Competition rules

1. Organizer

The Soundly Said Global Essay Prize 2026 (the “Competition”) is administered by Soundly Said (the “Organizer”). The Competition is free to enter and is not sponsored or administered by Jotform, Netlify, Google, WhatsApp, or any school shown on the School Cup leaderboard.

2. Eligibility

• Entrants must be current high-school or secondary-school students, or the local equivalent, when they enter.
• Entrants will ordinarily be 13–19 years old. A student outside that range may be asked to verify equivalent secondary-school status.
• The Competition is intended to be global, but entry and prizes are void where prohibited by applicable law.
• Members of the Organizer’s advisory team, competition administrators, judges, and their immediate family members may not enter.
• Entrants under 18 must provide a parent or guardian contact and obtain any consent required by local law.

3. How to enter

1. Complete the official online entry form before the deadline.
2. Provide accurate student and contact information. School or club information is optional.
3. Paste the essay text into the form or provide a Google Docs link that anyone with the link can view.
4. Confirm that the work is original and that you are permitted to submit it.

There is no entry fee and no purchase is required. Each entrant may send one form containing up to five essays. Every eligible essay is considered independently for prizes and awards. A person may receive no more than one student cash award. Incomplete, inaccessible, late, duplicate, or fraudulent entries may be excluded.

4. Essay requirements

An eligible essay must:

• be nonfiction, such as argumentative, analytical, research-based, personal, reflective, commentary, or opinion writing;
• be written by the entrant and express the entrant’s own thinking and voice;
• be submitted in English and be readable by the judging team;
• contain no more than 3,000 words, excluding the bibliography or works cited;
• have been written while the entrant was a high-school or secondary-school student;
• be work the entrant is legally permitted to share; and
• not be coursework still under active assessment, subject to confidentiality, or covered by an exclusive publication agreement.

Essays may have been written before the Competition opened and may have been graded or previously published if the entrant still has the right to submit them. Citations are expected where the essay relies on another person’s words or ideas.

Each essay slot must contain a substantively distinct work. Duplicate essays or lightly modified versions of the same essay count as one work and do not create additional main-prize or Portfolio Multiplier eligibility.

Use of artificial intelligence

Basic spelling and grammar tools are permitted. Essays substantially drafted, rewritten, or generated by generative AI are not eligible. The Organizer may ask an entrant to describe their writing process or provide drafts when authorship is reasonably in question.

5. Judging

Every eligible essay is evaluated independently on:

• Original insight — 35%
• Development and reasoning — 30%
• Clarity and style — 20%
• Overall impact — 15%

Likes, shares, referral counts, school size, and School Cup rank do not affect individual prize judging. The Organizer may use preliminary readers before a finalist review. Decisions are final once eligibility and authorship checks are complete.

6. Prizes, awards, and publication consideration

• Grand Prize: US$150
• Runner-up: US$75
• Third Prize: US$50
• Five Portfolio Multiplier Awards: US$25 each
• Two School Community Awards: US$50 each, awarded separately under Section 7

US$500 is available through at least ten cash awards. The normal structure has eight different student recipients and two different school or club community recipients. Any fallback awards described in Section 7 remain subject to there being enough verified eligible recipients.

Main essay prizes

Every eligible essay is ranked under the published rubric. The Grand Prize, Runner-up, and Third Prize go to the three highest-ranked essays by three different entrants. If one entrant has more than one essay in the top positions, that entrant receives only their highest-value placement and the next highest-ranked essay by a different entrant moves into the remaining cash position. The entrant’s other essays remain eligible for non-cash recognition and publication consideration.

Portfolio Multiplier Awards

An entrant with at least three substantively distinct eligible essays is automatically considered for the Portfolio Multiplier Awards. The scores of the first three eligible essay slots in the entrant’s form are averaged to create one portfolio score. Essays four and five retain their independent eligibility for the main essay prizes but do not replace an essay in the portfolio average. The five highest-scoring portfolios belonging to entrants who have not received a main essay prize receive US$25 each. Ties are resolved first by the average Original Insight score across the three essays and then by the judging panel. Portfolio awards are based on judging, not chance.

In addition to the cash awards, the Organizer may name essays as Finalists, Highly Commended, or Honourable Mentions. The number of recognitions in each tier depends on the quality and size of the entry pool. These tiers carry no cash value unless the Organizer expressly announces otherwise. More than one essay from the same entrant may receive non-cash recognition.

A person may receive no more than one student cash award. The School Community Awards are separate school or club awards. Potential winners must verify their identity, age, student status, authorship, and—in the case of a minor—guardian consent before receiving a prize. The Organizer will contact potential winners at the submitted email address; failure to respond within seven days may result in an alternate being selected.

