You are welcome to submit up to four works to the Football Art Prize. The entry fee is £10 for the first work and £5 for each additional entry. 

To support local talent, there is a discounted entry for the artists living near the three tour venues. Artists entering with a Rochdale, Sheffield or Sunderland postcode may enter for £7.50 for the first work and £5 for additional entries.

The entry fee goes towards covering a small portion of the administrative and operational costs involved in putting together The Football Art Prize competition and exhibition. This includes, but isn’t limited to, paying the administration for running The Football Art Prize competition, the costs for mounting the exhibition at each of the venues as well as marketing and promotion for the show.

The best people to answer this question are the artists who have shown in our open competitions over the years. Here’s what they’ve told us. 

Whether or not you get selected, open competitions such as the Football Art Prize provide you with a brief which might spark your creativity, or encourage you to venture into new territories, a deadline to work up to in your studio, and the opportunity to show your work to experts from the world of art and football. 

Your entries will be considered by a prestigious judging panel including football players David James and Lotte Wubben-Moy, artist Mark Wallinger, art writer, critic and broadcaster Sacha Craddock, and art curators Jo Cunningham, Mark Doyle and Kirstie Hamilton. 

If you are based in Rochdale, Sunderland or Sheffield and you enter the Football Art Prize, all of your entries will be displayed in a dedicated online gallery, whether they are selected for the final exhibition or not. 

If you are shortlisted for the exhibition, you have the chance to win significant cash prizes – £10,000 in total – as well as to show your work on a tour to outstanding venues, to see it hung next to your peers, to raise your profile and potentially your confidence as an artist.

All entries must be made through the Football Art Prize online portal. 

You can enter until the deadline: Friday 19 November 2021, 5pm.

For the first stage, head over to the Football Art Prize entry site, click on “online entry” and fill in the details on the registration form. You will then be able to upload 1 to 4 works. You will be asked to upload an image of each work, accompanied by the following details: Title, Medium, Year, Dimensions and Price. Each image should be a maximum of 1MB. 

Once you have uploaded all your images, you can go back and edit your entry up until the call for entries’ deadline. Your entry will automatically be submitted when the call for entries closes, on Friday 19 November, 5pm.

If your work is longlisted for the second stage, you will be invited to hand in your work via couriers and regional collection points. More on this below. 

Yes. The online application portal will allow you to increase the number of work you wish to submit before the deadline at 5pm on 19 November 2021. Please go to online entry and view your works. You will then be able to Add More Works using the link at the bottom of the page.

No, The Football Art Prize is open to artists over the age of 18 working in all two dimensional mediums including photography and moving image.

Works should be framed where possible. This is a standard measure to ensure that the delicate surfaces of the selected artwork are protected in the normal course of handling and display.

If there is a genuine aesthetic reason for the work to remain unframed, the entry will be accepted subject to the following conditions:
i) the artist is required to provide a reusable and robust packing case or equivalent for the protection of the work which will withstand exhibition transportation across the national tour.
ii) the artist accepts that if they enter work outside of the Rules & Guidelines, it is entered at their own risk. The Football Art Prize will not accept any liability for any loss or damage that may occur in the normal course of handling.
iii) artists may be required to provide suitable packaging for their work while in storage and during transportation throughout the exhibition and tour, or to provide a frame or other means of presentation as recommended by the organisers.
iv) works that cannot be mirror plated must be accompanied by full hanging instructions and if selected for exhibition the artist may be required to supply suitable fixings.

Frames should be strong enough to accept a small screw or nail in the back for hanging purposes. Fixings are not required for framed works, if selected for exhibition mirror plates will be supplied and used by the organisers. There should be no projections of any kind whatsoever from the back of the frames to avoid damage to other works. Metal frames, glazed works with unprotected glass edges and non-reflective glass are all inadmissible.

Once you’ve submitted images of your work online and the deadline has passed, your entries will be closely considered by the selectors. When the selectors have made their decision, you’ll receive an email with the first stage results week commencing 22 November 2021.

If the selectors longlist your work, you will be invited to hand it in, so they can take a closer look at it in person. The in-person stage 2 judging will take place at the Millenium Gallery in Sheffield, South Yorkshire. This location in the centre of the United Kingdom has specifically been chosen to facilitate the stage 2 process for entrants, and to put the Prize at the heart of the local community.

There will be a number of regional collection points across the UK. Artists can also send their work via a courier. Once the first stage selection is completed, we will assess where the best handing in points are to benefit the most artists. We will take into account artists’ situations and financial restraints and endeavour for our transporters to charge as little as possible for work coming in.

During the second stage, the selectors will determine which works will be shown in the final exhibition. If you are selected for the exhibition, your work will be shown on a tour to Touchstones in Rochdale, Millennium Gallery in Sheffield and Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens. If you’re not selected during the second stage, you will then need to collect your work from the same location.

If, for any reason, artists are unable to bring their work in for the exhibition, we will offer to exhibit their work online.

If shortlisted, your work will be available to see and to purchase in the touring exhibition. 

If your work sells, it will be sent off to the buyer at the end of the touring exhibition. 

If your work doesn’t sell, you will be invited to collect it after the exhibition closes. You can pick it up in person or arrange for a courier to do it for you. If you previously sent your work via a regional collection point and wish to have them collect your work for you, please contact the courier directly.

The commission on works sold at exhibition is 40% + VAT. This commission is to cover specifically the costs of administering and processing any sales (including online) and more broadly to contribute towards the costs of staging the Football Art Prize.

The Football Art Prize is generously supported by Arts Council England. All of the funding received by the Prize from the Art Council goes towards community engagement, both in Rochdale to accompany the physical show (1), and online, for audiences to enjoy around the UK and internationally (2). 

1. To coincide with The Football Art Prize, a community engagement project will take place in Rochdale with funding from Arts Council England and the support of a range of local partners across the arts, football and health. From October 2021, artists Neville Gabie and Alan Ward will work closely with a small group representative of Rochdale’s diverse communities to research, develop and deliver a programme of activity exploring the creative links between football and art. The activity will run during the exhibition in Rochdale, but also shape the engagement programmes of the tour partners in Sheffield and Sunderland. 
2. There will also be an online gallery showcasing all of the entries from Rochdale, Sunderland and Sheffield. To highlight local talent, all entrants from Rochdale, Sunderland and Sheffield will see their artworks displayed, even if they are not selected for the final exhibition.