Awards and opportunities – quick links
Arts prize winners
Museum of the Year
The Box in Plymouth is the winner of the prestigious £120,000 Art Fund Museum of the Year for 2026, the largest museum prize in the world. The judges commended The Box for its ambitious and welcoming approach, which not only brings together extraordinary collections, exhibitions and archives under one roof, but also includes impactful community work and a deep commitment to access for all. Striving to be nationally known and locally loved, The Box preserves Plymouth’s cultural collections of more than 2 million artworks, objects, specimens and archival materials. It has welcomed more than 1.3 million visitors since opening in 2020.
The Selfies Book Awards
The Selfies Book Awards celebrate the best independently published new books across fiction, children’s books, and memoir.
Established in 2018, the Selfies recognise the many highly professional self-published authors working in the UK today. This year marked the first time that entries were accepted from around the globe, with authors from every continent submitting their books for consideration.
The Fiction Prize went to Eva St John for Flint in the Bones; Cypriot-Australian author Luke Icarus Simon won the Memoir Prize for The Art in My Palm, a genre-defying debut that blends memoir and autobiographical fiction; and Jemma Hatt won the Children’s Book Prize for Kringle’s Emporium. Hatt also won the Children’s Book Award in 2020 for The Adventurers and the Cursed Castle.
Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer Portrait Award
Marc Dalessio has won the £35,000 first prize in the Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer Portrait Award for his captivating oil on linen painting of his neighbour Jean-Denis.
Chloe Cox was awarded the £12,000 second prize for her oil on canvas painting What’s Mine is Yours, Michael Slusakowicz won the £10,000 third prize for the oil on canvas Charlie and Magda, and Joel Nichols won the £9000 Young Artist Award for their large-scale portrait In Our Borderlands.
This year’s award attracted 1474 submissions by artists from 63 countries. The winning portraits are now on display in the Smith Freehills Kramer Portrait Award exhibition, which features the work of the 51 finalists.
The free exhibition is at the National Portrait Gallery, London until 7 October, then travels to Derby Museum and Art Gallery in November and The Gallery at The Arc, Winchester in March next year.
New English Art Club Award Winners
The New English Art Club celebrated its 140th anniversary with an exhibition and the presentation of numerous awards.
Jean Lim received the £2000 Hermione Hammond Drawing Award, which recognises emerging artists under 35, for Grazing over the Tibetan Mastif.
The £2000 Climate Emergency Prize, for an artwork that addresses the climate crisis, went to Simon Page for End of Babel. Rosie Good won the £500 runner-up prize for her work Rubbish Drawing.
The £2,000 Doreen McIntosh Prize, for an artist whose work fulfils NEAC’s ideals of rigour, was won by Craig Jefferson for Beach Composition. Among the other prizes and accolades, NEAC scholarships were also awarded to Vanessa Wilkey, Oliver Marr and Sarah Muwanga.
Jerwood Artists in Residence at The Soane
Lacey Law and Kanto Ohara Maeda have been chosen as this year’s Jerwood Artists in Residence at Sir John Soane’s house museum in London. Maeda is the Summer Resident and Law will follow on as the Autumn Resident.
Kanto Ohara Maeda is a multidisciplinary artist and animator, whose practice is founded in drawing. Raised in Sussex, he studied architecture in Edinburgh and animation at the Royal College of Art.
Lacey Law is a Norfolk-based tattoo artist and woodblock printmaker. Best known for her elaborate compositions on skin and in print, Law’s practice explores the relentless human desire for beauty in our surroundings, and the compulsion to decorate the spaces we inhabit.
The Soane’s Drawing Office is the earliest surviving example of a working architectural office, having been originally installed in Sir John Soane’s home in Lincoln’s Inn Fields in 1823. The residents can work in the Drawing Office, and are also provided access also the museum’s collection, exhibitions and education program to inspire and inform their work.
Law and Maeda follow last year’s inaugural Jerwood Artists in Residence, Simon Farid and Mohammed Qasim Asfaq.
Opportunities
The British Art Prize
Entries are now open for the The British Art Prize, with the chance to win a range of prizes. This major international competition offers an important platform for artists to gain publicity and recognition with a combined audience of almost a million art lovers and collectors. The overall winner receives a £2000 cash prize and a solo exhibition at Panter and Hall’s Cecil Court Gallery, along with a bundle of Staedtler art materials and a six-page feature in Artists & Illustrators, the UK’s best-selling art magazine. The winning artwork will also be displayed in the finalists’ exhibition at OXO Gallery in London in October.
The British Art Prize is open to all artists, British and international, from amateur to professional. Entries close 7 August.
OV Theatre Makers
OV (Old Vic) Theatre Makers is a free, UK-wide, six-month theatre training program for those aged 18 to 30. With the support of director Joseph Hancock and leading professional theatre-makers, it is an opportunity to explore contemporary theatre-making practices and build a toolkit of valuable skills. Participants will have the chance to showcase their work in a Scratch Night at a professional theatre.
Applications close 30 July.
Society of Wildlife Artists
Artists are invited to submit work for exhibition in the Society of Wildlife Artists‘ 63rd annual exhibition, The Natural Eye. The society is seeking works that depict wildlife subjects and evoke the spirit of the natural world, and many prizes and awards are on offer. The prize is open to entries in all forms, both two- and three-dimensional. The selection panel will be looking for works that show imagination, artistic ability, originality and creativity, and that reveal a personal experience or true understanding of the subject.
Entries close 7 August.
Winchester Poetry Prize
Entries are now open for the Winchester Poetry Prize. Held as part of the Winchester Poetry Festival in October, the winning poet will receive £1000, with second and third place receiving £500 and £250 respectively. There is also a special award, the Kathryn Bevis Prize, for a poet based in Hampshire. All longlisted poets will be invited to read their work at the festival and their poems will be featured in a printed anthology.
Entries close 31 July.
Bournemouth Writing Prize
The Bournemouth Writing Prize for poetry and short stories is open for entries, with a generous prize fund of £3000. This year, the competition is supporting Jane Goodall’s Roots & Shoots UK, an initiative that empowers young people to take positive action for people, animals and the environment. The prize is part of the 2027 Bournemouth Writing Festival, where there will be a special event celebrating the winners. Bournemouth has a rich literary heritage with many writers, from Bram Stoker to Bill Bryson, and Mary Shelley to JRR Tolkien, taking inspiration from this popular Dorset seaside.
Entries close 15 August.
