The Observer/Anthony Burgess Prize for Arts Journalism
- The Observer/Anthony Burgess Prize for Arts Journalism
- Entries
- Terms and conditions
- 2025 results
- Previous winners
- The Journalism of Anthony Burgess
The Observer/Anthony Burgess Prize for Arts Journalism:
The Observer / Anthony Burgess Prize for Arts Journalism is currently closed for entries. We plan to open entries for 206 Prize in early autumn.
In the meantime, browse these pages for the most recent Prize results, and keep reading below for all you need to know about the competition.
The Observer / Anthony Burgess Prize for Arts Journalism is a writing competition with a prize fund of £4,000 and an opportunity for your work to be published in the Observer newspaper.
The aim of the prize is to discover and celebrate new talent in arts journalism. All we ask is that you impress the panel of judges with your best work. Your entry should be a previously unpublished review of up to 800 words on new work in the arts, suitable for publication in the Observer.
We welcome entries from anywhere in the world, and you are welcome to enter more than once. All entries should be written in English.
Anthony Burgess wrote for the Observer for more than thirty years, and this prize celebrates his connection with the newspaper. He had a wide range of interests, and there is no restriction on the artform featured in your review.
The winning piece could be about an album, book, concert, exhibition, film, audio drama, a piece of theatre or a TV show, or any other artwork which offers the opportunity to write a lively and thoughtful review.
‘New work’ in the arts means anything that has appeared since 1 January 2024, although we can be flexible about this date (for example, for a touring exhibition, or the revival of a stage play).
For examples of the kind of thing we would like to see, here are pieces by previous winners; and here are the Culture pages of the Guardian website.
On 14 May 2025, we announced the winner of the first prize, which is £3,000 and publication in the Observer. Two runners-up won £500 each.
This year’s judges included Sarah Donaldson, Deputy Editor and Arts Editor of the Observer, and Andrew Biswell, director of the Anthony Burgess Foundation, and guest judge Rowan Moore, architecture critic of the Observer
The prizes are awarded by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation and the Observer.
Entries are closed for the 2025 competition. Entries for next year will open in September 2025.
