How to Enter

Ready to submit your story?
Here’s everything you need to know to enter The 2025 Hope Prize.

The Hope Prize is a global short story competition open to writers from anywhere in the world. Entrants must be 18 years or older as of 31 October 2025, and all submissions must be written in English.

Key Dates

The deadline for receipt of entries is Friday 31 October 2025 at 11:59 PM AEDT.

Please ensure you’ve checked what 11:59 PM AEDT (Melbourne, Australia) corresponds to in your local time zone.
Australia is ahead of most countries, so your local deadline may fall earlier than expected.

Entry Fees

The entry fee is $30 AUD (approx. $19 USD / €18 EUR / £15 GBP etc). This fee helps cover the essential costs of running the prize, including $13,000 in prize money, marketing, and platform fees (such as Submittable and the website you’re reading this on!).

Each story must be submitted separately, and each must be accompanied by its own entry fee.

Eligibility

To enter, writers must be 18 years or older by close of submissions on 31 October 2025.
There are no geographical restrictions. The Hope Prize is an international competition, open to writers from anywhere in the world.

Submission Format

Entries must be:

• Written in English

• A maximum of 5,000 words (no minimum)

• Double-spaced

• Set in 12-point Times New Roman font (ideally)

Please do not include your name or personal information anywhere in the document of your story. Include only the title and the story text to ensure a de-identified judging process.

What to Submit

The Hope Prize is a short story competition and we accept prose short stories only; either fiction or narrative nonfiction (including memoir).
We do not accept poetry, essays, or academic writing.

Genre, style, and subject matter are open (and we encourage bold self expression and boundary pushing).
We are looking for thoughtful engagement with the themes of hope, courage, or resilience. Stories that help us to understand the human experience in all its forms; love, daily grit, small wins, massive triumphs and living through what life throws at us. All of it is welcome here.

We only accept previously unpublished work.

The best way to understand what our judges and readers are looking for is to buy a copy of the 2024 Hope Prize Anthology, Tomorrow There Will Be Sun. 100% of royalties from the sale of this book go to mental health charity Beyond Blue.

Please note:
We passionately welcome writers at all stages of their journey.
You don’t need a publishing history or a degree in Creative Writing (although it’s great if you have one!). You just need a compelling story and the skill and courage to tell it well, and in your own voice. We passionately believe great writing is rooted in curiosity, sharp observation and literary instinct. So, whether this is your first submission or your fiftieth, we’re deeply honoured to read your work.

How to Submit

All entries must be submitted via the Submittable platform.

Prize Timeline

• Early bird submissions open: 1 May 2025

• Early bird deadline: 30 June 2025

• 2025 submissions close: 11.59pm AEDT (Melbourne, Australia time) 31 October 2025

• Long list determined: Late January 2026

• Shortlist + winners determined: March to April 2026

Please note to preserve the integrity of our de-identified judging process, long list and shortlist announcements cannot be made until after the winner is determined, which will be between March and April 2026.

All shortlisted writers will be published in The 2025 Hope Prize Anthology by Simon & Schuster Australia.

Please note: While we aim to stick to these dates, there may be slight changes depending on volume of entries and judging schedules. We’ll keep you updated every step of the way via IG and our newsletter.

The Voices We Need Program (formerly Financial Hardship Access)

We believe some of the most urgent, powerful writing comes from those navigating occupation, war, conflict, displacement, or economic hardship.
The Voices We Need is our fee-free submission pathway, created to ensure that vital stories aren’t left unheard due to structural barriers.

The Voices We Need is now reserved for writers who are directly affected by:

• War, conflict, or occupation

• Forced migration or statelessness

• Entrenched poverty

• Systemic barriers (including those related to race, class, geography, incarceration or identity) that make the entry fee unaffordable

We offer a limited number of fee-free places and review applications on a rolling basis until 10 October 11.59AM AEST.

To apply, email hello@thehopeprize.com with the subject line “The Voices We Need” and a short statement of need. No detailed personal information is required.
We’re only able to offer one submission per person through the fee-free program, to ensure we can support as many writers as possible.

Inspiration

We encourage writers to read our 2024 anthology, Tomorrow There Will Be Sun, and follow us on Instagram @hopeprize for story highlights, updates, and a sense of the kind of writing we champion and love to read.

Publication

The winning entries, along with selected highly commended stories, will be published in an anthology by Simon & Schuster Australia.

All royalties from the sale of the anthology will be donated to CAMFED (The Campaign for Female Education), supporting girls’ education and empowerment globally.

Please note: we publish our long list, because getting long listed is an incredible achievement and you should know when your name is in the pile!

Our judging process

All submissions are read and assessed through a rigorous blind judging process to ensure fairness and impartiality.

In the first stage, every story is read by our team of experienced readers. From there, up to 200 outstanding stories are selected for the longlist. These longlisted stories are then reviewed by the team at Readings, who carefully narrow them down to 20 exceptional pieces: the shortlist. This stage, too, is conducted entirely blind, with all stories de-identified.

The shortlisted stories are then sent to our panel of judges. Each judge independently reads and scores every story against a shared rubric that looks for qualities such as a distinctive voice, a strong sense of narrative, emotional impact, creativity, and a thoughtful engagement with the themes of hope, courage, or resilience. The judges spend around a month with the stories before final scores are combined to determine the winners. This is also judged entirely blind.

First, second, and third place stories are then awarded and announced in April 2026, with all shortlisted works published in the annual anthology.

Transparency & Values

We are a small, independent, mostly volunteer-run social enterprise, and we deeply value transparency. We’ve clearly outlined our process, partners, charitable partnership, timelines, and prize details because we know that openness builds trust.

Entry fees go directly toward prize money (we split this 50% with Readings), publication costs, platform and marketing expenses and administration of the prize. It is a huge job and the prize simply could not exist without entry fees.

This year, we have awarded 145 fee-free places to writers experiencing financial hardship, funded almost entirely out of our own pocket, because we believe prizes like ours should be accessible to everyone with a story to tell. This is well above the industry average, which is usually 10-15 entries per competition.

Demand for these places was so high that we went well over our initial cap, simply because we couldn’t say no to so many deserving writers. Our Voices We Need program, which provides these fee-free places, is primarily funded by us, but writers can choose to add a small, optional tip when submitting if they’d like to help sustain the program. Every contribution directly supports greater access and inclusion.

As writers ourselves, we founded The Hope Prize to offer something rare: a meaningful opportunity for emerging and established voices through international publication and a $13,000 prize pool.

In a world that’s increasingly hostile to artists and creatives, we’re determined to carve out a space that is uplifting, fair, and genuinely cool.

If you have any questions about how the prize is administered, please reach out to us at hello@thehopeprize.com. We kindly ask that you read our FAQ first, as we’ve worked hard to ensure all relevant information is easy to find on our website.