Prizes are stated in US dollars. The Organizer will make reasonable efforts to use a lawful payment method available to the winner. Winners are responsible for any taxes or reporting obligations that apply where they live. Results will be posted after judging and verification; the announcement date will be published on the competition page.

7. Global School Cup

A student may use a school or club referral link. Each verified writer and each eligible submitted essay can be credited to the selected school code. Duplicate, automated, incomplete, inaccessible, ineligible, or fraudulent entries do not count. Participation is optional; students may enter independently without a school code.

For this section, a verified writer means one unique entrant whose current high-school or secondary-school status and at least one eligible essay have been verified. An email address is used for deduplication but is not, by itself, proof of eligibility. School and club identities use the submitted name, city or region, and three-letter country code; spelling variants and duplicate codes may be merged before totals are final. Clubs or teams affiliated with the same parent school are treated as one community for selection purposes. A genuinely independent community club may qualify separately after verification.

• 5 verified writers: Connector badge and one equal entry for two School Community Awards
• 20 verified writers: signed digital captain certificate
• 50 verified writers: Founding School recognition

Two US$50 School Community Awards

Each school or club community that reaches at least five verified writers by the deadline receives exactly one entry in the School Community selection. A verified writer counts once for selection qualification regardless of how many essays they submit. Reaching more than five students does not create additional selection entries.

Duplicate codes for the same parent school or club are merged, and each verified community may receive no more than one selection entry. Ineligible, duplicate, automated, purchased, fabricated, or fraudulent submissions do not count. No earlier than November 8, 2026, the Organizer will use a documented random process to select two different qualifying codes without replacement after eligibility checks. Each selected code receives US$50 and cannot receive both awards.

The Organizer will contact the registered code contact and/or entrants associated with a selected code. The award will be paid through a lawful available method to the verified school or club, or to an authorized adult sponsor or guardian on its behalf. If no authorized representative responds and completes verification within seven days, an alternate qualifying community may be selected. If any US$50 school award remains unallocated after verification and alternates are exhausted—including because fewer than two communities qualify or payment cannot lawfully be completed—it becomes two additional US$25 Portfolio Multiplier Awards. Those awards pass to the next highest portfolio scores from students with no cash award, using the same tie-breakers. If that portfolio pool is exhausted, the US$25 amounts become Additional Merit Awards for the next highest-ranked individual essays by different students with no cash award. The one-student-cash-award limit continues to apply.

The selection is free, requires no purchase, uses the same five-student threshold worldwide, and is entirely separate from essay judging. Referral totals never change an essay’s score, prize eligibility, award tier, or publication consideration.

The Organizer may verify school or club affiliation and merge duplicate school names or codes. School Cup recognition has no cash value and does not affect essay judging. Public rankings show school or club names and aggregate totals only—not student names.

School totals close at the competition deadline. The eligible school or club with the most eligible essays earns 2026 Global School Cup recognition and a signed digital certificate. Schools tied on eligible essays share that recognition. The displayed order among tied schools uses verified-writer totals and then school name only to keep the table stable.

8. Copyright, judging rights, and publication

Entrants keep copyright in their essays. Entering grants the Organizer a limited, non-exclusive, royalty-free permission to store, reproduce internally, and share the essay with readers or judges only as needed to administer, verify, and judge the Competition.

Entry does not automatically grant public publication rights. If Soundly Said would like to publish an essay, it will send a separate invitation and obtain the entrant’s—and, where required, their guardian’s—permission. Declining publication does not change an entrant’s judging outcome. Publication may be offered to an essay whether or not it receives a cash prize, Finalist recognition, Highly Commended recognition, or an Honourable Mention.

9. Verification and fair play

The Organizer may disqualify an entry for plagiarism, false information, impersonation, prohibited AI use, harassment, manipulation of school totals, technical abuse, or any other material breach of these rules. Reasonable corrections to names, school attribution, or contact information may be accepted at the Organizer’s discretion.

Internet or form errors do not guarantee an extension. Entrants should retain a copy of their confirmation and essay. If two entries are materially identical, the Organizer may request clarification and determine which, if either, is valid.

10. Changes, cancellation, and questions

If circumstances outside reasonable control prevent fair operation, the Organizer may adjust dates, judging procedures, or the Competition itself. Any material change will be posted on the competition page and will preserve already submitted entrants’ rights as far as reasonably possible.

Questions may be sent through the contact options on the official Soundly Said website.

Rules version: August 30, 2026.