Berggruen Prize Essay Competition

Thank you for your interest and participation in the 2026 Berggruen Prize Essay Competition. We are no longer accepting submissions.

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The annual Berggruen Prize Essay Competition seeks to stimulate new thinking and innovative concepts while embracing cross-cultural perspectives across fields, disciplines, and geographies. The competition poses fundamental philosophical questions of significance for both contemporary life and the future. As such, this initiative complements the Berggruen Prize for Philosophy & Culture, which recognizes major lifetime achievements in advancing ideas that have shaped the world.

The competition awards a prize of $50,000 USD for essays submitted in English and $50,000 USD for essays submitted in Chinese. The winners are celebrated at an annual award ceremony, and their winning essays are published to give readers insight into perspectives of both East and West.

The inspiration for the competition originates from the role essays have played in the past, including the essay contest held by the Académie de Dijon. In 1750, Jean-Jacques Rousseau's essay Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, also known as The First Discourse, won and notably marked the onset of his prominence as a profoundly influential thinker. Similarly, our competition aspires to create a platform for groundbreaking ideas and intellectual innovation.

We invite essays that follow in the tradition of renowned thinkers such as Rousseau, Michel de Montaigne, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Submissions should present novel ideas and be clearly argued in compelling ways for intellectually serious readers. We are not seeking peer-reviewed academic work. Below is a selection of exemplary essays that epitomize the genre and style we look for. While some of these pieces are authored by already distinguished thinkers, we have chosen them primarily for their exceptional embodiment of genre and style.

• Frankfurt, H. G. (1971). Freedom of the will and the concept of a person. Journal of Philosophy, 68(1), 5-20.
• Fukuyama, F. (1989). The end of history? The National Interest, 16, 3–18.
• Huntington, S. P. (1993). The clash of civilizations? Foreign Affairs, 72(3), 22-49.
• Nagel, T. (1974). What is it like to be a bat? The Philosophical Review, 83(4), 435-450.
• Sontag, S. (1966). Against interpretation. In Against Interpretation and Other Essays (pp. 3-14). Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
• Frank, A. (2024). The coming second copernican revolution. Noema Magazine.
• Swanigan, P. (2024). It is time to give up hope for a better climate & get heroic. Noema Magazine.
• Seth, A. (2025). The Mythology of Conscious AI. Noema Magazine.