By opportunity
Money and time
34 of 220 pay the artist. 19 cost nothing to enter.
Closing soon
9 close inside a week. 43 never close at all.
By practice
14 practices tracked. 30 calls take any medium.
By place
35 countries represented. 121 take applicants from anywhere.
The index and the method
The fee-transparency flagship
Every listing starts at an explicitly verified zero application fee. That does not erase later costs: framing, shipping, travel and commission stay visible whenever the organiser publishes them.
Artadia · Houston, United States
Free $15,000 unrestricted awards for Houston-area contemporary visual artists.
Pollock-Krasner Foundation · Location not stated
Year-round unrestricted grants of up to $50,000 for professional painters and sculptors.
Artists' Fellowship, Inc. · United States
Rolling emergency aid for professional fine artists facing illness, disaster or bereavement.
Artadia · Atlanta, United States
Free $15,000 unrestricted awards for Atlanta-based contemporary visual artists.
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation · Location not stated
Prestigious fellowship funding six to twelve months of independent creative work.
Creative New Zealand, Toi Aotearoa · New Zealand
NZ$25,000 or NZ$50,000 fellowships giving established New Zealand artists time to develop practice.
Tokyo Biennale 2027 · Japan
Tokyo Biennale open call for socially engaged projects made in Tokyo neighbourhoods.
Foundation for Contemporary Arts · United States
Year-round grants of $500 to $3,000 for urgent, unbudgeted project costs.
NordArt / Kunstwerk Carlshutte · Location not stated
Free-to-enter open call for one of Europe's largest annual contemporary art exhibitions.
Adolph & Esther Gottlieb Foundation · Location not stated
Unrestricted $25,000 grants for long-practising painters, sculptors and printmakers.
Ontario Arts Council · Canada
Creation grants of CA$5,000 to CA$15,000 for Ontario-resident visual artists.
Belgrade Art Studio Residency · Serbia
WE OFFER YOU A UNIQUE EXPERIENCE, Perfect environment for creative exchange and collaboration.
Illinois Arts Council Agency · United States
Unrestricted $10,000 awards for Illinois artists, selected by randomised lottery.
Asian Cultural Council · Location not stated
Fellowships up to US$38,000 for Asian artists and curators pursuing cross-cultural exchange.
Creative Australia · Australia
Project grants of AUD 10,000 to 50,000 for Australian artists across all art forms.
Sher-Gil Sundaram Arts Foundation · India
Two grants of INR 500,000 for India-based photographers in staged or documentary work.
Villa Medici - Academie de France a Rome · Italy
Twelve-month funded fellowship in Rome across visual arts, film and art history.
Royal Society of Sculptors · United Kingdom
One-year development award for early-career sculptors, with exhibition and fabrication residency.
Adolph & Esther Gottlieb Foundation · Location not stated
No-deadline emergency relief for established artists hit by a specific catastrophe.
Belgrade Art Studio Residency · Serbia
WRITERS, CURATORS, THINKER, PHOTOGRAPHERS, ARTISTS/DESIGNERS residency at cheaper costs.
Edward F. Albee Foundation · United States
The Edward F. Albee Foundation exists to serve writers and visual artists from all walks of life, by providing time and space in which to work without disturbance.
Haystack Mountain School of Crafts · Deer Isle, United States
A two-week residency on Deer Isle with no application fee and no charge for tuition, room or board, for approximately 50 participants.
CERF+ The Artists Safety Net · United States
No-deadline $3,000 grants for US craft artists after a disaster — reopening 1 October 2026.
Artadia · United States
Free open call awarding $15,000 unrestricted to Boston-area contemporary visual artists.
The Elephant Trust · United Kingdom
UK grants of £2,000 to £5,000 for making new work or mounting exhibitions.
Questions artists ask
Free to enter means the organiser explicitly states an application fee of zero. Selected artists may still face framing, shipping, travel, fabrication or commission. Those published obligations appear in each true-cost section; anything the organiser leaves unstated remains marked as unknown.
The application charge is checked against the organiser’s current official page or prospectus and recorded with a verification date. A missing fee is not treated as free. Listings belong here only when the source explicitly confirms that applying costs nothing.
Entry charges and sales commission are separate. A competition can accept applications free and then retain a percentage if selected work sells. Check commission, VAT, delivery and return-shipping terms before applying; zero at the application stage does not remove later contractual costs.
Not necessarily. Removing a fee can increase access and the number of applicants, while eligibility limits can narrow the pool. Reliable odds require published entries and available places. When those figures are absent, the listing says the organiser does not publish acceptance numbers.