A List of Short Story Competitions Is Only as Good as Its Listings
Quick answer: A list of short story competitions is useful only if each listing gives checkable facts: deadline with timezone, fee, word range, eligibility, rights, judging, and what a non-winner receives. Writory's: closes 25 November 2026 at 11:59 PM IST, $8, 100 to 3,000 words, age 13 and over worldwide, blind judging, a certificate and score for every entrant.
Writory's listing in one line: 100 to 3,000 words, $8 a story, closes 25 November 2026 at 11:59 PM IST, blind judging, and a certificate and score out of 100 for every entrant.
How to read a contest listing
A listing is a set of claims, and each one can be checked in under a minute. The deadline should carry a timezone; a bare date is a listing written by someone who has never missed one. The fee should say what it buys. The word range should be exact. Eligibility should name an age and any residency rule. The rights clause should be quoted or linked, not summarised as standard. The judging method should say whether names are removed. And the listing should say what a non-winner receives, because for most entrants that is the whole transaction.
Aggregated lists rarely give all seven, and they go stale: windows move, fees change, contests close. Treat any list, including this page, as a pointer to the organiser's own page, and read the rules there before paying. A listing that has been copied between sites for years without a date on it is the commonest way writers end up entering a contest that no longer exists.
What Writory's listing says
Set against those seven fields, the Writory Short Story Contest reads as follows. Deadline: 25 November 2026 at 11:59 PM IST, with results and certificates on 30 November 2026. Fee: $8 for one story, $14 for two, $25 for five. Word range: 100 to 3,000, counted on the story text. Eligibility: age 13 or over, any country, any language. Rights: writers keep all of them; entering grants permission to judge and nothing more. Judging: blind, names removed, against the published rubric at /short-story-judging-criteria. Non-winners receive a certificate and all five rubric marks out of 100.
Two more lines a careful reader would want. Prize: $100 to the winner of each round plus free entry to the next, and publication on /winning-stories with consent. Record: the story contest has no winners yet, its first being named on 30 November 2026; the poetry contest it sits beside has published winners monthly for over a year on /past-winners, from India, the United States, Ireland, Kenya and Slovenia. Free entry is earned by winning or by entering three rounds running.
Red flags in a listing
Rights taken on entry rather than on winning. A prize that is publication in an anthology entrants are then invited to buy. Feedback or results that cost extra to see. No past winners anywhere, or winners without dates. A deadline that keeps extending, which means the field is thin and the organiser knows it. A fee with no stated return for non-winners. A judging method that is not described at all. None of these alone proves bad faith; two together should send you elsewhere.
Apply the same list to Writory. Rights stay with the writer. There is no anthology to buy. Results and the scorecard are included in the fee; the optional written feedback report is the only extra, and it is stated as optional. Winners are on dated pages, poetry so far and story from 30 November 2026. Deadlines are fixed in advance and published with a timezone. The one line a sceptic might pause on is the fee, so it is stated here in full: $8 a story, and what it returns is a certificate and five marks out of 100 for every entrant.
The deadline, and what this page is not
Writory's round closes on 25 November 2026 at 11:59 PM IST, Indian Standard Time, because the contest is run from India; IST is UTC plus five and a half hours, with no daylight saving, so that is early evening in London, early afternoon in New York and mid-morning in Los Angeles. The first contest runs from 1 September to 25 November 2026 at 11:59 PM IST, with results and certificates on 30 November 2026. From December the contest is monthly: entries close on the 25th, results on the 30th, and the next round opens the moment they land.
This is not a directory of every short story competition open this year, and it does not rank them. It is one contest's listing set out in the form every listing should take, with the checks that let you read any other. Free contests worth your time include the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, Furious Fiction and On The Premises; read their own pages, not a copy, and check the date on anything that calls itself a list.
The published rubric, 100 points
- Storytelling & Structure (25 points): Does every scene cause the next, and does the ending pay off the opening?
- Character & Emotional Impact (25 points): Do we want something with your character, and does the story make us feel it?
- Language & Craft (20 points): Clean, deliberate prose: rhythm, precision, and nothing wasted.
- Originality & Voice (20 points): The angle only you could write, told in a voice that sounds like nobody else.
- Impact & Resonance (10 points): What the story leaves behind after the last line.
How it works
Submit an original story of 100 to 3,000 words by 25 November 2026 at 11:59 PM IST. Every story is judged blind against the rubric above, and results arrive on 30 November 2026: every entrant receives a certificate with their name and a score out of 100. Writers keep all rights. Monthly winners earn free entry to the next round. Enter at https://writoryofficial.com/submit-story.
Common questions
Who can enter Writory's contest?
Anyone aged 13 or over, from any country, with an original story of 100 to 3,000 words in any genre and any language. There is no residency rule, no citizenship rule and no separate category by nationality. Entry is online at /submit-story and every story is judged blind in one pool.
What is the fee, and is anything else charged?
$8 for one story, $14 for two, $25 for five. Results, the certificate and the five-part score are included. The only optional extra is a written feedback report from the editorial team, and it is never required to see your result. Free entry is earned by winning or by entering three rounds running.
What is on the certificate, and can it be verified?
Your name and the contest round, recording a blind-judged, scored result against a published rubric. Winners are named on dated public pages, so a placing can be checked by anyone. The score itself, five marks out of 100, arrives with the certificate on 30 November 2026 and stays private to you.
Why not list every competition here?
Because a list goes stale faster than anyone maintains it, and a stale listing costs a writer a fee or a missed window. This page gives the seven fields to check and one complete listing to check them against. For fee-free contests, the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, Furious Fiction and On The Premises publish their own current windows.
How do I check that a contest's past winners are real?
Open the results pages and look for dates, names and, ideally, the winning work itself. Writory's poetry winners are on /past-winners month by month for over a year; the story contest's first winners will appear on /winning-stories on 30 November 2026. A contest that pays out leaves this kind of trail; one that cannot show it is asking for trust.
Can I enter the same story in several competitions on a list?
At Writory, yes: there is no exclusivity requirement and no first-publication clause, so a story entered here can sit with other contests or magazines at the same time. Check each other contest's rules, since some treat a win published online as prior publication and would withdraw the story's eligibility.
More story contest pages
About Writory
Writory (writoryofficial.com) is an international monthly poetry contest founded in 2025 by Shivay Mehra. Poets from 31 countries have entered, readers come from over 150 countries, and every submitted poem is judged and scored out of 100 across five criteria: creativity, emotion, structure, language and impact and resonance. Every entrant receives a certificate; winners receive cash prizes and are published by name. Entries close on the 25th of each month and results are announced on the 30th. Writory is listed by Duotrope, Poetry Kit, Christopher Fielden's competition list and Creative Writing NZ, among other organisations. Past results are public at past winners and the leaderboard.