Art Contests
Competitions open to entry across every discipline, with the prize, the jury and the entry fee shown on each listing.
30 open listings · Updated 26 October 2026
What to expect from a contest
Contests tend to be shorter, lighter and more frequent than formal competitions. Many run to a theme, accept work on a rolling basis or repeat several times a year, and are organised by magazines, online platforms, brands and smaller institutions rather than national bodies.
That makes them a reasonable place to build a submission habit. The barrier is usually lower, the turnaround faster, and a run of entries over a year will teach you more about how your work reads to strangers than agonising over a single prestigious deadline.
Checking what a contest is actually for
Some contests exist to find work. Others exist to build a mailing list, generate content, or sell entry fees. The distinction is usually visible: a genuine contest names its judges, states what winners receive and publishes previous results.
Pay particular attention to rights. Contests run by commercial organisers sometimes claim broad licences over all entries, not just winners, reproduction, marketing use, or sublicensing in perpetuity. Read the terms before entering, not after being selected.
Entering well
Follow the stated format exactly. Contests receive high volumes and disqualify on technicalities more readily than formal competitions, simply because the administrative capacity is smaller.
Where a theme is given, respond to it specifically. Judges working through several hundred entries to a brief notice work that engages the brief, and skim past work that was clearly made for something else and submitted anyway.
