Most art prizes that accept digital work treat it as one category among painting, sculpture and photography, judged by people whose expertise is elsewhere. POR:TAward is built the other way around: the whole prize is digital art.
It’s run by POR.T.A. (POR TODAS AS ARTES), a Lisbon-based association, and submissions close on October 24, 2026.
The essentials
- Deadline: October 24, 2026
- Entry fee: €15 per application
- Eligibility: artists and artistic collectives, internationally
- Submission limit: one original, completed work per applicant
- Format: the programme runs both physically in Portugal and online
- The open call opened August 24, so roughly five weeks remain
The money
- €10,000 cash award for the winning work
- Two €500 merit awards
A €10,000 unrestricted prize for a single digital work is meaningful. It’s more than most digital-art prizes award, and the €15 fee is at the low end for European competitions — a tenth of what some charge. Compared with the €50 YICCA fee we covered yesterday, the cost of entering is close to trivial, though the odds on any single prize never are.
The jury is the detail worth noting
The independent jury includes representatives of 100 Collectors and Carincur, plus Rudolfo Quintas, a Portuguese artist who works with interactive and digital media. Having a practicing digital artist on the panel is not a given for prizes like this, and it’s usually the difference between a jury that evaluates code-driven and interactive work on its own terms and one that rewards whatever renders best as a still image.
How to apply
Applications go through the organizer; the listing on Art Jobs carries the submission details, and POR.T.A. publishes updates through its Instagram account @por.ta.association. Collectives are explicitly welcome, which is worth knowing for anyone working in a duo or studio, since many open calls quietly assume a single author.
Practical advice, the same as for any digital submission: lead with a short excerpt rather than a full-length piece, state clearly how the work is installed or viewed, and describe what the viewer does if it’s interactive. A jury seeing hundreds of entries decides in the first thirty seconds whether it understands what your work is.