Awards and opportunities – quick links
Upcoming opportunities
Jerwood Artist in Residence at The Soane
Sir John Soane’s Museum hosts two artist-in-residence programs each year, one in spring and one in the autumn.
The program is designed to engage with a wide range of artists, architects, designers and makers at all stages of their careers but always with a focus on drawing. Those working in all disciplines, and who practice both observational and conceptual work, are encouraged to enter. Entries will be accepted from individuals and collaborations.
The Drawing Office at the Soane Museum is the earliest surviving example of a working architectural office, hence the emphasis on the importance of drawing. The artist-in-residence program enables The Soane to develop its relationship with contemporary practitioners, whilst complementing the broader work of the organisation.
Each residency comes with an honorarium of £4000, per artist or collaboration, and there is no fee to apply. Applications close 31 March.
NEAC Annual Exhibition
The New English Art Club invites artists to submit works for their 2026 Annual Exhibition, to be held at Mall Galleries on The Mall in the heart of London.
The NEAC welcomes paintings, drawings, and original framed prints (excluding photography) to be exhibited alongside works by their members. The exhibition offers many generous prizes and awards including the £2,000 NEAC Climate Emergency Prize and the £2,000 Hermione Hammond Drawing Award for a drawing by an emerging artist aged 35 or under. Applications close 20 March.
Sky Arts Landscape Artist of the Year
Applications are now open for Series 12 of Sky Arts Landscape Artist of the Year which has a new format for 2026.
Ten artists will be selected to take part, working in a new location each week, with just four hours to paint the landscape. Each episode will see one artist eliminated, giving those who progress the chance to create multiple works and develop their practice over time.
The winner will be crowned Sky Arts Landscape Artist of the Year and receive a £10,000 commission. Entries close on 23 March.
RISE by Henley Festival
Submissions for the 2026 RISE by Henley Festival Emerging Artist Prize are now open. The Prize rewards trailblazing emerging talent in the visual arts space and forms part of Henley Festival’s charitable mission by supporting the next generation of artists through the RISE program.
RISE offers a valuable platform for building recognition and awareness to artists in the early stages of their professional career and who have not yet established a reputation as an artist amongst art curators and buyers.
RISE has prizes of £1,000 and £500 and the opportunity to exhibit and sell in the RISE Gallery at the Festival. The Henley Festival, the UK’s only black-tie music and arts festival, takes place at Henley-on-Thames in July. Entries close on 31 March.
Wildlife Artist of the Year
The Wildlife Artist of the Year competition celebrates and rewards excellence in wildlife art and is open to amateur and professional artists from the UK and internationally.
Artworks should showcase the beauty of the natural world, promote conservation, and fight for its protection. It is very much about environmental ‘artivism’. The overall winner receives a £5,000 cash prize and a £5,000 conservation donation made in their name.
There’s also a £1,000 cash prize with a £1,000 conservation donation in their name for the runner-up and prizes of £500 to each of the eight category winners. Categories include: Abstract World, Animal Behaviour, Earth’s Wild Beauty, Environmental Artivism, Facing Extinction, Into the Blue, Wings, and Youth Exclusive for artists aged 15-19 years.
The competition is organised by the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation, a UK registered charity. Entries close on 24 March.
Young Playwrights Award
The Young Playwrights Award is a free, open-access competition for teenagers in the UK interested in writing a play. Hosted by the Royal Court Theatre, the Award has two age categories: 13-15 and 16-18 years. There is no designated theme or topic – the entries can be about anything, something inspiring, a story not told before, or ideas that challenge us.
Each play must be 1,000 to 5,000 words in length (about 10 to 30 minutes) and be written in English. The winning plays will be showcased at a Festival in July at the Royal Court Theatre in Sloane Square with a series of staged readings by professional directors and actors.
The selected plays will also be published in a special edition by Nick Hern Books. Entries close on 22 April.
Royal Cambrian Academy of Art Open Call
The Royal Cambrian Academy of Art invites submissions from artists across the UK for its 2026 Annual Open Exhibition. Dedicated to encouraging and portraying diversity within art, it is open to 2D and 3D work in any medium including painting, drawing, print, photography, textiles, sculpture, and film.
Successful submissions will be included in the Annual Open Exhibition at RCA’s gallery in Conwy, North Wales. There is a First Prize of £500; professional artists, amateurs, and students are all welcome to submit their work. Entries close on 7 April.
Awards and arts prize winners
The British Book Awards
The shortlists have been revealed for the 2026 British Book Awards. This year’s ‘Nibbies’, as they are colloquially known, have special resonance with it being the National Year of Reading. There are 15 categories with some popular authors receiving multiple mentions.
Freida McFadden, AF Steadman, Charlie Mackesy, Mick Herron, Elif Shafak, and Ruth Jones are the nominees in the prestigious Author of the Year category.
Books by Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Sarah Wynn-Williams, Andrew Lownie, Arundhati Roy and Kathy Burke are all recognized in the Narrative Non-Fiction category, along with Last Rites the posthumously-published memoir by Ozzy Osbourne.
The winners will be announced on 11 May.
What’s on Stage Awards
Paddington the Musical was the big winner at the 26th What’s on Stage Awards, presented last week in a glittering show at the London Palladium, winning nine of the 24 categories. The award for Best West End Show went to Les Misérables, now in its 40th anniversary year.
And Jonathan Bailey took home the award for Best Performer in a Play, for his role in Richard II, beating stiff competition from Ncuti Gatwa, Tom Hiddleston, Joe Locke, Maxine Peake and Rosamund Pike.
Women’s Prize for Fiction – Longlist
The Women’s Prize for Fiction is a world-wide celebration of the best in female creativity. The Prize is awarded annually to the author of the best full-length novel written in English and published in the UK.
The winner receives £30,000, anonymously endowed, and the ‘Bessie’, a bronze statuette created by the artist Grizel Niven. The 2026 longlist showcases the profound force, resonance, and scale of fiction writing. From tackling turbulent global issues to examining intensely intimate relationships, the long list covers many moving and meaningful themes and talks to some of the biggest issues of our time.
Chair of the judging panel, former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, says the selection ‘is truly a treasure trove for readers’. The full list is:
- A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing, Alice Evelyn Yang (Dead Ink)
- A Guardian and a Thief, Megha Majumdar (Scribner, Simon & Schuster UK)
- Audition, Katie Kitamura (Fern Press, Vintage, Penguin Random House UK)
- Dominion, Addie E. Citchens (Europa Editions UK)
- Flashlight, Susan Choi (Jonathan Cape, Vintage, Penguin Random House UK)
- Gloria Don’t Speak, Lucy Apps (Weatherglass Books)
- Heart the Lover, Lily King (Canongate)
- Kingfisher, Rozie Kelly (Saraband)
- Moderation, Elaine Castillo (Atlantic Books)
- Paradiso 17, Hannah Lillith Assadi (4th Estate, HarperCollins Publishers UK)
- The Benefactors, Wendy Erskine (Sceptre, Hodder & Stoughton, Hachette UK)
- The Best of Everything, Kit de Waal (Tinder Press, Headline Publishing Group, Hachette UK)
- The Correspondent, Virginia Evans (Michael Joseph, Penguin Random House UK)
- The Mercy Step, Marcia Hutchinson (Cassava Republic Press)
- The Others, Sheena Kalayil (Fly on the Wall Press)
- Wild Dark Shore, Charlotte McConaghy (Canongate)
The Women’s Prize for Fiction shortlist of six titles will be announced on 22 April.
