Our annual Contest Calendar is probably the single most powerful thing we publish all year. Teachers tell us they plan their classes around our challenges, and tens of thousands of teenagers around the globe participate by creating narratives, reviews, videos, opinion pieces, podcasts, illustrations, photo essays and more.
For us, these contests are an honor and a joy to host. We love learning from young people — about what moves them and makes them mad, what intrigues and confuses and delights and defines them.
This year, we are bringing back some recent and longtime favorites, as well as introducing a few new challenges.
To begin, we have two options this fall in response to the U.S. election, though students around the globe are welcome. In September, we open with a series of special forums that invite teenagers to have thoughtful conversations about their civic and political identities, values and beliefs. Then, if they choose, they can work alone or with others to make something in response — whether in writing, video, audio or visual art.
In the spring, we’re offering “My List,” a twist on our long-running review contest. This time, students can choose any collection of three to five works of art or culture to group in some way and then tell us why we should — or shouldn’t — check them out.
We’ll be posting the full rules and guidelines for each contest here when it opens. but for now you can look at the related resources we’ve provided, as well as last year’s rules, which will largely remain the same for our returning contests. And don’t forget we have a full yearlong writing curriculum to help support this work.
As always, we hope these contests encourage students to try different ways of thinking and creating, experimenting with both what they want to say and how they want to say it.
If you need some encouragement to participate, we recommend three pieces. Students might start with “‘I Was Enough’: How I Stopped Trying to Sound Smart and Found My Genuine Writing Voice,” by a teenager who reflects on how our competitions have helped her grow. If you are an educator, our reader-submitted “10 Reasons to Send Student Work Out Into the World” might be compelling, as might this essay, published on EdSurge by a teacher in a career and technical education program who uses our contests to help design learning around “authentic issues, problems and ideas.”
To download a PDF version of this contest calendar, click here. Questions? Scroll to the bottom of this post to learn more, write to us at [email protected] or post a comment here.
Sept.-Oct.
Reflect on your civic and political values, beliefs and identity and share your perspectives on current issues by participating in our special discussion forums for teenagers.
Run much like our 2020 Civil Conversation Challenge, these forums are accessible ways to help students from around the country and the world have rich discussions about important issues.
Here are the rules and guidelines for this year’s Student Conversation Forum. The five themes, along with dates when each forum will open for comment, are:
Forum 1 | Identity: Who are you, and how does that identity inform your political beliefs and values? (Open)
Forum 2 | Conversations Across Divides: What experiences have you had in talking to those who may not agree with you — whether in school, with friends and family, or online? What has been helpful? What has been hard? Why do these conversations matter? (Open)
Forum 3 | The Issues: What issues matter to you most? How do they connect to your life and the lives of those you care about? (Open)
Forum 4 | Information and Disinformation: Where do you get your information about current events? How do you think these sources affect your understanding of our world? (Open)
Forum 5 | Hope for the Future: What are you optimistic about? What might your generation do better than those that came before it? (Open)
Oct. 2-Nov. 4
Choose any of the questions that we’ve posed in the Election 2024 Student Conversation Forum (see above) and make something in response — whether in writing, visual art, video or audio. You can work alone or with others, and you can create almost anything you like.
For instance, you could make …
A poem, a narrative essay or a comic about who you are and how that affects your political beliefs
A podcast, a video or a play about having conversations with those who think differently from you about an issue — or a list of tips for how to have those conversations productively
An opinion essay, a drawing or a song about an issue you care about
An infographic, a diary entry or a video about the news and political information you consume and how it affects you
A photograph, a letter or a collage that expresses what you’re hopeful about
Here are the rules and guidelines, and here is a guide that includes four steps to figuring out what you want to say and how you would like to say it, with inspiration from 31 teen-created works across genres.
Update, Jan. 15: Winners have been announced!
Nov. 6-Dec. 4, 2024
What story from your life can you tell in just 100 words? Based on the storytelling form popularized by Modern Love’s Tiny Love Stories, we invite you to write a miniature personal narrative about a meaningful life experience.
Here are the rules and guidelines. For more inspiration, read the work of last year’s winners, or follow this step-by-step guide for participating.
Update, Feb. 13: Winners have been announced!
Dec. 4, 2024-Jan. 15, 2025
Inspired by the immersive New York Times series Where We Are, which focuses on young people and the spaces where they create community, we invite students to work alone or with others to make photo essays about the communities that interest them.
You can document any kind of offline community you like and feature people of any age. Then tell us about it by sending six to eight images with captions and a short introduction.
