UK Poetry Competitions: A Calendar of Deadlines, Fees and Prizes

Seven closing dates in this calendar fall in the last week of October: Candlestick Press and Templar’s iOTA Shot pamphlet awards on the 26th, Happiful on the 30th, then the Eric Gregory Awards, the Bedford Competition, the Edward Thomas competition and the Wildfire Free Speech or Fake News contest all on the 31st. A poet with six poems and a modest budget cannot enter them all, and ought not to try.

The table below lists twenty UK-run competitions open to entries on or after 1 October 2026, each read from the organiser’s own page that day. The dates are the organiser’s. Where a page gave a day but no year, the table’s notes say how the year was worked out.

Poetry competitions closing soon

14 in the next 45 days from 9 October 2026

1. 19Oct
   Waltham Forest Poetry CompetitionThe Waltham Forest Poetry Competition · first prize £400 (adult main prize)
   Fee
2. 20Oct
   VERVE Poem of the MonthVERVE Poetry Festival · first prize £100
   Fee
3. 21Oct
   Manchester Cathedral Poetry CompetitionManchester Cathedral · first prize £200
   Free
4. 26Oct
   Candlestick Press Moon Poem CompetitionCandlestick Press · first prize £100 plus publication and 10 copies of the pamphlet
   Fee
5. 26Oct
   iOTA Shot Pamphlet Awards 2026Templar Poetry · first prize publication of up to four pamphlets by Templar Poetry (no cash sum stated)
   Fee
6. 30Oct
   Happiful Poetry Prize 2027Happiful · first prize £100
   Free
7. 31Oct
   Eric Gregory AwardsSociety of Authors
   Fee unclear
8. 31Oct
   The Bedford Competition (poetry)The Bedford Competition · first prize £2,000
   Fee

Full calendar · Add the deadlines to your calendar (.ics)

Read from each organiser’s or magazine’s own page on 1 October 2026.

How poetry competitions work

The pattern is nearly uniform. A fee is paid per poem or per batch, the poems go in without the poet’s name, a reader or panel sorts them, and a named judge chooses the winners. Results come weeks or months later. For single-poem contests in the calendar the limit is usually between 25 and 50 lines: 30 at Manchester Cathedral, 35 at Candlestick Press, 40 at Bedford and Cafe Writers, 50 at the Wildfire contest, and only 14 at Guernsey.

Prizes vary a great deal. The Bedford Competition pays £2,000 for first place and Cafe Writers £1,000, while the monthly VERVE Poem of the Month pays £100 and Happiful £100. Cash is not always the point. Several pamphlet and collection contests pay a modest sum and publish the winning manuscript, and that publication can matter more to a career than the cheque.

Fees, free entry and fee waivers

Fees in the table range widely. The Waltham Forest competition asks £3 for a first poem and £1 for each further one, with entry free to under-18s. Bedford asks £8.50 a poem, or £17 for three, with student rates of £6. Cafe Writers charges £5 a poem, £13 for three, and offers free entry to UK residents with a household income under £16,000. The Poetry Business lets entrants request a fee waiver up to 14 October 2026.

A few competitions cost nothing. Happiful’s prize is free to UK residents aged 18 or over. Tower Poetry is free, for students only. Manchester Cathedral takes a first poem free and charges £5 for any extra. If you are budgeting, add up the fees before choosing, and consider dropping the expensive entries that leave you resenting the cost.

One odd structure deserves a note. Candlestick Press makes entry depend on buying a pamphlet (£6.95 plus postage), and one pamphlet allows two poems, two allow five. Whether that counts as a fee is a matter of taste; the organiser’s page describes it as how entry works.

Judging a competition before paying

Before sending money, read the rules page as if it were a contract. A trustworthy one names the organiser, the judges or the judging process, the fee, the line limit, the eligibility rules and the date results are announced. All twenty entries in the calendar state the closing date and the fee position, even when the amount is unclear (as with the Eric Gregory Awards, where no fee is stated).

Look at who has won before. Winners of the Edward Thomas competition read at the Fellowship meeting in Steep, Hampshire, each March, which is a real event, not a promise. The rules pages for Bedford and Cafe Writers are detailed enough to answer most questions before you ask. Treat the opposite as a warning: vague rules, no judge, no results date, or a prize mostly made up of anthology copies.

Eligibility catches people out. Happiful is for UK residents aged 18 or over. The Mslexia competitions are for women. Tower Poetry is for students aged 16 to 18. Eric Gregory entrants must be under 30 on 31 October 2026 and British or long-term resident. Read the line before you pay.

The calendar in order

Reading the table by date gives a rough shape to the autumn. Poetry London’s pamphlet prize closes on 1 October. The monthly VERVE Poem of the Month closes on the 20th of each month, which makes it the only rolling entry in the list. Waltham Forest closes on 19 October and Manchester Cathedral on the 21st.

