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Submissions open for 2026 BBC National Short Story Awards with Cambridge University

The 2026 BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University has opened submissions, as it enters its twenty-first year. Entries close at 9am (GMT), Monday 16th March 2026. The BBC National Short Story Award is open to published writers who are British citizens and/or resident in the UK.

Entry instructions and Ts&Cs are available here.

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Entries are now being accepted for the 2026 BBC National Short Story Awards with Cambridge University. The Award, now in its 21st year, is worth £15,000 and will be given to one writer demonstrating exceptional skill and artistry in the short story form. The Award is for a single story of up to 8,000 words, written by an established author.

Di Speirs, founder of the Award and a constant judging presence, will chair the panel as in 2025, and is joined by a stellar list of judges: 2022 NSSA winner Saba Sams, whose highly acclaimed debut novel ‘Gunk’ was published last year, two former NSSA shortlistees, Tahmima Anam (2016) and Will Eaves (2017), and author Andrew Michael Hurley.

On chairing the Award once again, Chair Di Speirs says:

I am absolutely delighted to be chairing the 2026 BBC National Short Story Award with such a terrific panel of judges. The joy of a brilliantly written story never palls. Great fiction has the ability to peel back the layers; short stories, more than any other form, can capture and distil our times and how we navigate them. So once again I’m excited at the prospect of discovery, delight, invention and imagination, and of seeing the world anew through the eyes of writers more perspicacious than me.

You can listen to the 2025 winning entry – Colwill Brown’s ‘You Cannot Thread a Moving Needle’ – on BBC Sounds, read by Sophie McShera, alongside other shortlisted and winning entries from previous years.

Submissions for the 2026 BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University are open from 9am (GMT), Wednesday 14 January 2026 to 9am (GMT), Monday 16th March 2026.