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Welcome to the Welsh Poetry Competition website.
The 20th international competition is now open and accepting entries!
This year, we shall be offering the following prizes:
1st Prize – £500
2nd Prize – £250
3rd Prize – £100
Plus 17 runners-up prizes of being published on our website and in a future anthology.
Our judge for 2026 will be award-winning poet Mick Evans.
To enter, just click here.
Closing date: Sunday 28th June 2026.
To keep up to date just sign up to our newsletter.
(scroll down and enter your email address)
This will be our 20th year of running the Welsh Poetry Competition. Sadly, this will also be our last year. To all previous entrants, thank you so much for all your support over the last twenty years, and please enter one last time – let’s make it a special contest!
Previous Winners
To see all our past winners – click here.
Other News
If you are an indie writer or self-published poet with a full-length poetry collection in paperback, then why not consider entering the Poetry Book Awards? This international contest is seeking poetry from small, independent presses and offers cash prizes as well as many other benefits.
To help support local poets and independent bookshops, we have set up the Welsh Book Shop. More books and writers are to be added as time goes on.
Newsletter
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**If you would like to be added to our mailing list, just click the link below, and we shall let you know when we update the website, announce winners and launch the next competition. We also offer writing tips, marketing ideas, author quotes, free poems and self-publishing news.
Our previous newsletters for the poetry competition and our self-publishing company are now combined so you get fewer emails. We usually send one email a month and you can unsubscribe at any time. Obviously, if you don’t sign up then you may miss out on exciting news!
International Welsh Poetry Competition uses MailChimp for our newsletters, they are GDPR compliant and we never give your e-mail address to anyone else.
Anthologies
We have two fantastic anthologies available containing all the winning poems from the first ten years of the competition.
Our third book – The Third One – contains almost all the winners from the competition (from the years 2017-2021) along with the judges’ comments by Kathy Miles, Sally Spedding and Mike Jenkins.
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Our second book – Ten Years On – contains all the winners from the contest (from the years 2012-2016) along with the judges’ comments by John Evans, Sally Spedding and Eloise Williams.
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The First Five Years anthology contains almost 100 previous competition winners (from the years 2007-2011) plus judges’ comments by John Evans, Mike Jenkins and Sally Spedding.
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If you would be interested in buying a copy and helping to support the competition click here for more details.
Publication
Why not check out Publish & Print – a new self-publishing company based in south Wales that offers poets and writers an affordable yet professional service for those wishing to join the self-publishing revolution?
To find out more – click here.
Facebook
Feel free to join the ‘Welsh Writers’ Facebook Group and post your poems for the world to see and judge, or just chat about poetry or the competition click here.
Note: You will need your own Facebook account to join in.
To follow us on X
Note: You will need your own Twitter (X) account to join in.
Funding
We should remind you that the competition is funded purely by the organisers & entrants and we receive no grants, bursaries or funding from the Arts Council of Wales, Literature Wales, Welsh Books Council, RCTCBC or any other external agencies whatsoever.
If any libraries, writing groups, small presses, Facebook groups, indie authors, Twitter followers, schools, universities, self-published poets, arts organisations, independent publishers, poetry workshops, bookshops, art galleries, councils etc. would like more information please let us know. You can email us or write to us at the usual address.
To read the rules – click here.
Thank you
All images copyright © Dave Lewis apart from: