Tear down half your city.Build the Hippodrome.
It will not fit. That’s the brief — something you already built has to come down, and everything left standing gets replanned around what replaces it. Raze half the city you have, or start a new one from scratch. Your call.
It doesn’t go in a spare corner
Half a city, re-engineered to make room for one building.
The hippodrome is the largest thing you will ever place. Hundreds of tiles long, dead straight, and completely unwilling to bend around the streets you spent hours getting right. There is no clever placement that avoids the problem.
So the city gives way instead. Warehouses come down. Roads that worked for years get rerouted around a wall. Whole districts get demolished and rebuilt a block over, because the arena has to sit there and nothing else gets a vote.
That teardown is what we actually want to see. Not the hippodrome on its own — the city that was pulled apart and put back together around it, and came out looking like it was always meant to be that way.
Clear it, shoot it, send it
We’re judging the rebuild, not the render. A modest town that gave up its whole waterfront will beat a bigger city where the arena just happened to have room.
Make room, or start from zero
Two ways in. Tear up a city that's already grown and force the space — or start a new one and plan it around the arena from the first road. Either way it's the city we're looking at, so a hippodrome dropped on an empty island misses the point. Any scale: a small arena wedged into a cramped town beats a huge one with nothing around it.
Shoot it
Photo mode, HUD off, and turn the depth-of-field blur off so the edges stay sharp. One wide shot that puts the arena in its district, then the details — the rerouted roads, the seams where the rebuilt blocks meet the old ones.
Send it
Hit the button. Your title arrives already marked; leave that word in and we'll find it. Built more than one? Enter more than once — we're judging cities, not counting entries. You'll need a registered Karto account to enter — that's also where the badge lands if you win.
The prizeOne city takes the laurel
When entries close we go through every one and pick the city where the rebuild reads best — the one that looks like it was worth tearing up a district for.
Its builder gets the Hippodrome Champion badge, on their profile and on every build they’ve submitted. One winner, once. It isn’t handed out again next season, and no amount of reputation earns a second one.
Entries close 28 September 2026. The shortlist goes out in the newsletter and onto the homepage, so a build that doesn’t win still gets seen.
Already submitted Hippodrome builds
Karto and this open call are an independent, fan-made project — not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Ubisoft. "Anno 117" and related names and imagery are trademarks of their respective owners, used here only to identify the game. Full details in our Terms.