Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2026 for unpublished short fiction (£5,000 in Cash Prize).

Application Deadline: 1 November 2025, 11pm GMT

Applications are now open for the 2026 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. The Commonwealth Short Story Prize is an annual award for unpublished short fiction administered and funded by the Commonwealth Foundation.  The prize covers the Commonwealth regions of 1. Africa, 2. Asia, 3. Canada and Europe, 4. Caribbean and 5. Pacific. (See Section 5 for countries in each region). 

Requirements 

• The prize is free to enter and open to any citizen of a Commonwealth country aged 18 and over.
• It is awarded for the best piece of unpublished short fiction (2,000–5,000 words).
• Entrants must be citizens of a Commonwealth country or stateless persons currently residing in a Commonwealth country. The Commonwealth Foundation will request verification of citizenship status before winners are selected. Entries from citizens of non-Commonwealth countries are not eligible. 
• For regional purposes, entries will be judged by country of citizenship. Where the writer has dual citizenship (of two Commonwealth countries), the entry will be judged in the region where the writer is permanently resident. 
• There is no requirement for the writer to have current residence in a Commonwealth country, providing that they are a citizen of a Commonwealth country. 
• Entrants must be aged 18 years or over on 1 November 2025. 
• The story must be original work and should not have been published anywhere, in full or in part, in any language, before 1 May 2026. Published work is taken to mean published in any printed, publicly accessible form, e.g. anthology, magazine, newspaper. It is also taken to mean published online, except for personal blogs, personal websites and personal Facebook pages. 

Prize:

• There will be five winners, one from each region. One regional winner will be selected as the overall winner.
• The overall winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize will receive £5,000 and the remaining four regional winners £2,500. If the winning short story is a translation into English, the translator will receive additional prize money 

Submission Requirements

• Entries should be uploaded in a PDF document. Please save your document as a PDF and use the title of the story as the file name. Please note that the story must not be saved as ‘Commonwealth Story’, ‘Short Story’ or any other generic title. If it is not possible to save the entry as a PDF document, it may be uploaded as a Microsoft Word document, with the file name in the same format as above. The first page should include the name of the story and the number of words. 
• The author’s details should be included on the entry form. They must not be given anywhere on the uploaded document. All entries are judged anonymously. 

For More Information:

Visit the Official Webpage of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize Writing Contest