Ten years ago this month, .ART launched as the first top-level domain built for the art world. Today, on our anniversary, applications open for the inaugural .ART Award.

The decade in between has been a long preparation. Since 2016, we have grown into a community of 310,000+ artists, galleries, museums, foundations, and cultural organisations across 170 countries. Along the way, we have sponsored the Digital Innovation in Arts and Culture Award, welcomed HUG into the family, and built our partnership with the American Alliance of Museums. The .ART Award is the natural next step, and a prize of our own.

“The value of an artwork has never lived in the object alone, it lives in the information surrounding it: the process, the context, the artist’s voice. For ten years, .ART has been building the infrastructure for artists to archive their own practice. With the .ART Award, we are launching the only global prize designed to honour exactly that.”

Ulvi Kasimov, Founder of .ART Registry

About the Award

The .ART Award is a global prize open to artists worldwide, across all disciplines, with more than $50,000 in total prize value. The format is straightforward: to apply, artists submit a .ART domain pointing to a website, portfolio, or social profile that documents their work, their identity, and the story behind their practice. The website itself is the application. Free to enter.

“We rarely get to see how an idea becomes a work of art. This award changes that by making the journey as important as the destination.”

Akanksha Ballaney, Senior Director of Business Development at Artsy and Artnet

Why this format

An artist’s online presence has become as expressive as the artwork itself. The website you maintain, the portfolio you curate, the social profile you treat as a home, these are all extensions of your practice, structured and self-authored. The .ART Award celebrates that work: the practice of presenting your art well, on your own terms, in a space you own. We want to see how artists are using that space, and the thinking behind it.

“I’ve spent my career moving between auction rooms, digital platforms, and foundation boardrooms, and the question that has always stayed with me is the one the market rarely asks: what happened in the studio before the work arrived? The sketches abandoned, the ideas reconsidered, the moment something became itself. The .ART Award honors exactly that hidden history, and for a collector and institution-builder who has spent years thinking about what art means beyond its price, that feels not just important, but overdue.”

Shlomi Rabi, Executive Director of the Per Artes Foundation

Prizes

  • $15,000 cash Grand Prize
  • One-month residency at Château du Fresne, near Paris
  • Residency at Anfitrion in Marbella, Spain
  • Editorial coverage in Whitewall Magazine, the Award’s media partner
  • A premium .ART domain name valued at $10,000
  • Additional prizes will be announced throughout the application period

Château du Fresne, near Paris. One-month residency at the historic estate is among the .ART Award 2026 prizes.

“For us and Château du Fresne, a .ART domain is more than a URL; it is a digital seal of authenticity that unites artists, curators, and collectors within a single, prestigious ecosystem. By documenting the creative process under this shared identity, we transform our historic legacy into a global, accessible sanctuary for artistic connection and discovery.”

Gijs Stork, curator, producer, and co-founder of Château du Fresne

The Jury

The 2026 .ART Award is judged by an international panel of ten leading voices across art criticism, curatorial practice, contemporary art, art markets, digital culture, and arts law:

  • Jerry Saltz, Senior Art Critic at New York Magazine and 2018 Pulitzer Prize winner
  • Sasha Stiles, poet and artist, co-founder of theVERSEverse
  • Dean Phelus, Associate Vice President of Learning and Editor in Chief of Museum magazine, American Alliance of Museums
  • Akanksha Ballaney, Senior Director of Business Development at Artsy and Artnet
  • Regina Harsanyi, Media Arts Curator, Museum of the Moving Image
  • Gijs Stork, curator, producer, and co-founder of Château du Fresne
  • Laurent Moïsi, Co-Publisher and Editor-at-Large of Whitewall Magazine
  • Shlomi Rabi, Executive Director of the Per Artes Foundation
  • Leo Crane, co-founder of AIFA Ventures
  • Irina Tarsis, Founder and Director of the Center for Art Law

Key Dates

Applications close on 1 November 2026. Semi-finalists will be announced on 6 November, finalists on 20 November, and winners revealed on 3 December 2026 during Art Basel Miami.

Webinar Series

“I’m fascinated by the inner workings of the artist’s studio, the layers of inspiration and influence and craft, the process behind an artwork, and I appreciate how the award.art initiative centers this aspect of creativity.”

Sasha Stiles, poet and artist, co-founder of theVERSEverse

Two large neon-lit text-based artworks by Sasha Stiles installed at Basel Social Club 2023; a viewer stands in the foreground.

Work by .ART Award juror Sasha Stiles, on view at Basel Social Club 2023. Image courtesy of Play Record Mint.

Sasha will explore exactly these inner workings in the first session of our companion webinar series, taking place this Wednesday. To support artists through the application process, we are launching a series of conversations with jury members and practitioners alongside the Award. More sessions will follow throughout the application window.

Apply

Visit award.art to learn more and apply. Free entry, deadline 1 November 2026.