Clubs and competitions

National and international competitions

Wells Festival of Literature Young Poets Competition

This competition offers a chance for young poets aged 16-22 to show off their word skills. You can enter up to three poems in the Young Poets Competition for a fee of £3 per poem which you will have to pay personally.  There is a top prize of £200, with second and third prizes of £150 and £100.Winners receive a year’s membership to The Poetry Society.  The competition opens on 1 April and closes on 31 July.  More details here.

Foyle Young Poets Award

The Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award is one of the biggest and most prestigious poetry competitions in the world. Every year, 15 top winners and 85 commended poets are chosen.  The competition is open to young people between the ages of 11-17.  Poems can be on any theme and in any style but must be no longer than forty lines.  The competition closes on the 31 July 2026.  More details here.‍ ‍

Mere Literary Festival

This competition is open to students from 6-15 and the organisers want to read the very best of your writing on the theme of Adventure. You can write using this theme in any way you like: it can be a story, a poem, a description or an account of how you think about it. The word limit is up to 800 words. You don’t have to write as many as this, but you should not exceed it. The closing date is September 12th, 2026. Prizes galore. More details here.

Crowvus Ghost Story Competition

The Annual Crowvus ghost story competition is now open, and entries are free for children. This category is for anyone up to and including 16 years old on 1st December 2026. The word limit is 4000 and you need to submit your entry to submissions@crowvus.com. Make sure you put ‘competition’ in your subject line. Do not use the online form. More details here.

The Betty Haigh Shakespeare Prize

The Betty Haigh Shakespeare Prize offers an opportunity for students aged 11 – 19 in school, college, or sixth form to demonstrate their creativity and their engagement with an adaptation of one of Shakespeare’s texts. The organisers invite you to submit a piece of writing of up to 1,500 words. Your submission can be in a form of your choosing (e.g. academic essay, journalistic article, or creative response). The competition closes on 30 September 2026. More details here..

The Young Walter Scott Prize

This prestigious competition is for those aged between 11 and 19 and interested in history and writing. This is the UK’s only creative writing prize specifically for budding historical fiction writers. You could win a £500 travel grant, tickets to one of the UK’s best book festivals, and the chance to see your own work in print in a special anthology. Stories must be between 800 and 2,000 words and set in a time before you were born. You have until 31st October 2026 to get your entries in. More details  here.

The Solstice Nature Prize

The Solstice Nature Prize is a national, annual writing competition for young writers, which invites young people to take a closer look at the natural world, explore their relationship with it, or examine the challenges it faces, and write short stories, poems, and thought-provoking blogs in response. They are looking for entries about any aspect of nature and offer prizes for winners in four age groups: 7-11, 12-14, 15-17 and 18-25 years. The closing date is the 10th October 2026. More details  here.