10 Reasons To Enter The World Illustration Awards 2025
From promotion to prizes, community, potential opportunities, and much more.
The World Illustration Awards are a year-round celebration of the power and diversity of illustration being made today. Being part of WIA offers a host of significant benefits and opportunities from the call for entries stage right through to the winner announcements.
Being Longlisted, Shortlisted, Highly Commended or even a Winner is a fantastic achievement, giving you the opportunity to prove the value of your creativity to clients, business partners and customers.
We will share selected entries already as they come in as we get such a great amount of wonderful work. This is followed by the announcement in May of 500 longlisted projects, and then the release of the 200 shortlisted projects which will feature in a highlight Showcase on the AOI’s website launching in July.
To celebrate our 10 year Anniversary we are sharing 10 reasons you should enter WIA2025.
1. Awards and Prizes
The WIA rewards excellence, offering cash prizes to our overall winners. Our category winners receive a trophy, AOI Membership and a detailed feature on our website. All our Highly Commended Illustrators are also highlighted on our website and receive a beautiful printed certificate. The Shortlist are all in with a chance to win a Cross Category Award, with prizes including SAA Agent Mentorship, featuring in the Directory of Illustration publication and more.
Image Credits left to right: Zhang Jiayi: WIA2024 Category Winner Advertising, and Kate Osmond: WIA2024 Highly Commended Publishing Category.
2. Feature on the WIA Website
All our longlisted, shortlisted and winning artists will have a detailed entry feature on the WIA Website. This includes links to your Website and Instagram, as well as short bio and more information about your selected project. All our Shortlisted illustrators also have the chance to feature in an online interview as well, which is connected to their project page.
Image Credit: WIA2024 Shortlisted Illustrator – Veronika Kiriyenko
4. Feature on WIA Socials
We feature many of the WIA New Entries during the call for entries and judging stages each year, as well as the Longlist after their announcement in May. Our Shortlist will get a dedicated post celebrating their selected project, as will our winners. We also offer our Winners the opportunity to do an Instagram Takeover during the Call for Entries for the next year of the competition. We have nearly 60k followers on our Instagram account and a vibrant and engaged community online.
4. Features on our WIA Newsletter
Our vibrant and engaging WIA newsletter is sent out twice a month to over 20k subscribers across the world. We share WIA news as well as featuring many of the new entries, shortlisted, longlisted and winning projects. Sign up to our newsletter here.
5. Get involved in a wonderfully diverse community of Illustrators
We create a programme of engaging events for our illustrators, from webinars on ‘How to Enter’ and ‘How to get the most out of being Longlisted’, to online Meet Ups for our Shortlisted Illustrators. Our Shortlisted illustrators are also invited to our online Awards Night where we announce the Highly Commended and Winning Projects, along with lots of fun networking opportunities and activities.
Our Shortlisted, Highly Commended and Winning Illustrators also feature on our ‘Meet The Illustrator’ interviews on our website. You can explore the WIA2024 Illustrator Interviews here.
Image Credit: Illustrator Interview with WIA2024 Shortlisted Illustrator Eva Neirynck
6. Develop your Illustration Practice
Many illustrators enter the World Illustrators as an opportunity to develop their illustration practice. From students and recent graduates, to established professional illustrators, it’s an opportunity for them to stretch themselves and share new work with a wider audience.
7. Explore New Areas of Illustration
With 10 categories to choose from, there are so many different areas of the illustration industry to explore with your entries. If undsure, we always recommend that illustrators enter their projects into a category that they would like to be known for. You can also enter a project multiple times in different categories, to give it a chance of being seen by a wider audience. For example the below project ‘Bang’ by Jennifer N R Smith was entered into the Science & Technology category (where it was selected as a winner) as well as the Book Covers and Children’s Publishing categories.
8. Increased visibility to agents and commissioners
As one of the most established and well recognised illustration competitions worldwide, commissioners and agents look to WIA for inspiration and to find new and exciting talent in the industry. We work with 30 judges across our 10 categories each year who are experts in their industry, and we share updates on the Shortlist, Longlist and Winners with our commissioner contacts through our newsletter and an online catalogue.
You can read our interview here with Carole Bouvier who won the Cross Category Society of Artists Agents (SAA) Award for New Talent in 2022.
9. Be Part of The WIA Touring Exhibition
Each year, we work with national and international venue partners to host the World Illustration Awards Touring Exhibition. They exhibit the Highly Commended and Winning projects of the previous year’s competition, across ten industry-relevant categories and includes material that tells the story of the ideas, processes and artists behind the work. This year WIA2024 will be on tour at The University of Lancashire from 11th Dec 2024 – 31st Jan 2025 and the London Book Fair from 11-13th March 2025.
Image Credits: WIA2023 Touring Exhibition at the University of Hertfordshire
10. Have your work championed on a worldwide stage
The World Illustration Awards is a unique opportunity to share your work with a worldwide audience. Meet illustrators from all over the globe, explore illustration trends and techniques and be part of an amazing selection of diverse work from illustrators from over 84 different countries. WIA are partnered with AOI and the US-based Directory of Illustration giving special access to the European and US markets.
If you’re feeling inspired to enter WIA2025, you can find out more about how, why, where and what to enter here.
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