Deadline: February 27, 2026
Applications for the Caine Prize for African Writing 2026 are now open. The Caine Prize for African Writing is a registered charity whose aim is to bring African writing to a wider audience using their annual literary award.
In addition to administering the Prize, they work to connect readers with African writers through a series of public events, as well as helping emerging writers in Africa to enter the world of mainstream publishing through the annual Caine Prize writers’ workshop which takes place in a different African country each year.
The stories written at Caine Prize workshops are published annually alongside the Prize’s shortlisted stories in the annual Caine Prize Anthology by Cassava Republic Press in the UK and publishers African countries including, Jacana Media (South Africa), Cassava Republic (Nigeria), FEMRITE (Uganda), Gadsen Publishers (Zambia), ‘amaBooks (Zimbabwe), Langaa (Cameroon), and Mkuku na Nyota (Tanzania).
Prize
- Winner receives a cash prize of £10,000. Four shortlisted writers receive a cash prize of £500 each.
Eligibility
- The story must have been published in the five years preceding the submissions deadline. For 2026 eligibility, the judges will only consider work published between 27th February 2021 and 27th February 2026.
- Entries must be between 3,000 and 10,000 words in length.
- Entries must be submitted by a publisher. This includes publishers of physical and digital books, literary journals, magazines, and arts-oriented websites. Kindly note that the publisher submitting the entry cannot also be the author of the story.
- Writers must be over 18 years of age at the time of submission.
- Self-published and unpublished short stories are not eligible.
- Publishers are encouraged to submit multiple short stories as long as they do not submit more than one story by the same author.
- Stories may only be entered for consideration for The Caine Prize for African Writing once. Unfortunately, this means that you may not re-submit a story for consideration, even if it was not selected for the shortlist.
- Genres not eligible for entry include: novels, children’s stories, factual writing, academic essays, plays, poetry, autobiography/biography, and any work that does not constitute a fictional short story.
- Submissions must specify which African country the author comes from and the short story word count.
- Publishers must obtain the consent of the author before submitting the short story.
- When submitting digitally published short stories, kindly provide a PDF version. Alternatively, you may instead provide a PDF containing a link to the publication.
Application
Submissions for The Caine Prize for African Writing open on Monday, 1 December 2025 (00:01 GMT) and close on Friday, 27 February 2026 (12:00 GMT).
For more information, visit The Caine Prize for African Writing.
