Sir Peter Ustinov Television Scriptwriting Award

Closed for this cycle

The 2026 competition closed on 3 August 2026 at 11:59pm Pacific, and winners are announced on 31 October. No 2027 dates have been published. Across four evidenced cycles the shape is very consistent: entries open between mid-February and mid-March, the final deadline lands in the last week of July or the first days of August, and winners are announced in the last week of October, preceded by a four-stage announcement cascade through late September. One drift worth noting: both the opening and the final deadline have moved a little later every year, from 14 February and 25 July in 2023 to 18 March and 3 August in 2026. Fees have been identical across 2024, 2025 and 2026.

Closed for this cycle

The 2026 cycle opened on 2 March and closed on 20 March 2026 at 5:00pm, with shortlist interviews in the week of 4 May and six writers informed by 12 May. No timezone is published, though the organisers are Irish. The 2027 window is unannounced, but the cadence is the most stable of any Irish scheme we carry: four consecutive years with a late February or early March open, a deadline in the first three weeks of March, a residential weekend in Galway in May, a second in Dublin in October, and six writers plus three shadow editors every single year. The only drift is the deadline itself sliding from the first days of March in 2023, 2024 and 2025 to the 20th in 2026, so a March 2027 deadline is a reasonable expectation.

Open for applications

Open now and genuinely free. Two tiers, both at zero cost across all four categories: regular on 30 September 2026 and final on 22 October 2026. No times or timezones are published for either deadline.

Closed for this cycle

The 2026 round closed at 11:59pm on Sunday 3 May 2026 and the competition returns in early 2027, with no date yet published. The recent pattern is consistent: across 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026 the deadline has fallen on the last Sunday of April or the first Sunday of May at 11:59pm, with finalists in June and showcases in June and July. The fee rose from 20 to the current level between 2024 and 2025 and has held since. One caveat on calling it annual: the organisers' own previous-years list skips 2019, 2021 and 2022, and the 2020 finalists were never staged in a theatre because of the pandemic, so it has run annually since 2023 but has missed years before.

Closed for this cycle

The 2026 round ran from 3 October and was scheduled to close on 27 October 2025 at 11:59pm Pacific, but hit its 1,000 application cap first and shut early. FOX says only to check back next autumn for the next cycle. The programme is genuinely annual across three evidenced cycles, but the window has moved earlier and shortened each time, from a roughly 40 day window opening in December, to 16 days in mid-October, to 25 days in early October. The 1,000 cap was introduced for the second of those and has closed the window early both times since, so the published closing date is a ceiling rather than a plan.

30 Oct 20266 days left