For emerging designers, fashion competitions can bring prize money, mentoring, press and, most importantly, a room full of people who can change a career. Many of today’s best-known designers were spotted this way. But deadlines move every year and each prize has its own rules. Here is our guide to the key fashion design competitions for 2027, checked against the organisers’ own pages on 28 October 2026.
Dates and rules change between editions, so always confirm the details on the official website before you apply.
LVMH Prize for Young Fashion Designers
Who it’s for: designers aged 18 to 40 who have created at least two womenswear, menswear or genderless ready-to-wear collections, from anywhere in the world.
Timing: for the 2026 edition, applications opened on 17 November 2025 and closed on 11 January 2026, with the semi-final held in Paris in March. Industry trackers expect the 2027 call to follow a similar pattern, opening in November 2026 and closing in January 2027, but LVMH had not announced the 2027 dates when we checked.
Also look at: the separate prize for young fashion graduates, which offers recent graduates a place in an LVMH house’s design studio. In 2026, graduate applications ran until 5 April.
Apply at: lvmhprize.com. Source: LVMH.
ANDAM Fashion Awards
Who it’s for: designers and brands with a creative and commercial project, with categories that have included a Grand Prix, a Pierre Bergé Prize for emerging labels, an accessories prize and an innovation prize.
Timing: ANDAM’s website says the 2027 competition will open in January 2027. In 2026, finalists were announced at the end of May and winners on 1 July. The 2026 winners included Marie Adam-Leenaerdt (Grand Prix) and Anthony Calydon (Pierre Bergé Prize).
Apply at: andam.fr.
ITS Contest (International Talent Support)
Who it’s for: recent graduates, students and emerging fashion, accessories and jewellery designers, working alone or in teams of up to two.
Timing: applications for the 2027 edition have closed. The digital portfolio deadline was 21 September 2026, with the designer selection due in mid-November 2026.
What winners get: according to the ITS 2027 entry requirements, each of the ten selected designers receives a €10,000 cash prize, a ten-day residency in Trieste in March 2027 and a ten-month exhibition at ITS Arcademy, Italy’s museum of art in fashion.
Apply at: itsweb.org. Start preparing now for the next call, which has opened in the summer in recent years.
Hyères International Festival of Fashion, Photography and Accessories
Who it’s for: designers aged 18 and over, individually or as a duo. You don’t need to have launched a brand, and there is no set theme.
Timing: for the 2026 edition, online applications closed on 31 January 2026, with ten finalists showing at the festival in October. A 2027 call had not been published when we checked, so watch villanoailles.com for the next announcement.
Worth knowing: Hyères has a long record of spotting future creative directors. Anthony Vaccarello won the festival’s top prize in 2006, years before he led Saint Laurent.
International Woolmark Prize
Who it’s for: more established emerging brands. The prize asks for between four and ten years of producing commercial apparel, or the same experience working as a designer within a brand. Collections centre on Merino wool.
Apply at: woolmarkprize.com, where you can check whether the current call is open.
Graduate shows and local prizes
Not every opportunity is a global contest. Graduate showcases, national fashion council schemes and city fashion weeks often run their own awards for new talent. Tokyo Fashion Week, for example, announces the Tokyo Fashion Awards each spring/summer season, and winners receive showroom support and a Paris presence, as we reported in our Tokyo SS/27 Diaries. Check the fashion council or fashion week in your own country for similar programmes.
How to make a strong application
- Tell a clear story. Juries see hundreds of portfolios. Explain your concept in a few sentences.
- Show your process. Many competitions, including ITS, ask for sketches, research and development work, not just finished looks.
- Invest in images. Clean, well-lit photography of your garments matters.
- Read the rules twice. Some prizes exclude projects that have already won elsewhere, or limit entries to one competition per country.
- Plan ahead. Deadlines cluster between September and January, so prepare your portfolio in the summer.
Costs and practicalities
Check whether a competition charges an entry fee, and remember that even a free entry can cost money and time. Finalists may need to produce new looks, ship garments, travel to juries or exhibitions and cover accommodation. Some organisers cover part of these costs, as ITS does for portfolio shipping, while others don’t. Read the rules for what is paid for, and budget before you apply so a place in the final doesn’t become a financial strain.
Don’t stop at the prize
As we argued in our opinion piece on prizes and emerging designers, winning is a start, not a business plan. Use the exposure to build relationships with buyers, editors and manufacturers, and keep sharing your work. If you’d like your collection to reach more readers, you can submit it for a feature in The Vanilla Issue.
