Writing Competitions in Ireland: A Monthly Short Story Contest You Can Enter From Any County
Quick answer: Writing competitions in Ireland include Writory's monthly short story contest. Entry costs $8, about €7, for one story of 100 to 3,000 words in English, Irish or any other language. Judging is blind against a published rubric, every entrant receives a certificate and a score out of 100 on 30 November 2026, and writers keep all rights.
Entry is $8 for one story of 100 to 3,000 words, the deadline is 25 November 2026 at 11:59 PM IST, and every entrant, placed or not, receives a certificate and a five-part score out of 100 on 30 November 2026.
How this sits beside Listowel, The Stinging Fly and RTÉ
Ireland is unusually well served for a country of five million people. Listowel Writers' Week has run in Kerry since 1971 and carries a short story competition inside it. The Stinging Fly in Dublin has been the magazine where Irish short fiction gets noticed since 1997, and RTÉ Radio 1's Francis MacManus Short Story Competition puts the winning stories on air. The Seán Ó Faoláin Short Story Competition, run by the Munster Literature Centre in Cork, ties its prize to a September festival given over entirely to the form.
Those are annual events, and most of them do one of two things with the entries that do not place: they stay silent, or they send a form line. A monthly contest with a returned score is meant to sit underneath that calendar, not compete with it. Writory reads every story blind against a published five-part rubric and sends every entrant a certificate and a score out of 100 on 30 November 2026. You can hold your best draft for Listowel and still learn something from a different one in the meantime.
Entry terms for writers in Ireland
The rules are the same for a writer in Letterkenny as for one in Lagos. Stories run from 100 to 3,000 words, in any genre, and can be written in Irish or in English; an entry in Irish is read in Irish, not translated, and judged in the same pool as everything else. Entrants must be 13 or over. You enter online at /submit-story, and your name is stripped from the file before the panel sees a word of it.
Scores are built from five parts: Storytelling & Structure and Character & Emotional Impact at 25 marks each, Language & Craft and Originality & Voice at 20 each, and Impact & Resonance at 10. The certificate carries the total. The top prize each round is $100, winners enter the next round free, and you keep every right to your story, so a piece entered here can still go to The Stinging Fly or Banshee afterwards.
The deadline in Dublin time, and a warning about the letters IST
The contest closes at 25 November 2026 at 11:59 PM IST. Irish readers should notice that IST here means Indian Standard Time, not Irish Standard Time; the two share an abbreviation and nothing else. Indian Standard Time runs five and a half hours ahead of Greenwich, so 11:59 PM in New Delhi is 6:29 PM in Dublin in winter, when Ireland is on Greenwich Mean Time. In the summer months, when Irish clocks move an hour forward, the same moment is 7:29 PM in Dublin.
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. An early-evening deadline suits most people: the story goes in after work, with the evening still ahead of you. Do not leave it until an Irish midnight, because by then the round has been closed for more than five hours and the story rolls into the next one.
Paying in dollars from Ireland, and how a prize reaches you
Writory is based in India and charges international entrants in US dollars: $8 for one story, $14 for two, $25 for five. Pay by card or PayPal at /submit-story; your bank converts at the day's rate, so the euro figure moves a little from month to month, and we would rather say so than print a euro price we do not charge. There is no free open entry. Free rounds are earned, by winning a round or by entering three rounds in a row.
Prizes are paid by PayPal, which works with Irish bank accounts and cards without difficulty. Optional written feedback on your story is available at entry for a separate fee; the certificate and the score come with every entry regardless. If you want to prepare first, the Story Craft course at /academy/story-craft is free and takes a story from premise to final line in short lessons.
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
Can writers living in Ireland enter?
Yes, from any county, on the same terms as every other entrant. There is no Irish-only category and no residency check beyond the account you register with. Judging is blind, so the panel sees no name, town or nationality. Writory's sister poetry contest has already named a winner from Ireland, so Irish entrants are not new to the platform.
What does entry cost in euro?
Entry is charged in US dollars: $8 for one story, $14 for two, $25 for five. Your card or PayPal account converts at the day's rate, which at the time of writing puts a single entry at roughly €7. We do not set a fixed euro price because the exchange rate would make it wrong within weeks.
What do I receive if I do not win?
A certificate with your name on it, and a score out of 100 broken into the five rubric parts: Storytelling & Structure, Character & Emotional Impact, Language & Craft, Originality & Voice, and Impact & Resonance. Both arrive on 30 November 2026, the same day the winners are announced. Nobody is told their rank or how many others entered.
What time does the deadline fall in Ireland?
The round closes at 25 November 2026 at 11:59 PM IST, and IST here is Indian Standard Time. That is 6:29 PM in Dublin, Cork or Galway while Ireland is on Greenwich Mean Time, and 7:29 PM during Irish summer time. Results and certificates follow on 30 November 2026.
Can I write in Irish?
You can. Every story is read in the language it was written in and judged in one pool against the same rubric, so an entry as Gaeilge competes on equal footing with one in English. Language & Craft is scored on precision and rhythm within the language you chose, not on which language it is.
Does entering stop me sending the story to an Irish magazine or to Listowel afterwards?
No. You keep all rights, and entering is not publication; your story is not posted anywhere. Winners are asked before anything is published. Check the individual rules of the magazine or competition you have in mind, since a few require that a story has never been submitted elsewhere, but most only ask that it is unpublished.
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.