Then the late-October crush, and in early November the Poetry Business pair on the 4th. Cafe Writers follows on 15 November, Templar’s Straid Collection Awards on 23 November, and the Thomas Cranmer competition on 6 December. Mslexia’s two competitions both close on 7 December, with results due in February 2027. The Guernsey International Poetry Competition runs to 15 January 2027. Tower Poetry, for students, opens in October 2026 and had announced no closing date when checked.

A practical habit: write the deadlines in a diary with the fee next to each, and decide in advance how much you will spend in total. Competitions are a poor place to chase a result impulsively.

Rights, shortlists and what happens after

Rules on rights differ and are worth reading before you enter, because a winning poem may be published by the organiser, and some prizes carry publication in an anthology, magazine or pamphlet. The Mslexia single-poem prize includes publication in Mslexia. Candlestick Press prints its winner in a pamphlet and gives ten copies. Others, like the Edward Thomas competition, invite winners to read aloud.

Shortlists and commended lists matter less than poets think. They are pleasant, they are not a trophy, and they rarely open doors by themselves. Where an organiser sets a date for results, as Happiful does for 28 February 2027, wait until then before sending the same poems elsewhere, unless the rules say simultaneous entry is allowed. Cafe Writers, for one, does not allow simultaneous submissions.

Pamphlet and collection prizes

Pamphlet contests ask for a short sequence. The Poetry Business Pamphlet Competition wants 20 pages and gives two winners £500 each plus Smith|Doorstop publication; the entry fee is £25, or £22 for subscribers, Friends and Poetry Society members. iOTA Shot Pamphlet Awards from Templar Poetry take 16 to 25 pages and publish up to four pamphlets, with no cash sum stated. Mslexia’s pamphlet competition asks for 18 to 20 poems across 20 to 24 pages, judged by Maura Dooley for Bloodaxe Books, with £500 and publication.

Collections are bigger commitments. The Poetry Business 40th Anniversary Collection Competition asks for 40 to 60 pages and an unpublished manuscript, with £500 and publication, and a joint entry with the pamphlet competition costs £50. Templar’s Straid Collection Awards take a complete collection and publish up to three, with a closing date of 23 November.

Poetry London has its own pamphlet prize, which closes on 1 October, the day of checking, so it may already be gone by the time you read this. It offers £250 plus publication by Poetry London Editions.

For anyone choosing between a single poem and a pamphlet prize: if you have fewer than a dozen poems you would stand behind, enter single poems. A thin manuscript shows its gaps; a single strong poem does not.

Regional, themed and age-restricted contests

Not every contest wants the same poem. Manchester Cathedral’s “Unsung City” theme is regional in spirit, and open to all ages and faith backgrounds with no prior writing experience needed. The Edward Thomas competition is tied to a poet and a Hampshire village. The Thomas Cranmer competition asks young people for an original poem about Thomas Cranmer as author of the Book of Common Prayer, with £150 in each of two age bands, 11 to 15 and 15 to 18.

The Eric Gregory Awards are the odd one out: no fee is stated, and entry means sending a collection of no more than 30 poems and no more than 50 pages. The Guernsey International Poetry Competition has a tiny line limit of 14 lines, which suits a compressed poem and punishes a loose one.

Why entries fail

The rules pages repeat a short list.

• Late entries. Most deadlines are midnight, UK time or GMT, and the Candlestick Press date is midnight GMT.
• Over the line limit. A 41-line poem in a 40-line contest is out.
• A name left on the poem where entry is anonymous.
• Work published elsewhere, including some online posting.
• Ignoring a theme: 2026 themes in the calendar include music at Waltham Forest, “Unsung City” at Manchester Cathedral, free speech at Wildfire and mental health at Happiful.

The theme rule is the one entrants misjudge. A poem that touches the subject sideways may be admired by a judge and still count as off-brief by the rules.

Where competitions meet magazines

Some organisers are also magazines. Mslexia and Poetry London run competitions, and The Poetry Business, which publishes The North, runs the pamphlet and collection contests. The magazine side of that world, with its windows and its own fees, is laid out in the directory of UK poetry magazines. The Literary Desk holds interviews and poems from a long-running poetry journal, and anyone who finds themselves wanting to edit rather than enter might read how to publish your own magazine. Types of journals sets the wider landscape of periodicals.

The big name missing from the table is the National Poetry Competition, run by the Poetry Society, whose page could not be read at checking. The Poetry Society was founded in 1909 and its competition exists, but dates and fees need to come from the society itself.

For rules and fees straight from the organisers, see the Bedford Competition rules, Cafe Writers and the Poetry Business pamphlet competition. The Poetry Business closes on Wednesday 4 November, and so does its collection prize.