Writing Contests 2027: Which Ones Are Worth Your Time and How to Prepare a Winning Entry
A writing contest is worth your time if it meets three conditions: it is free (or its fee is modest and justified by a real prize fund), its rules let you keep your rights (a simple permission to publish the winners, never an assignment), and its judges are named (identifiable authors, editors, agents or booksellers, not "a panel"). Most of the contests announced every year fail at least one of the three. The ones that pass are few, and they are the ones on this page. The dates below are those of recent editions; most 2027 rules are published between December and February, and this selection is updated every January.
The three criteria, explained
Free. A contest that charges 20 or 30 dollars to read your story is not automatically a scam: several British and American prizes fund a real cash award and paid readers that way. But a paid contest with no announced prize fund, or whose "prize" is a vanity publication, is a service dressed up as a competition.
Rights kept. Read the ownership clause first. The acceptable wording: winners grant permission to publish their text in an anthology or on the website, non-exclusively, for a limited time. The wording to run from: "all entries become the property of the organiser" or "entrants assign all rights free of charge". What your text is worth and how to prove it is yours is covered in how to protect your manuscript.
Named judges. A panel of named people tells you who will read, therefore who you are writing for, and guarantees that somebody actually reads. An anonymous "selection committee" is sometimes an intern and sometimes nobody.
English-language selection
| Contest | Who, what format | Fee | What winners get | Usual timing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Writers & Artists Short Story Competition | Any age, short story | Free | A place on a residential writing course, online publication, named judges | Closes early in the year |
| Discoveries (Women's Prize Trust with Curtis Brown Creative) | Women, novel in progress, opening pages | Free | Agency mentoring, named judges | Opens in January |
| Bridport Prize | Any age, short story, flash fiction, poetry, first novel | Paid, announced prize fund | Cash prizes, reading by judges named each year | Closes end of May |
| Bath Novel Award | Unpublished novel | Paid, announced prize fund | Cash prize, reading by literary agents | Closes in spring |
| Reedsy Prompts | Any age, short story on a weekly prompt | Small fee | Small cash prize, online publication | Every week |
For paid contests, do the arithmetic cold: fee multiplied by the number of contests you plan to enter this year. If the total exceeds what you would spend on a professional read of your manuscript, keep the fees for one or two prizes whose judges mean something to you.
French-language selection
| Contest | Who, what format | Fee | What winners get | Usual timing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prix du Jeune Écrivain | Ages 15 to 27, unpublished short story | Free | Publication in an anthology by a trade publisher, jury of writers | Closes in winter or early spring |
| Prix Clara | Under 17, short story | Free | Publication in an anthology, jury of authors and journalists | Closes in spring |
| Fyctia contests | Any age, novel written on the platform, set theme or genre | Free | Publishing contract for the winner, judged by the organising publisher | Several rounds a year |
| Étonnants Voyageurs short story contest | Ages 11 to 18, short story | Free | Publication and an invitation to the festival, jury of authors | Closes in winter |
| Library and town contests | Varies, often a short themed story | Free in the vast majority | Local publication, sometimes a small prize | All year |
Two remarks. The contests reserved for young writers are the most serious in the French-speaking landscape: strong juries, real publication, no fee. And Fyctia contests are played in public, chapter after chapter, which is another discipline altogether, described in how to write serial fiction on Wattpad and Royal Road.
The 2027 calendar: how to organise the year
| Period | What happens | What you do |
|---|---|---|
| December to February | Rules are published, spring contests open | You read the rules and note format, length, theme, rights clause |
| March to May | The busiest closing dates | You submit, text proofread and formatted as requested |
| June to September | Results, summer prizes, autumn contests open | You write the autumn text |
| October to November | Year-end contests, Fyctia rounds | You adapt an existing text rather than writing a new one |
The calendar trap: writing one story per contest. You last a quarter at that pace. The method below is to write few texts and adapt them.
Adapting an existing story to a set theme
A contest theme is an angle, not a subject. "Borders", "the return", "water": each can run through almost any story if you move three things, the title, the opening and the central object. Here is an example with an invented story, The Last Tram (a man misses the last tram and walks home through a city he no longer recognises), adapted to the theme "borders".
| Element | Original version | Version adapted to the theme |
|---|---|---|
| Title | The Last Tram | Line 4 Stops at the River |
| First sentence | He watched the doors close and did not run. | The tram stopped at the bridge, and on the other side the city had another name. |
| Central object | The crumpled ticket he keeps | The ticket, valid on one side of the river only |
| Added scene | None | A three-line exchange with the bridge keeper |
| Last sentence | He got home at dawn without meeting a soul. | He crossed at dawn, and nobody asked for his papers. |
The body of the story barely changes: the same streets, the same tiredness, the same solitude. What changes is what the reader sees in it. A judge spots a text bolted onto a theme instantly; a judge does not spot a story whose theme runs through the title, the first and the last sentence. The full method for a short text is in how to write a short story that lands.
In the Sagoræ workshop, the simplest way to do this adaptation is to duplicate the project, keep the original untouched and ask Théo to read the new version with a single question: where is the theme visible, and where is it bolted on. He rewrites nothing; he tells you where it rings false.
What wins, according to judges who talk about it
Judges who describe their deliberations say almost the same thing every time: they eliminate the entries that break the format first (length, theme, anonymity rules), then those whose first page has no voice, then those that end on a moral. What remains is decided on the last sentence. In other words, a winning entry is a compliant text that opens with a sentence of its own and ends without explaining. The rest (style, originality) counts, but it is only judged after those three filters.
A contest is not a shortcut to publication, but a line reading "winner of the X prize" in a query letter gets read, as how to get published in 2026 points out.
Frequently asked questions
Are free writing contests legitimate? The most serious ones are: the prizes for young writers, the Writers & Artists competition and platform contests cost nothing and really do publish. A free entry is not a warning sign; an unnamed jury is.
Can I enter the same story in several contests? Often yes, as long as no rule demands exclusivity during the judging period. Check the "unpublished" clause: a text posted on a blog or a platform is sometimes counted as already published.
Should I register my story before entering a contest? It is not needed for protection, but a cheap deposit or a dated file gives you proof of authorship if the rules are ambiguous.
Where do I find the 2027 rules? On the organisers' own websites, from December onwards. Distrust aggregated lists that copy last year's dates.
If you want to keep your stories, their adapted versions and their submission dates in one place, Sagoræ offers a free trial, no card required.
✒️ Read next: How to Get Published in 2026: Agents, Editors and What Really Happens After You Submit · How to Write a Query Letter That Gets Read: Template and 3 Annotated Examples · How to Write a Novel Synopsis: The One-Page Method, With an Example
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