actionable insight back to our community, we have synthesized open call data from 2024 through the first quarter of 2026. For artists planning their studio pipeline and commissioning agencies benchmarking their budgets, understanding market trends is essential. This report outlines key findings regarding budget distribution and shifting trends in art categories, and serves as a follow-up to our groundbreaking 2025 publication CODAreview: The Power of Public Art, which included several breakdowns of key data indicators in public art commissioning trends.
Of the 1,139 open calls with a recorded budget between $5,000 and $10,000,000, the distribution is heavily skewed toward smaller commissions. Over 80% of projects fall below $250,000, reflecting the predominance of community-scale and local government art programs in the North American public art market.
| Budget Range | Projects | Share |
|---|---|---|
| $5k – $250k | 913 | 80.2% |
| $250k – $500k | 103 | 9.0% |
| $500k – $750k | 38 | 3.3% |
| $750k – $1M | 23 | 2.0% |
| $1M+ | 62 | 5.4% |
This tier accounts for the large majority of open calls. Projects here are typically community murals, small outdoor sculptures, and functional art installations commissioned by local municipalities, nonprofits, and neighborhood improvement districts. Budget size in this range is broadly compatible with individual artists or small studios. The Cody Public Art Mural Project (Cody, WY, $10,000) is representative: a single-wall commission initiated by a community arts board.
The second-largest tier. These projects typically require custom fabrication or engineered installation, such as mid-size plaza sculptures, architectural glass panels, or suspended atrium works. Clients at this level include hospitals, universities, and mid-tier urban development projects. The Cincinnati State Main Building Artwork Commission (Cincinnati, OH, $116,000) illustrates this category.
Although the smallest group by count, these projects are disproportionately large in scope. They are concentrated in airport terminals, transit hubs, and major civic landmarks — institutions that conduct formal procurement through RFP processes precisely because of the scale of the investment. The 2026 Tampa International Airport call ($5,800,000) is the highest-budget example in the dataset.
The $500k–$750k and $750k–$1M tiers together account for only 5.3% of projects. These are most commonly state Percent-for-Art mandates or large city-funded urban renewal commissions. It's a small handful of institutional outliers sitting on top of a very large base of modest, community-driven commissions.
Project titles and descriptions were classified into art categories using a weighted keyword model. The analysis covers 662 open calls in 2025 (full year) and 206 in Q1 2026. The 2026 figures are raw Q1 actuals and have not been annualized.
Sculpture accounted for 31.0% of classified calls (205 projects), making it the dominant category by a substantial margin. Murals followed at 22.2% (147 projects), with Landscape & Water third at approximately 13.2% (87 projects). The predominance of sculpture likely reflects the durability and visibility requirements of permanent outdoor commissions, which most public agencies prioritize.
In Q1 2026, Sculpture stood at 25.2% (52 projects) and Murals at 24.3% (50 projects) — a gap of less than one percentage point. Together, they account for approximately 49.5% of all Q1 2026 calls. Several factors may explain the relative rise of murals: lower per-project cost makes them accessible to a wider range of commissioning bodies; shorter production timelines suit fiscal year end deadlines; and the current urban renewal cycle in many North American cities favors visible, community-facing interventions. It is also worth noting that large-scale institutional sculpture calls — such as airport or transit projects — tend to be issued in the second half of the year, which may partially depress the 2026 sculpture share at this early stage.
Median budgets vary substantially across categories, reflecting differences in material costs, fabrication complexity, and installation requirements.
| Category | Median Budget | Projects |
|---|---|---|
| Architectural metal | $173,500 | 2 |
| Architectural glass | $160,000 | 7 |
| Commemorative | $155,000 | 47 |
| Suspended and mobiles | $125,000 | 17 |
| Ceramics and mosaics | $120,000 | 29 |
| Public works | $118,000 | 75 |
| Furniture | $105,000 | 25 |
| Sculpture | $100,000 | 364 |
| Landscape and water | $84,000 | 166 |
| Experiential and interactive | $80,000 | 17 |
| Technology | $71,500 | 12 |
| Flooring | $55,000 | 6 |
| Video and projection mapping | $25,000 | 5 |
| Murals | $25,000 | 267 |
| Light art | $22,500 | 2 |
Architectural metal ($173,500) and Architectural glass ($160,000) carry the highest median budgets. Both categories involve works that are integrated into the building envelope — exterior cladding grilles, laminated glass facades — and must comply with structural engineering and fire safety standards, which significantly increases total project cost beyond the artwork itself.
Commemorative works ($155,000) rank third. This category — memorials, veterans monuments, historical markers — is typically commissioned by government bodies with dedicated capital budgets. The 47 valid projects provide a reasonably reliable sample. Pre-design community engagement and multi-round approval processes are common and add to indirect costs.
Sculpture (364 projects, median $100,000) and Murals (267 projects, median $25,000) are the two most active categories by volume, but their median budgets differ by a factor of four. This indicates they serve fundamentally different segments of the commissioning market. A $25,000 mural commission is accessible to a municipal parks department or a small neighborhood improvement fund; a $100,000 sculpture commission typically requires a capital allocation, engineering review, and multi-year maintenance commitment. The narrowing of their count share in 2026 does not imply convergence of the underlying economics.
The data indicates a highly structured public art market. While large-scale institutional projects with budgets exceeding $1 million continue to represent a stable segment of capital investment, the majority of the market's volume exists in the $5,000 to $250,000 range. Concurrently, the narrowing gap between traditional sculpture and mural commissions suggests that community-facing artworks are becoming an increasingly favored procurement strategy for local governments and private developers. CODAworx will continue to track these open call metrics, providing the data necessary for artists and commissioners to navigate the evolving public art landscape.
Looking for more data on public art? Our publication CODAreview: The Power of Public Art contains over 200 pages of data, case studies, how-to's and resources for navigating the public art industry.
Header photo: Convergence by Rebecca Rutstein Studios, Created with Mural Arts Philadelphia and funded by AT&T, PTS Foundation, Hummingbird Foundation and the City of Philadelphia.