2026 Frontier OPEN

May 11 to July 12, 2026

It can be difficult to write for a themed contest. Some poets may not have an award-worthy poem for every pirate-horror or glassblowing sonnet contest out there. Those who do may still struggle to interpret the nebulous criteria. While themes can provide direction, they also run the risk of an additional publication barrier.

That’s why, once a year, our publication holds a contest with no thematic restrictions—no deciphering niche writing prompts, just an invitation to submit your strongest work.

Frontier Poetry is thrilled to announce our biggest writing contest of the year: the 2026 Frontier OPEN. While we primarily serve as a platform for new and emerging writers, the OPEN is meant to support and elevate the poetry community as a whole. Every year, we look forward to this prize, for which emerging and established poets are considered in equal measure and as a result are often published side by side in Frontier Poetry.

We’re awarding one exceptional poem that demonstrates impact, risk, experimentation, and craft excellence—regardless of theme or subject—with a $5,000 prize.

In addition to the winner, nine finalists will also receive an award of $100 each with publication. The Frontier Poetry editorial team will work together to select winners and finalists for this contest.

Our editorial team can’t wait to read your best work—glassblowing sonnets and pirate-horror poems included.

The contest opens May 11th, 2026, and closes July 12th, 2026.

Read recent Frontier OPEN winners:

Guidelines

Submissions are open to all poets, regardless of publication history.
Send up to three poems per submission, for a total of no more than twelve pages.
For this contest, we have no aesthetic or formal requirements and will consider all styles of poetry.
Please submit unpublished poems only. Previously published work will be automatically disqualified.
You may submit multiple times, but each submission requires a separate $20 fee.
We welcome simultaneous submissions, but please notify us immediately if your work is accepted elsewhere.
As part of our dedication to the pursuit of a more inclusive publishing world, we offer a free submission window for poets from historically marginalized groups at the beginning of the contest. Please note the portal will close when we hit our cap of fifty submissions; there will be no additional waivers granted.
Submissions are open internationally, to any poet writing in English. Inclusion of other languages is welcome, as long as the poem is primarily written in English. Some code-switching/meshing is warmly welcomed.
Please include a brief cover letter that includes a short, third-person bio with your publication history, if applicable. To safeguard our staff, please include any necessary content warnings as well.
Do not include any identifying information in the body of your document.
Work generated by AI will be automatically disqualified.
Please do not submit work if you have a close relationship with Frontier’s editors.
Winners and finalists will be announced in the summer of 2026.

If you have any questions, please visit our FAQ page. If you don’t find the answer to your question, you can send an email to contact (at ) frontierpoetry (dot) com.

Additional Feedback Options

Our editorial commentary costs $12 and will provide you with a few sentences of high level, big picture feedback from one of our astute readers.

The single–letter editorial feedback option costs $59 and will provide you with two pages of detailed and actionable feedback by one of our editors on a single poem of your choice from your packet, including suggestions for future submissions. The $149 option will provide you with three letters from three different editors. Our guest editors are paid a significant portion of the fee and all are astute and professional poets. Please allow eight to twelve weeks from the close of the contest to receive your editorial feedback.

Note on What We Look For

We do not hold preference for any particular style or topic—we simply seek the best poems we can find. Send us work that is blister, that is color, that strikes hot the urge to live and be. For a sense of what we are looking for, read through our previously published poems or What We Look For. We warmly and sincerely invite all voices, and especially those that have been historically marginalized and silenced to submit work.

We also encourage you to submit your poetry for free to our New Voices, open year-round. We pay our emerging NV poets $50 per poem, published every Friday. New Voices is the beating heart of Frontier, and we hope to read your work soon. Thank you so much for supporting the community of new and emerging poets.