Dear NYC Scholastic Awards Community,
The NYC Scholastic Awards team hopes you enjoyed a wonderfully creative summer. Thank you for making 2025 an outstanding year for the NYC Scholastic Awards. Nearly 4,000 talented NYC students participated in the 2025 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. New York City students earned over 150 National Medals for their art and writing submissions. We look forward to even more in 2026!
The NYC Scholastic Awards will be administrated by the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers again. We are also working closely with The Metropolitan Museum of Art to coordinate the exhibition of Gold Key work, and the Bronx Documentary Center to exhibit National photography works. Visit the NYC Scholastic Awards blog frequently to learn about opportunities for students and educators offered by our partners.
Registration for the 2026 Scholastic Awards opens on October 1, 2025.
- Year 3 of our New Portal: We have a new and improved Portal to process entries. Returning users are recommended to login now to update their accounts and new users are encouraged to begin familiarizing themselves with our new features. Check out our Portal now:
- Check Out the Updated Entry Guidelines: There are changes to the submission guidelines for 2026. Teens and educators are strongly recommended to read through the category descriptions and submission guidelines before uploading any work. Teens are responsible for submitting their work to the proper category and ensuring it adheres to the guidelines. Visit for more information.
- Review our Copyright & Plagiarism policy to ensure teens submit works that do not violate our terms and conditions:
- Digital Submissions Only! We’re saving paper (and postage money). All entries must be submitted digitally via the student or educator dashboard. Mailed-in entries will not be accepted.
- Do Not Mail Checks for Entry Fees! Teens are no longer be permitted to submit checks to cover their individual submission fees. Teens are required to submit payment digitally via Stripe. Teens and guardians may submit payment as a guest if they do not have a Stripe account. Mailed-in checks for individual submission fees will not be accepted or processed.
- The only exception to this policy is for schools/educators covering the entry fees of multiple students. These educators may mail in a single check covering the cost of all submissions accompanied by a list of the students covered by the payment. Only checks from schools submitted with the required information will be processed. Checks must be received by Tuesday, December 9, 2025. Alternatively, a bulk payment and invoice tool is available on educator dashboards for educators interested in paying for bulk entries digitally via Stripe.
- The NYC Submission Deadline is December 9, 2025. All submissions and payments must be received by this date. Students are encouraged to submit work early to avoid the stress and complications of waiting until the last minute.