Here are the rules and guidelines. For more inspiration, see the work of last year’s winners, or follow this step-by-step guide for participating.
Jan. 15-Feb. 12, 2025
Three Novels That Have Great Teenage Characters
Four Sci-Fi Movies That Even People Who Hate Sci-Fi Will Love
The Five Worst Fast Food Sandwiches
Choose any collection of three to five works of art or culture to group in some way, and then tell us, in 600 words or fewer, why we should — or shouldn’t — check them out.
You can work alone or with others and can make lists about any category of creative expression The Times covers, whether books, movies, restaurants, albums, theatrical productions, video games, dances, TV shows, architecture or art exhibitions.
Here are the rules and guidelines and here is a step-by-step guide for participating.
Feb. 12-March 12, 2025
Following the example of the long-running Tip column from The New York Times Magazine, write a short description of how to do (almost) any task in 400 words or fewer.
As long as your topic is appropriate for a family newspaper, you can explain whatever you like, including tasks that Tip has already taken on. But you must find, interview and quote one expert on the subject throughout your piece.
Here are the rules and guidelines. For more inspiration, read the work of last year’s winners, or follow this step-by-step guide for participating.
March 12-April 16, 2025
What bothers you? Who could do something about it?
In the tradition of Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter From Birmingham Jail and the open letters you can find in the Opinion section of The New York Times, we invite you to write a letter of protest or appeal, in 500 words or fewer, to a person or group who can make a change on an issue that matters to you. While your letter should address a specific audience, its real purpose is to be read by — and to influence — the general public.
Here are the rules and guidelines. For more inspiration, read the work of last year’s winners, or follow this step-by-step guide for participating.
April 16-May 14, 2025
Make an original podcast of five minutes or less that informs or entertains listeners. You can create a podcast on any topic you like in any format you like, whether that’s an interview with an expert, an informal conversation with a friend, a journalistic investigation, a fictional story or anything else you can think of.
Here are the rules and guidelines. For inspiration, listen to the work of past winners and visit the related writing unit.
June 6-Aug. 15, 2025
Voice and Choice: Our Summer Reading Contest
Every week for 10 weeks during the summer we’ll be asking: What got your attention in The Times, and why? Each week students can enter by submitting a short written response — or they can make a video up to 90 seconds long.
Here are last year’s rules and guidelines. For inspiration, read the work of past winners and visit the related writing unit.
All School Year
Our Conversation Challenge for Weekly Current Events
We invite students to react to the news via our daily writing prompts, and each week, we publish a selection of their comments in a roundup for the world to read. We will also give a shout-out to new schools that join the conversation.
A Few More Details About Our Contests
Why do we run so many contests? We believe in student voice. We want young people to be active content creators, not just consumers. And we’re proud to offer places where they can create for an authentic audience of students, teachers, parents and other readers from around the world.
Here are more details:
On the day each contest begins, we will add a link here, on this page, to the contest announcement so students can submit entries. We will also link to all related materials as they are published.
The work students send us is always considered by our staff and other experts, including Times journalists, as well as educators from partner organizations or professional practitioners in a related field. Judging for our contests is blind. That means we see only the entries themselves, not student names or schools, when we make our decisions.
We announce finalists about two months after a contest has closed and winners get their work published on The Learning Network. We usually celebrate dozens of winners, runners-up and honorable mentions each time.
Students’ entries must be original and fundamentally their own. They must not be plagiarized, written by someone else or generated by artificial intelligence. They also should not have been published elsewhere at the time of submission, including in a school newspaper, on a radio station’s website or in a literary magazine.
Anyone who submits to our contests retains the copyright for the work, even after we publish it.
Students can enter as many contests as they want, but they can submit only one entry per contest. Our Summer Reading Contest, however, offers a fresh opportunity to submit each week for 10 weeks.
Entries for most contests must be accompanied by a statement describing your process. We are interested in how you made what you made, and your comments help us improve our offerings.
All of our contests are open to students around the world ages 13 to 19 who are in middle school or high school. Age is determined by the student’s age at the time of submission. College students cannot submit entries. However, high school students (including high school postgraduate students) who are taking one or more college classes can participate. Students attending their first year of a two-year CEGEP in Quebec can also participate. In addition, students ages 19 or under who have completed high school but are taking a gap year or are otherwise not enrolled in college can participate. Note: The children and stepchildren of New York Times employees are not eligible to enter these contests, nor are students who live in the same household as those employees.
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We can’t wait to see what you’ll create this year!
