Painting Competitions in 2026–2027: Prizes, Deadlines, and Where to Enter
Painting has the oldest competition infrastructure in art — prizes with royal charters, biennials older than most museums — and, alongside it, a thick layer of newer calls of very mixed seriousness. The field rewards knowing the calendar: the major prizes run on fixed rhythms, and missing a deadline usually means waiting a year or two for the next one.
This guide covers what painting juries weigh that other media's juries do not, and the calls open to painters now, each checked on the organiser's own page. Dates shift between editions; confirm with each organiser before planning around one.
What painting juries weigh differently
Surface survives reproduction badly. Impasto, glazing and scale are precisely what a JPEG flattens, so painting juries lean harder on the photograph than any painter would like. Shoot in raking light where the rules allow a detail shot, and read our photography guide before you lose a selection to glare.
Dates and editions matter. Painting prizes ask when the work was made more often than other calls — many require work from the last one to three years. A strong older painting can be ineligible.
Figuration and abstraction travel different circuits. Portrait prizes and realism salons reward one; open biennials and academy shows are broader. Entering the right circuit is half the strategy: a realism salon will not look at your work the way an open biennial will.
Open calls for painters
Every call in this table accepts painting and was checked on the organiser's own page; the date of that check is shown with each entry. Calls that have closed fold away at the bottom.
Submissions close at noon Eastern. Exhibition 6 April – 7 May 2027, after which around 40 works tour the US for a year.
Pastel in every form, plus charcoal, chalk and pencil. Selected work hangs at Mall Galleries, 27 January – 6 February 2027.
Up to six works may be entered and up to four selected; photography is not eligible. Exhibition 25 February – 6 March 2027.
Water-based media only: watercolour, acrylic, ink, gouache. Prizes are listed as subject to final confirmation.
Recently closed (3)
One winner from one image. Any 2D or 3D medium; AI-generated work is not accepted.
Applications are free; selected work is shown in 22,000 m² of a former iron foundry and an 80,000 m² sculpture park, 5 June – 3 October 2027. Up to ten images per application.
Up to three works per artist. Judged by an international jury; finalists receive diplomas and an evaluation.
Deadlines and fees are read from each organiser’s own page on the date shown with the entry. They do change — check the organiser’s site before you prepare an entry.
Two of these end in a physical exhibition. NordArt shows selected work at Kunstwerk Carlshütte in Büdelsdorf, Germany, from June to October 2027, with a €10,000 prize, and application is free. The Pastel Society's annual exhibition hangs at Mall Galleries in London, takes pastel, charcoal, chalk and pencil, and charges £22 a work.
19th International ARC Salon
Not in the table yet, because its entries do not open until spring: the Art Renewal Center accepts entries to the 19th Salon from 1 March to 10 June 2027. It is the largest competition in contemporary realism; the last Salon drew about 3,500 entries from 72 countries. If your work is representational, this is the deepest pool of peers you can be judged against.
Curatone.art — current juried call
Portrait & Figure is open until 1 November 2026, with results on 16 November. Painting in any style is eligible alongside other media; entry is free and finalists pay $25, every work is scored by the jury on a published ten-point scale, and finalists receive a numbered certificate and a permanent place in the winners archive. Calls change every few weeks; the competitions page always shows the current theme.
Not confirmed at the source
The prizes painters plan their years around, among them the National Portrait Gallery's Portrait Award, the John Moores Painting Prize, the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and Jackson's Art Prize, are not listed here because we could not read their current terms on the organisers' own pages when this guide was updated. They are added as soon as we can. Until then, check each organiser's site rather than a figure quoted elsewhere.
A painter's calendar strategy
The large painting prizes run on fixed yearly or two-yearly rhythms, so a season is planned around a few fixed points and filled in between. Work out which of the big calls fit your work, note when each opens, and keep lower-stakes juried calls going in the gaps so the record grows while the long juries deliberate. Whether any given fee is worth it is a question with a method, not a mood: we walk through it in Are Art Competitions Worth It?, and the money side of the field is mapped in Art Contests with Cash Prizes.
Whatever you enter, enter paintings that photograph true and fit the call's theme — the two failure points that have nothing to do with how well you paint.