2026 Call for Applications

About the Open Call

The 2026 Seed Award is an opportunity dedicated to offering support to emerging artists and cultural practitioners that add a new wave of ideas, perspectives, and energy to the force of culture. They deserve the chance to explore, experiment, and build momentum in their work — and the Seed Award offers support to this journey. Each Seed Award recipient will receive €5,000 to invest in the growth of their artistic and cultural practice on their own terms. As a trust-based grant, the Seed Award places full confidence in the vision and autonomy of its recipients, allowing them to choose how best to use the support for their artistic and cultural development. Whether exploring new perspectives, nurturing connections, investing in materials, or simply taking the time to experiment and create without financial strain, the Seed Award offers the freedom and space needed to let their practice flourish. The Prince Claus Fund holds a very broad disciplinary understanding of arts and culture and encourages applications from experimental, innovative and inter-disciplinary art practices. Academic scholarships or academic research are not supported.

What is Offered

Each Seed Award recipient will receive €5,000 to invest in the growth of their artistic and cultural practice on their own terms, allowing them to choose how best to use the support for their artistic and cultural development.

Requirements

The Seed Award offers support to talented and engaged emerging artists and cultural practitioners who are committed to strengthening their contexts and societies through socially and politically engaged work that contributes meaningfully to free expression and safe spaces in civil society, participation and structural equity, or environmental sustainability. Applicants must be in the early and exploratory stages of their career (within the initial 1 to 5 years of their professional career, excluding study years), have established an innovative and interesting artistic or cultural practice that addresses pressing social/political issues that are important within their local context, have received little to no institutional recognition and support for their artistic and/or cultural practices, and be from, living, and working in eligible countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe.

How to Apply

If you are eligible, you can apply by submitting an application on our online application platform. Kindly note that only completed applications that are submitted via the Prince Claus online application platform will be considered. The application form includes questions about your practice and project and requires supplementary materials which include: samples of your work, a C.V. and reference letter, and a pitch video/audio that answers the question: What drives you as an artist? You can create an account/log-in into our Prince Claus Awards Platform and see the application form and its steps before filling it out and submitting your application. Once you begin filling out the form, you can save your progress at any time and return to complete it later, as long as it is before the deadline.