Submission deadline: August 1, 2025
The Harbinger Prize 2025: competition for teen journalists is now open
Harbingers’ Academy is proud to announce the third edition of The Harbinger Prize — and for the 2025 edition, we made it a real challenge! Participants will choose one of our four prompts to write their piece this year.
The competition is open to students aged 15 to 17 worldwide. We seek young people capable of exploring pressing issues through their unique perspectives, fostering a deeper understanding of the world around them.
As our academy’s learning environment, Harbingers’ Magazine is where students apply their journalism-related skills in real-world scenarios, crafting stories that speak to their generation. It’s a pioneering current affairs publication, entirely led and managed by teenagers. It focuses on topics that matter to its global teenage audience, making every pitch, article and podcast episode reflect the issues that resonate with them.
For more information on The Harbinger Prize 2025, including submission guidelines, how to create your profile, our selection criteria, and updates on the deliberation process, sign up for the Harbingers’ Weekly Brief newsletter. This is where we announce the prompts for this year’s edition.
Harbingers’ Weekly Brief
Written by teenagers for teenagers, delivered every Friday afternoon to your inbox, with what’s best from the world’s youngest newsroom and its publisher, the Oxford School for the Future of Journalism
The Harbinger
The Harbinger Prize 2025 Awards:
- Magazine participation: Seven winners will join the Harbingers’ Magazine project, engaging directly in editorial decisions and content creation.
- The Harbinger Prize: One exceptional talent — the overall winner — will be awarded a bespoke reporting trip, mentored by an instructor from the Harbingers’ Academy.
- Tutoring and courses: Winners will receive one hour of weekly tutoring, allowing them to complete the Introduction to Journalism course.
- Invite a friend: Winners can invite up to two friends to join their learning journey, transforming individual awards into group opportunities.
- Publication opportunities: Shortlisted authors may receive offers to publish their work.
Key dates and procedure:
- Competition announcement: 14 March
- Prompts announcement: 21 March
Submission opens: 1 June - Submission deadline: 1 August
- Shortlist announcement: 1 September
- Interviews: 10–20 September
- Winners announcement: 30 September
The Harbinger
Prize 2024
Meet all winners:
Read the winner's essay:
“If there is anyone I would pledge my full support to if they decided to, I don’t know, start a dictatorship or something, it would have to be Gloria Delgado-Pritchett from the ABC sitcom Modern Family. She’s the best character, she could probably take on the Mafia and do it in heels.
Her only downfall: her husband, Jay. Jay is always buying himself el sombrero mexicano to prove to his Columbian Gloria that he knows her culture, but, oh my, dare anyone suggest that Canadian and American cultures are similar. Jay’s racist shots in the dark are sad to watch, but this brand of racism does provide a lesson.
‘Crossfire racism’, as it’s known, is racism intended to target a particular racial group, but due to a lack of awareness it hits a different racial minority. This oversimplified homogenization is a brand of racial profiling that is reductive to our unique and individual cultures, creating prejudice that applies to groups it’s not supposed to.
- Reva Sobti, 16, Our nation’s backbone is caught in the crossfire of racism
Seven winners will be invited to join Harbingers’ Magazine for the academic year 2025/26. One of them will become the winner of The Harbinger Prize 2025.
© 2025