The State of Writing Contests 2026

What do writing contests actually charge, and what do they pay? This report aggregates the110 contests and grants in our contest databaseas of 20 July 2026. Every figure below is computed from the database records; nothing is estimated. Rows we could not parse are counted and disclosed, not guessed at. The same computation will re-run for the 2027 edition.

What entering costs

Of the 110 listings, 47 are free to enter, 41 charge a fee we could parse to an amount, and 22 state a fee we could not parse ("see website", "varies", amount not specified). Multi-tier fees use the first listed amount. Currencies are never converted, so each is summarised on its own scale.

Prize relative to fee

For 37 contests, the entry fee and the headline prize are both parseable amounts in the same currency with a cash prize listed, so a prize-to-fee ratio can be computed. Across those, the median contest pays a headline prize 125 times its entry fee; the middle half of the field sits between 56.1x and 227.3x. The full range runs from 20x to 625x.

The bottom quartile of this distribution (below 56.1x) is what powers the "high fee relative to prize" note on contest listings. 9 contests currently carry it. The full rules are on the methodology page.

Where the contests are, by genre

Counts are genre-tag mentions: a contest tagged both fiction and poetry counts once under each tag.

Who can enter, by region

How firm the deadlines are

A deadline is confirmed when it was read from the organiser's page as a literal date, and projectedwhen it was carried forward from a previous cycle and is awaiting confirmation. Separately, our weekly verifier re-checks records against their source pages and stamps a checked date on the ones it confirms.

Methodology