Afritondo Short Story Prize 2026 ($1,000 prize) – YOA

Deadline: December 23, 2025

Applications are open for the Afritondo Short Story Prize 2026. The Afritondo Short Story Prize celebrates excellent fiction from Black and African writers worldwide. Each yr, the prize invites entries that creatively tackle a selected theme, showcasing contemporary views and imaginative storytelling.

This yr’s theme is “transition”.

Synonyms embrace transformation, change, alteration, metamorphosis, adaptation, transfiguration, mutation, evolution, passage, motion.

A lady offers delivery to her first child. A younger, impressionable boy comes of age. A neighborhood bands collectively after the mysterious dying of their beloved king. Far and broad, people have turn into accustomed to this important side of our existence. Yet, many individuals wrestle with it. Familiarity, in spite of everything, breeds consolation.

What occurs when a spot, a system, a individuals are within the technique of changing into, or turn into one thing else? How a lot change is an excessive amount of? When does transitioning turn into insufferable, unpardonable? And how do individuals reply to it? What do individuals be taught from it?

They are all the time on the lookout for tales that shock them, that take dangers with creativeness and language. An superb story for the prize will provide a novel interpretation of the theme, reveal one thing sly, one thing surprising in regards to the human situation, and go away them gasping days after they’ve put the story away.

Prizes

• $1,000 for one winner
• $100 for 4 writers on the shortlist

Eligibility

• Open to Black and African writers worldwide.
• Stories have to be written in English and between 3,000 to five,000 phrases.
• Submissions have to be in English.
• Submissions should replicate the theme.

Application

The submission must be in Microsoft Word (doc, docx) and within the following format:

• Double-spaced, Times New Roman or Calibri font, 12-level measurement.
• The title of the story ought to seem on the prime of the primary web page, adopted by the phrase rely. No additional data is required.
• Every web page have to be numbered.

Click here to apply

For extra data, see guidelines and go to Afritondo Short Story Prize.