Schlaich Bergermann Partner’s Danube Valley Bridge Opens in Austria

The Danube River flows from Germany’s Black Forest some 1,800 miles across Europe before pouring into the Black Sea. As the continent’s second-longest river, it has served as a west-to-east conduit, giving rise to the many cities that line its banks, like Vienna, Budapest, and, in north-central Austria, the provincial capital of Linz. There, the Danube Valley Bridge, completed in October 2024 and designed by Stuttgart, Germany–based engineer Schlaich Bergermann Partner (SBP), spans it—the longest earth-anchored suspension bridge in the world.

The project began in 2003 with a design competition that called for a pylon-free bridge to reach over this bend of the river. It connects two segments of the first completed phase of the A26 Linz motorway—they are tunneled through two mountainsides that are designated nature preserves—above existing highways and trunk lines flanking both riverbanks. The company led the winning bid alongside architecture firm Gerkan, Marg & Partners, based in Hamburg, and Innsbruck, Austria–based civil engineer Baumann + Obholzer Ingenieure. Rather than opting for a more traditional arched structure, the design team proposed a nearly 1,000-foot-long suspension bridge, fully anchored within the abutting rocky slopes, with a composite structure of prefabricated steel and concrete supporting it.